How many word families are in English?

There are roughly 100,000 word-families in the English language. A native English speaking person knows between 10,000 (uneducated) to 20,000 (educated) word families. Professor Paul Nation found that a person needs to know 8,000-9,000 word families to enjoy reading a book.

Further detail about this can be seen here. Just so, how many word families are there?

37

Additionally, how many common words are in the English language? Studies have shown that the average English native speaker knows about 20,000 words with university-educated people knowing around 40,000 words. When actually speaking and with everyday writing (emails, letters, notes etc.) this goes down to about 5,000 very common words that are used repeatedly.

Similarly one may ask, what is a word family example?

Word families are groups of words that have a common feature or pattern - they have some of the same combinations of letters in them and a similar sound. For example, at, cat, hat, and fat are a family of words with the "at" sound and letter combination in common. You can study one word family a week.

What are the 500 most common words in English?

Common Words

  • shape.
  • yes.
  • hot.
  • miss.
  • brought.
  • heat.
  • snow.
  • bed. bring.