> Most people know 1000 words on average in English Maybe I misunderstand but that sounds so stupid and wrong I don't know where to start. Standard vocab estim

> Most people know 1000 words on average in English Maybe I misunderstand but that sounds so stupid and wrong I don't know where to start. Standard vocab estimates are 15K - 30K, averaging about 20K (these from memory) Edit: from wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Native-language_vocabulary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Native-language_voc... --- As a result, estimates vary from 10,000-17,000 word families[16][19] or 17,000-42,000 dictionary words for young adult native speakers of English.[12][17] A 2016 study shows that 20-year-old English native speakers recognize on average 42,000 lemmas, ranging from 27,100 for the lowest 5% of the population to 51,700 lemmas for the highest 5%. These lemmas come from 6,100 word families in the lowest 5% of the population and 14,900 word families in the highest 5%. 60-year-olds know on average 6,000 lemmas more. [12] According to another, earlier 1995 study junior-high students would be able to recognize the meanings of about 10,000–12,000 words, whereas for college students this number grows up to about 12,000–17,000 and for elderly adults up to about 17,000 or more.[20] ---