VOCABULARIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 243, 18 February 1944, Page 5

VOCABULARIES

Sir,-Some weeks ago Ihe Listener — published an interesting article on Basic English and, quoting an English paper, stated that Mr. Churchill’s vocabulary was composed of 250,000 words. Remembering from my student days that Shakespeare, who is generally credited

with a vocabulary far above the "normal," used about 15,000 words, this claim worried me. Even admitting that since his days we have certainly added a vast amount of words to the bulk of our language (scientific, technical, and general), the figure of a quarter of a million words at a single man’s command seemed too ‘much, Then, while I was pondering about this question without having a means of properly checking up on it, I came by chance across a letter addressed to the (London) Listener (October 7, 1943) by Compton Mackenzie, who, as a writer, should know about the use of words. He bears out the point I have been hesitating to put forward. Here is what he says: "Mr. Tom Harrisson has allowed mass to get the better of observation when he suggests that the Prime Minister has a quarter-million-word vocabulary. If he that by ten he might be nearer the mark, and at the same time put Mr. Churchill on a level with Shakespeare. The Concise Oxford Dic. tionary gives about 60,000 words, but. the books of no Englishman alive or dead would provide quotations to illustrate many more than half ofethem. To test that remark I have just opened the Concise Oxford Dictionary at random. There are 64 words on one page and 57 on the other. Of these I may have used in writing 37 from the first page and 22 from the second. I should have had to turn to the dictionary to make mage 2. sure wast 11 of the words meant. Mr. Churchill mii be able to guess the meaning of 120,000 lish words, but I think it is im: able, and anyway that is not the same thing, thank heaven, as having a vocabulary 120,000, for if it were he would be unreadAs for nd agg Hyg Eau there are now a million w in the ish moe ol I do not believe it. All the debussing of military English, all the triphibian operations of exuberant oratory, and all the jargon ef science and sciolism has not been able to add half a million words to the O.E.D. since 1928."

LINGUIST

(Wellington)