How many Latin vocabulary words are there?

[Rebecca VA]

How many basic vocabulary words (I'm not talking about endings) are there in Latin? Wheelock's has about 20-22 per chapter, and there are 40 chapters, so that makes 800-850. Surely the Romans had more words than that?!

 

In Latin 3 and 4, do students learn more vocabulary words, or do they just work with the words they already know?

[Teachin'Mine]

I don't know how many, but I would imagine there are way more than that. How's that for specific. :lol: I think that once the grammar is established that the next years are building vocabulary to be able to do more translations. Hopefully Kareni, or others, will give you more specific info. :)

[Kathy in Richmond]

I also don't have a figure, but we found that the amount of vocabulary increased after the kids finished the Latin grammar years and moved on to reading Latin literature. Each author's topics and thus the needed vocabulary varied widely (mythology, Roman history, love poetry, Cicero's political orations, etc.)

 

OK, I pulled our Ovid reader off the bookshelf. It has approximately 800 words in the glossary. Of course, some of these would be review for the student, but many more would be new.

 

You might be interested in looking through the Bolchazy Carducci catalog. They sell vocabulary card sets to accompany many of the Latin authors.

 

~Kathy

[Lawana]

I read somewhere, wish I could remember where, that Latin has a 2000 word vocabulary, making it a comparatively low vacabulary language. Sure wish I could give you a source.

[Moira in MA]

The Oxford Latin Dictionary has around 40,000 entries and covers just Classical Latin (to AD 200) so Lawana is way off, sorry. Maybe she's thinking of the Diederich study (see below).

 

There is a very famous (in Latin circles) study of the frequency of Latin words Paul Bernard Diederich's study done in 1939 that gives a basic vocabulary of just under 1500 words.

 

But, like Kathy said, every author has his favorites and you learn them as you go along.

 

 

HTH

~Moira

[Lawana]

The Oxford Latin Dictionary has around 40,000 entries and covers just Classical Latin (to AD 200) so Lawana is way off, sorry. Maybe she's thinking of the Diederich study (see below).

 

There is a very famous (in Latin circles) study of the frequency of Latin words Paul Bernard Diederich's study done in 1939 that gives a basic vocabulary of just under 1500 words.

 

But, like Kathy said, every author has his favorites and you learn them as you go along.

 

 

HTH

~Moira

That's what happens when I try to go by memory. I think I was (sort of) remembering the basic vocabulary. Thanks for setting me straight.

[Kareni]

Traupman's New College Latin & English Dictionary is the dictionary my daughter's Latin instructor recommended that she used through AP Latin and continues to use in college. It contains "More than 70,000 words and phrases ...." And, it's quite portable!

 

Regards,

Kareni