The average speed that people read in English

What is the average speed that people read in English?

According to this website, it's 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 words per minute for fiction.

The average length of a novel is 90,000 words, according to this website, which means the average person would take 5-6 hours to finish it.

If you are learning English, even if you are at B2-C1 level, you probably read a little slower. Let's say that you read 180 words per minute. It would take you over 8 hours to finish a 90,000-word novel.

Hence, you can see the benefits of increasing your reading speed!

If you're interested in doing that, you can test your reading speed here. Be warned, you not only have to read a text, but also answer some questions on it!

Reckless

Sometimes, words can seem confusing. Take the word reckless, for example. It means roughly the same thing as careless. However, when we look at careless, it seems obvious that it is a combination of the word care and the suffix -less. There is also the word careful. 

Why then, is there no such word as reck, or reckful?

In fact, there is such a word as reck. Here is the Google definition:

reck

/rɛk/

verb

ARCHAIC

verb: reck; 3rd person present: recks; past tense: recked; past participle: recked; gerund or present participle: recking

1. pay heed to something.

   "ye reck not of lands or goods"

   • it is of importance.

     "what recks it?"

Notice the word archaic in the definition. This means that the word is no longer used. If it is no longer used, why is it in the dictionary? So that people reading old books or manuscripts can look it up.


There is also a word reckful. Although it does not appear as a Google definition, you can find it in some dictionaries. Again, it is marked as archaic or uncommon.

reckful

adjective

(comparative more reckful, superlative most reckful)

1. Full of careful heed or attention; careful; cautious.

Portmanteau

A portmanteau is a blend of two words that become one word.

The most famous portmanteau at the moment is Brexit - Britain + Exit. Brexit is not really an official word and is not found in many dictionaries.

Other examples of a portmanteau are:

brunch (breakfast + lunch)
skort (a kind of mix of a skirt and shorts)
infotainment (information + entertainment)
bromance (bro + romance)

What is the size of a native speaker’s vocabulary?

What is the size of a native speaker’s vocabulary?

The answer is not so simple. There are two sides to a person’s vocabulary. The first is the number of words they use on a daily basis. This is their active vocabulary. The second is the number of words that they recognise, but may not use themselves. This is their passive vocabulary.

For instance, most native speakers would understand the word ‘ajar’, which means ‘slightly open’, as in the door is ajar. But it is probably not a word that they use very much. Perhaps they never use it!

Lexicographer Susie Dent says that most native speakers of English have an active vocabulary of 20,000 words and a passive vocabulary of 40,000. I have seen other sources that claim most people have an active vocabulary of as little as 12,000 words.

Still, for an English learner, that is a lot of words to learn to catch up with the natives.

But there is a way to improve your vocabulary without learning new words. That is, to transfer some words from your passive vocabulary into your active vocabulary.

For example, you might be fond of the word ‘maybe’, but you can always try to use ‘perhaps’ more. Perhaps you usually write For example. You could try using For instance instead.

It’s all about making an effort and stepping outside of your comfort zone.

Historical origins of some idioms.

Here is a passage that was forwarded to me, which describes the origins of many English idioms, such as 'one for the road' and 'raining cats and dogs'. I'm not sure it's 100% accurate, but I think you'll find it interesting anyway:

There is an old Hotel/Pub in Marble Arch, London, which used to have a gallows adjacent to it. Prisoners were taken to the gallows (after a fair trial of course) to be hanged. The horse-drawn dray, carting the prisoner, was accompanied by an armed guard, who  would stop the dray outside the pub and ask the  prisoner if he would
Like ''ONE LAST DRINK''.  If he said YES, it was referred to as ONE FOR THE ROAD.   If he declined, that Prisoner was ON THE WAGON.
 
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and t hen once a day it  was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "piss poor", but  worse than that were the really poor folk, who  couldn't even afford to buy a pot, they "Didn't  have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of  the low.
 
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
Temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to  be.
 
Here are some facts about the 1500s: Most people got married in June, because t hey took  their yearly bath in May and they still smelled  pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
 
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.  The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.  Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!" 

Houses had thatched roofs, thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was t he only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.  When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.  Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."      
  
There was nothing to stop things from  falling into the house. This posed a real
problem in the bedroom, where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "dirt poor." The wealthy
Had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their  footing. As the winter wore on they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance. Hence: a thresh hold.
 
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung
over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate
mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for
dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight, then start over the next
day.  Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence
The rhyme: ''Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old''.   
  
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When
visitors came over they would hang up their bacon, to show off. It was a sign of
wealth that a man could, "Bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to
Share with guests and would all sit around talking and  ''chew the fat''.    

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death.  This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.   

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf,
The family got the  middle, and guests got the top, or ''The Upper  Crust''.  
 
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and  wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of ''Holding a Wake''.      
  
England is old and small and the local folks started  running out of places
to bury people, so they  would dig up coffins and would take the bones to 
a bone-house and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out
of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realised they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up  through the ground and tie it to a  bell.   Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night  (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell;  thus someone could be, ''Saved by the Bell ''or  was considered a ''Dead Ringer''

ISMS and ISTS

I spent a class going over some words ending in -ism or -ist, words such as 'capitalism' and 'theist'.

Afterwards, I got to wondering how many such words there are in English.

It turns out that there are plenty.

morewords.com lists 887 words ending in -ism and 1201 words ending in -ist. There are more ending in -ist because of words like 'list' or 'mist'.

Words ending in -ism: http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ism/
In order of how common they are: http://www.morewords.com/most-common-ends-with/ism/

Words ending in -ist: http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ist/
In order of how common they are: http://www.morewords.com/most-common-ends-with/ist/

Words have lives, too

Just like us, words have lives. They are born, they struggle for survival and eventually they die.

Words have to come from somewhere. They are born when a new word is coined. 

Words might need to compete with other words for survival. For example, you could say 'maybe' or you could say 'perhaps'. I think you would agree that the word 'maybe' is more popular. Everyone seems to say 'maybe', but only a few people use 'perhaps'. As a word becomes less popular, it could begin to sound old-fashioned and it's decline is hastened. Eventually, nobody uses it anymore and the word is 'dead'.

The Darwinian-style life struggle of a word is influenced by coevolutionary social, technological, and political factors (see this link for empirical research).

A word most often lives longer than we do. A word can live for a few hundred years or more. Many Latin words have even outlived the death of their own language and live on in other host languages to this day, in phrases like alma mater.  

I'm trying to think of some words which are currently in their death throes and what comes to mind are the words used to describe groups of animals. After all, when was the last time you heard someone talking about a clowder of cats?

Language of Truth and Lies: Performatives

I found a fascinating video description of 'performatives'... and how they are used to tell lies that are technically true!

Who invented English grammar rules?

If you've ever wondered why English has such odd grammar rules, here's an excerpt from the book 'English Grammar for Dummies':

The next time you try to decide whether you had run or had ran home, thank the Angles and the Saxons. Those old guys were members of Germanic tribes who invaded England about 1500 years ago. Their languages blended into Anglo-Saxon, which came to be called Englisc. Nowadays it's called "Old English."

Old English lasted about 400 years; this English would look and sound like a foreign language to English-speakers today. Although it's gone, Old English isn't forgotten. Remnants remain in modern speech. You can thank (or blame) the Anglo-Saxons for most of the irregular verbs, including the fact that you say ran instead of runned.

In the Middle English period (1100 to about 1450) England was speckled with local dialects, each with its own vocabulary and sentence structure. Nobody studied grammar in school, and nobody worried about what was correct or incorrect. (There were a few more important items on the agenda, including starvation and the bubonic plague.)

In the fifteenth century the printing press was invented and the era of Modern English began. At this time, folks were more interested in learning to read and also more interested in writing for publication. But writers faced a new problem. Sending one's words to a different part of the country might mean sending them off to someone whose vocabulary or sentence structure was different. Not to mention the fact that spelling was all over the place! 

Suddenly, rules seemed like a good idea. London was the center of government and economic life — and also the center of printing. So what the London printers decided was right soon became right. However, not until the eighteenth century did the rules realty become set Printers, in charge of turning handwriting into type, were guided by "printers' bibles," also known as the rules. 

Schoolmasters tried to whip the English language into shape by writing the rules down. But they grafted Latin concepts onto English, and it wasn't always a good fit. In fact, some of the loonier rules of English grammar come from this mismatch. In Latin, for example, you can't split an infinitive because an infinitive is a single word. In English, infinitives are formed with two words (to plus a verb, as in to dance, to dream). Nevertheless, the rule was handed down: no split infinitives.

English Conventional Usage

This is a topic I have been interested in for a while.

I've long understood that English works by 'conventional usage'. That is to say that a word means whatever everybody understands it to mean, as opposed to what some controlling body wants it to mean.

Hence, a word can change meaning. Something which goes 'against' English grammar can become acceptable, such as a split infinitive or using 'and' at the beginning of a sentence.

If everybody started using the word 'dinosaur' for breakfast (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordplay_(The_Twilight_Zone)), then dinosaur would become an acceptable word to use for breakfast.

The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing has this to say (page 243):

Words Are Not Endowed with Fixed and "Proper" Meanings

When people object to how someone else uses a word, they often say, "That isn't its proper meaning." The word disinterested, for example, is frequently employed in the sense of "uninterested," and those who dislike this usage argue that the proper meaning of disinterested is "objective, unbiased. "

In such arguments "proper meaning" generally signifies a meaning sanctioned by past usage or even by the original, etymological sense of the word. But the dogma that words come to us out of the past with proper meanings—fixed and immutable—is a fallacy. The only meanings a word has are those that the speakers of the language choose to give it. If enough speakers of English use disinterested to mean "uninterested," then by definition they have given that meaning to the word.

Those who take a conservative attitude toward language have the right, even the duty, to resist changes which they feel lessen the efficiency of English. They should, however, base their resistance upon demonstrating why the change does make for inefficiency, not upon an authoritarian claim that it violates proper meaning.

As a user of words you should be guided by consensus, that is, the meanings agreed upon by your fellow speakers of English, the meanings recorded in dictionaries. We shall look at what dictionaries do in Chapter 29. For now, simply understand that dictionary definitions are not "proper meanings" but succinct statements of consensual meanings.

In most cases the consensus emerges from an activity in which individual language users participate without knowing that they are, in effect, defining words. The person who says "I was disinterested in the lecture" does not intend to alter the meaning of disinterested. He or she has simply heard the word used this way before.

You, You, You and You.

Did you know that the word, ‘you’ has at least four meanings?

1 The first use is of ‘you’ as the second person singular:

Jack, where are you going?

We are talking to Jack and you refers to Jack. Hundreds of years ago, English speakers used the word, ‘thou’ as the second person singular and distinguished it from the second person plural, but this was lost in time.


2 The second use of you is the second person plural.

Class, you must complete your homework on time.

We are talking directly to a group of people and we refer to them by you (and your).


3 Next, we have something called the ‘generic you’. Although this is rarely mentioned in grammar books, it is extremely common. The generic you means ‘anyone’:

You can’t make a cake without eggs.

A more formal way of saying this is to use ‘one’:

One can’t make a cake without eggs.

In fact, this is called the ‘generic one’.

English learners first come across the generic you when they learn basic classroom language:

How do you spell that?
How do you pronounce that?

Perhaps that accounts for the common mistake:

How to spell that?

Learners feel that ‘you’ does not make sense, so they substitute it with ‘to’. But the reason it does not seem to make sense is that they have not yet learned the ‘generic you’. Of course, even advanced level students and teachers may not be aware of the generic you.

4 The final use of you is to talk about oneself. Consider this exchange:

Billy: How are you holding up since Linda passed away?

Grampa: Well, you do get lonely sometimes, but I will persevere.

Notice the use of you to distance the speaker from a sensitive topic. Once again, we could use ‘one’ in its place or we could just say ‘I’:

Well, one does get lonely sometimes, but I will persevere.
Well, I do get lonely sometimes, but I will persevere.

This last usage is the least common.