The Rest is Science is one of my favorite shows/podcasts/YouTube channels. I have watched every single episode, and I keep waiting for the next one. Recently, they published an episode about how many English words a human knows.
They had talked about this in an earlier episode, and someone made a test to algorithmically determine this. So naturally I took the test. Below is my result.
Out of the 171,476 words in the English language, knowing 73,650 words seems farfetched to me. And the reason might be because I was able to get many words correct, just by guessing. As many of the people have pointed out in the comments of the videos, there should have been a fifth option, “I don’t know.” That would have given a more accurate picture.
But it’s a fun test. Here’s the link that was shared in the podcast to take this test. Take it and share how many words you know!