大家可以選擇一邊聽小編的朗讀，一邊閱讀文章内容：

There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word. Is dogone word, or two (a noun meaning 'a kind of animal', and a verb meaning 'to follow persistently')? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (e.g. dogs = plural noun, dogs = present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since it might also be written as hot-dog or even hotdog?

對于這個問題，幾乎沒有合理的答案。要想計算清楚一門語言的單詞量幾乎是不可能的，因為很難界定清楚什麼才叫單詞。比如說，dogone算是一個還是兩個單詞？因為dogone作為名詞，表示一種動物，而作為動詞，則表示緊緊跟随。如果這種情況算作兩個單詞，那麼是不是單詞的不同變形也要算作不同的單詞？比如，dogs既可以作為名詞dog（狗）的複數形式，也可以作為動詞dog（跟蹤）的第三人稱單數形式。dog-tired（精疲力盡的）算是一個單詞，還是連在一起的兩個單詞？hot dog（熱狗）真的是兩個單詞嗎？要知道，hot dog也可以寫作hot-dog，甚至是hotdog。

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

總共有20冊的《牛津英語詞典》第二版中，收錄了171,476個在使用的單詞和47.156個已廢棄的單詞。而在此基礎上，還有大約9.500個派生詞，作為小類目收錄進詞典裡。這些單詞中大約一半多是名詞，大約四分之一是形容詞，大約七分之一是動詞，剩下的包括感歎詞、連詞、介詞、後綴等。而這些數字還不包括用來歸類不同單詞的單詞，如noun和adjective。

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

這就意味着，英語裡至少有25萬完全不同的單詞，這還不包括單詞的變形，也不包括那些詞典裡未收錄的技術性或是地域性的詞彙，也不包括那些尚未被收錄到已經出版的詞典裡的單詞。而這些單詞中，大約有20%當前已經不再使用。如果單詞的不同含義也算作不同的單詞的話，英語的單詞總量将會多達75萬。

---

如果覺得好，歡迎繼續關注廖懷寶的原創頭條号“新概念英語的教與學”！

,

更多精彩资讯请关注tft每日頭條，我们将持续为您更新最新资讯!

查看全部