古人云，“少壮不努力，老大背单词”。各位挣扎在红黄蓝黑各种宝书中的同学或许要问，这单词要背到什么时候才算够？我们不妨来看看外国人的词汇量是多少。
Britain’sGuardiannewspaper, in 1986, estimatedthesizeoftheaverageperson’svocabularyasdevelopingfromroughly 300 wordsattwoyearsold, through 5,000 wordsatfiveyearsold, tosome 12,000 wordsattheageof 12.
1986年，英国《卫报》估算英国人2岁的单词量约为300个，5岁时为5000个，到了12岁，词汇量在12000个左右。
TheGuardian’sresearchsuggestedthatitstaysataroundthisnumberofwordsfortheremainderofmostpeople’slives—addingthatthisisroughlythesamenumberofwordsasthosedrawnonbyapopularnewspaperinthecourseofproducingitsdailyeditions—whileagraduatemighthaveavocabularynearlytwiceaslarge (23,000 words). ShakespearehadoneofthelargestrecordedvocabulariesofanyEnglishwriterataround 30,000 words.
《卫报》的研究认为大多数人之后的词汇量都不会有太大的变化。它还指出，12000词汇量基本等同于流行报纸每天文章里的词汇量。但是大学毕业生的词汇量大约是其2倍，约23000个。莎士比亚则是所有英语作家中词汇量最大的之一，高达约30000个单词。
FrancisandKucera (1982) suggestthatthe 2000 mostfrequentwordfamiliesofEnglishmakeup 79.7% oftheindividualwordsinanyEnglishtext, the 3000 mostfrequentwordfamiliesrepresent 84%, the 4000 mostfrequentwordfamiliesmakeupabout 86.7%, andthe 5000 mostfrequentwordfamiliescover 88.6%.
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