Scholars have often used the literary output of authors to estimate their vocabulary size, Shakespeare being one frequently studied case (Craig, 2011). I decided to compare this data point against the most famous artists in hip hop. Prior to indulging in our reading selection, there are some languages expressed through words and/or phrases that must be understood. In few other capacities has Shakespeare garnered such unrivalled accolades as in his skill as a wordsmith, a fashioner of shiny new words that have … Using statistical techniques, it’s possible to estimate how many words he knew but didn’t use. Thus, we can estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words. Your data is skewed by the fact that all of these writers used words that were created by Shakespeare. This total of 17,677 words may be divided into 14,652 main words and 3,025 compound words; thus the main words amount to slightly less than I’m also skeptical about those claims! The new total shows that almost two-thirds of Shakespearean ‘coinages’ may not have been his.. After a shipwreck, a group of noblemen wash up on an enchanted island ruled by the magician Prospero. Shakespeare and 'The Licence of Ink' Data-crunching Shakespeare reveals that he invented radically fewer words than conventionally supposed. size of the vocabulary used in a work. Shakespeare’s Vocabulary. To test the hypothesis that Shakespeare’s vocabulary grew as h… Play this game to review Other. 1. 14,376 words appeared only once and 846 were used more than 100 times. Estimated vocabulary size … Learn shakespeare vocabulary play quotes with free interactive flashcards. This total of 17,677 words may be divided into 14,652 main words and 3,025 compound words; thus the main words amount to slightly less than And I can’t see Figure 3 anywhere…. The “corpus” for each writer was the works I could download from the Project Gutenberg website. Raw Lyrics Data via John W. Miller. You can deduce it from the figures given though. Each is a graph showing the relative size of corpus, number of unique word tokens, and number of unique word stems for various authors’ available works in Figure 1. The central idea of this text is* The author uses details in paragraph 1 to develop the central idea when comparing the vocabularies of rappers to William Shakespeare. It’s significantly larger, for example, than Dickens or Richardson. Happily stumbled across this piece entirely by accident and must admit my knowledge of the subject matter is limited. Name SortName Created SortCreated; All's Well That Ends Well: All's Well That Ends Well: 1603-5: 1603-5: Antony and Cleopatra: Antony and Cleopatra: 1606-7: 1606-7 Milton is often cited as having a smaller vocabulary than Shakespeare, but this is also not borne out by the analysis. Jason Kottke estimates that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words, which suggests Shakespeare was pushing the boundaries of English vocab as he knew it. It is proposed to test this opinion by studying the plays by Shakespeare: are their vocabularies more extensive than that of other plays from the same age but by different authors? I would think that the most important measurement would be the number of words for which he’s listed by the OED as first use. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Several studies over the years have tried to determine the average vocabulary size of adults and children. I’m not sure what happened to the figures, this was written over 10 years ago and I suspect things have been lost in server moves etc.. Oh, sad. About half have found a permanent place in the language. In few other capacities has Shakespeare garnered such unrivalled accolades as in his skill as a wordsmith, a fashioner of shiny new words that have … Mostly my motivation was to show how easy it is to disprove the commonly-held notion that Shakespeare’s vocabulary was as special as his place in literary history. I know you said you’re not talking about his influence but I don’t think you can separate vocabulary from the equation without looking at his influence on the writers you are comparing him to. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Learn how your comment data is processed. Show me how to use in a sentence. words used in their lyrics Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare’s vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever. At first glance it appears that Shakespeare’s vocabulary was markedly larger than Marlowe’s. Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare's vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever. I Comedies”, “Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books”, “Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language”, “Preface to Shakespeare” Even if I were looking at influence (and my argument has nothing to do with that), I don’t see how you can know how many words Shakespeare ‘invented’, since the attribution of words to him is based on his being a major source of words for that era, and moreover in an era where neologisms were common and Shakespeare had no problem using popular and less hifalutin/classical language in his popular works. apart and put it back together in new and fascinating ways. What I discovered suggests that Shakespeare’s vocabulary, while far from small, is far from extraordinary among writers when size of corpus is taken into account. He is credited with writing approximately 154 sonnets and 38 plays. In 2013, The Economist published an article that estimated that adult native test-takers knew about 20,000 to 35,000 words and a native 8-year old will usually have an average vocabulary of 10,000.They also found that vocabulary size stops growing at mid-age. I suspect it’s simply that the OED notes that it’s the first recorded use. My wife will tell you my classical training was abysmal to non-existent. In his sample size of 35,000 words per artist, Daniels determined that Aesop Rock used 7,392 unique words (and Wu-Tang Clan, 5,895) against Shakespeare’s 5,000 unique words. Teachers and researchers can create customised test sessions to measure their students' vocabulary sizes and then download the results. The first thing to acknowledge is that Shakespeare’s vocabulary is larger than some other notable writers with similar-sized corpuses. How we are supposed to know that he coined these words and phrases I’ve no idea. about stage directions and actors interpretation. guage, The Story of English, estimates that Shakespeare's vocabulary was twice as large as that of an educated person today.7 In Stephen Greenblatt's introduction to the Norton Shakespeare, we read of "Shakespeare's astonishing vocabulary of some 25,000 words." A few simple programs were written to analyse his and other writers’ works whose corpuses were of similar size to see how they compared. What percentage of the english language did they know/use? It’s true that admirers of Shakespeare have often celebrated the sheer size of the vocabulary he used in his works. A vocabulary list featuring "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare, Act I. Shakepeare is also said to have invented many words. The vocabulary king among writers is Joyce, whose vocabulary towers over Shakespeare’s (Finnegans Wake was not included) even with a significantly smaller corpus. Spelling Bee Test your spelling acumen. Notice that your final conclusion is not necessarily wrong, but your analysis is probably not enough to justify your conclusions. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. - Me when I YEET. Wouldn’t the number of these vary with the time period, and with the author’s background? "PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW" // HAMLET, … Genre matters in vocabulary calculations—check out the chart below, which takes 500 random samples of 35,000 words from rock, country, and hip hop. Greek? The first one would be to c ompute t he size of the vocabulary if al l the pla ys had been of the smallest length found in the corpus (B . Rather than see him as an unusually successful writer whose works have remained popular over centuries, we have tried to make his literary abilities seem extraordinary too. It’s significantly larger, for example, than Dickens or Richardson. How Long Will It Take For The Leavers To Leave? From his raucous and rabble-rousing youth, King Henry V rose to be one of England’s most beloved and celebrated monarchs. Reading Shakespeare can be a daunting task, but with the right vocabulary guide, comprehending the text is easier than you think. expand their vocabulary and acquire specialist vocabulary; improve the range, accuracy and fluency of expression; engage confidently with guides in the Birthplace Trust properties; Available: Monday to Saturday, all year round. A non-trivial task…. this in the context of a visual medium (theater) in which we know (comparatively) little Also unsure what you mean by “Marlowe came later”? This opinion has already been challenged by several studies (Eliott & … It is proposed to test this opinion by studying the plays by Shakespeare: are their vocabularies more extensive than that of other plays from the same age but by different authors? *’s”) were removed. The first thing to acknowledge is that Shakespeare’s vocabulary is larger than some other notable writers with similar-sized corpuses. Scholars have often used the literary output of authors to estimate their vocabulary size, Shakespeare being one frequently studied case (Craig, 2011). (Note that Joyce’s corpus here does not include Finnegans Wake). Shakespeare was a master of wordplay but supremely poetic. Use them to help you become familiar with the language, as a reference while reading, and as a resource for writing in your journal. People with college degrees tend to have larger vocabularies. Shakespeare’s vocabulary might be reduced further if we took out place and other names from his works, and removed the variant spellings more common in the era before standardized spelling. Is this a myth too? I used each artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. Shakespeare’s double life, as both an English and a universal artist (poet and playwright), begins with the First Folio of 1623. there is, as I can see, no way in which your study accomodates this. 3, The third column is the size of the writer’s vocabulary based on the number of unique word tokens in the corpus. The myth of Shakepeare’s unusually large vocabulary suggests that our view of Shakespeare has been warped by our veneration of his work. Ooh, where did he do that? In Shakespeare’s collected writings, he used a total of 31,534 different words. Greenblatt calls this an … Its relative enormity is unquestioned in the popular and academic literature, bolstered by – and reflexively reaffirming – the peculiar status Shakespeare holds within our culture. Both Shakespeare and Joyce were masters at this and their vocabulary total doesn’t reflect their mastery of the language. Does the size of a writer’s vocabulary matter? Was there a poet called Shakespeare of the time not from Stratford? Would be neat to see the info for the other authors. You’re applying rules to measure the impact of a notorious and shameless rulebreaker. Choose from 500 different sets of shakespeare vocab act 2 flashcards on Quizlet. Based on a count from the OED, between 10,000 and 12,000 new words were added to English during the 16th century. Fabulous article. He upset not only the He did Yet even this requires exception, since he may simply have been the first to publish it, or his publication been the first to survive. David Crystal points out in his 2004 book The Stories of English that these statements both overestimate Shakespeare’s vocabulary and underestimate the size of an average English vocabulary. By Shakespeare’s vocabulary I’d like to know the number of building blocks for his literature as an indication of his flexibility in expressing himself. Shakespeare’s Vocabulary Considered Unexceptional, http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/eng366/lectures/poetry.htm, Assyrian Dictionary Complete « Living Languages, http://politicworm.com/oxford-shakespeare/why-shakespeare-matters/, http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/, https://www.quora.com/How-many-words-did-Shakespeare-invent-and-what-are-they, Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Jenkins Pipelines, Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before Using Vagrant, The Halving of the Centre: Covid and its Effect on London Property, Riding the Tiger: Lessons Learned Implementing Istio, The Astonishing Prescience of Nam June Paik, The First Non-Bullshit Book About Culture I’ve Read, Why Everyone Working in DevOps Should Read The Toyota Way, Software Security Field Guide for the Bewildered, The Lazy Person’s Guide to the Info Command, Seven God-Like Bash History Shortcuts You Will Actually Use. His impact is not diminished by his un-extraordinary vocabulary, so why have people insisted on it? Read the full text here. Words shortened with “. After a shipwreck separates her from her twin brother, Viola disguises herself as a man so she can pass safely through the land of Illyria. Answer (1 of 1): This investigation of the size of Shakespeare's vocabulary and its implications for authorship starts with the assumption Shakespeare did, in fact, have a superior vocabulary. If you’re wondering who has a bigger vocabulary — Shakespeare or rappers — here’s the quick answer in purely numerical terms. The English Vocabulary Size Test is free for students and learners take. Shakespeare wasn’t a genius in the same way that, say, Einstein was… Where Einstein This is a thesaurus of all the glosses to the words in the Glossary, linked to the lines in the texts where these words are found. Use them to help you become familiar with the language, as a reference while reading, and as a resource for writing in your journal. Students often find the works of Shakespeare intimidating, but with this collection of free lesson plans about the Bard's plays, teachers can make the subject matter easier for kids to digest. It probably doesn't help if you sing "My name is" about 200 times. A stemming algorithm reduces the words “fishing”, “fished”, “fish”, and “fisher” to the root word, “fish”. SHAKESPEARE HAD FEWER WORDS, BUT DOPER RHYMES THAN RAPPERS Central Idea Graphic Organizer Identify how the central idea was developed throughout the text. Shakespeare Vocabulary is believed to be more than 50000 words in which he used 31000+ words in works. A better comparison than any of these later writers (yes, Marlowe came later) would be Francis Bacon, who partnered with Shakespeare (the poet, not the Stratford dude) in following the French Pléiade in their effort to create a vernacular literature for their respective native languages out of the roots of Latin and Greek. Further reading: http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ – a lot of hippity hop rapping artists have a larger vocabulary than the Bard. “However, the single most remarkable feature about Shakespeare’s poetic language is his extraordinary vocabulary, his choice of particular words to convey particular emotional attitudes. This opinion has already been challenged by several studies (Eliott & Valenza 2004 ; … This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. I was thinking it might (if anything) do the opposite – young Marlowe and Shakespeare have very similar vocabulary profiles, so if Marlowe had lived/written on, then he would have potentially displayed the same vocabulary. C He defends Shakespeare's small vocabulary, referencing other writers that produce quality work with a limited vocabulary. Shakespeare took everything Me when I YEET. With both vocabularies combined, he would have known a … I was surprised to find out recently that “neither here nor there” for instance, is from Othello…. Whatever the size of the English lexicon at the time, Shakespeare was in command of a substantial portion of it. It may also be worth researching further whether this analysis indicates that there is a difference in vocabulary size exhibited between playwrights (eg Shakespeare, Marlowe), poets (eg Milton, Shakespeare, Marlowe(?)) Jason Kottke estimates that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words, which suggests Shakespeare was pushing the boundaries of English vocab as he knew it. Hardy – with a similar sized corpus – also shows a vocabulary not dissimilar to Shakespeare’s. Do you read Latin? size of the vocabulary used in a work. Rappers Who Have a Larger Vocabulary Than Shakespeare By Brian Koerber 2014-05-05 22:46:53 UTC Forget style, speed and Grammys , this rappers ranking examines vocabulary size. Estimated vocabulary size … Joyce was the only other classic writer who could be said to match Shakespeare’s mastery of language, although even Joyce tipped his hat to Shakespeare on that score. Because each of these authors have written a different total number of words and without quantitatively taking that into account it is somewhat difficulty to know what is really going on. The Thesaurus is the opposite of the Glossary. No. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Here are one hundred words and phrases that Shakespeare created which you may recognize or even use in your day to day vocabulary. I would support C. Riboldi’s suggestion that it would be interesting to know what percentage of the known english language was used by each author during their careers. He explores Shakespeare's use of words, rather than the size of his vocabulary, that contributes to the quality of his writing. See the definition, listen to the word, then try to spell it correctly. McCrum et al. 14,376 words appeared only once and 846 were used more than 100 times. In Shakespeare’s collected writings, he used a total of 31,534 different words. Learn shakespeare vocab act 2 with free interactive flashcards. Try our free vocabulary size test! Again, the results were very similar. A stemmed word is a “root” form of a word that may have several distinct relations in other word tokens. If you follow the github link you’ll see that the raw data was flattened from the Gutenberg sources. It’s about the supposedly extraordinary nature of his vocabulary. I wrote the article some years ago, and it’s very satisfying that people still read it! I may have to dig out my dog-eared Ellman. Jonson: A Tale of a Tub 8 237 tokens). I did, however, study Joyce before switching to computing, so this was a natural thing to do. Learn shakespeare vocab act 2 with free interactive flashcards. The sixteenth century saw all the nations of Europe engaged on this project, of which Bacon and Sir Philip Sidney are known to have been involved, and which we can see that Shakespeare was too by his very achievement. What I found is expressed in the two graphs below (click to view). William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor. I would venture to guess that most or all of the writers who came after him benefitted by his habit of creating new words from Latin and Greek roots. Shakespeare did invent many words, but he also invented new uses for existing words and […] Shakespeare’s almost uniquely rich use of language.” M. T. Crane, Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 24, G. L. Brook, The Language of Shakespeare (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976), pp. I was going to ask that, too. In his collected writings, Shakespeare used 31,534 different words. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. To determine the word stems I used a Porter stemming algorithm implemented in perl freely available on the web. I’m only an anglophile Frenchman, but I’ve got the impression Shakespeare is not so much praised for the size of his vocabulary than for the number of phrases he coined. Each writer is represented by three numbers. Average Vocabulary Size Estimates of average vocabulary size range from 20,000 to 70,000 words depending upon which experts you listen to and how they define a word. The first column is the size of the corpus examined (ie how many “real” word tokens there were in the texts I gathered together), and divided by 20 (so the numbers are comparable to the other data points). Your English Vocabulary Size is: 30150 *** Top 0.01 % You are Shakespeare! C. He defends Shakespeare’s small vocabulary, referencing other writers that produce quality work with a limited vocabulary. The study made use of “the visual world paradigm with semantic and phonological competitors to study lexical processing efficiency in children ages 2-5 years old.” In his sample size of 35,000 words per artist, Daniels determined that Aesop Rock used 7,392 unique words (and Wu-Tang Clan, 5,895) against Shakespeare’s 5,000 unique words. Search. Isn’t it even more impressive that he managed to do so much with nothing more than the tools other writers possess? Hi hopkinshughes! 3 So glad it happened my way. State that "... Shakespeare had one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, some 30,000 words" (103). So you’d have to get the sources again, determine which capitalized words are proper nouns and then perform the analysis. To test the hypothesis that Shakespeare’s vocabulary grew as he got older, a similar-sized corpus of his later works was examined. In fact, given the relatively small size of his available corpus, his vocabulary is very large indeed.5. I’m afraid time is the problem. If I’m right, then as more works are digitized from that era his reputation in that area will diminish also. Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” was also analysed, but contains a great deal of Latin text interspersed, making his vocabulary anomalously large. By the way, I’m not trying to punch holes in your work: I found your study fascinating. So, a simple count of words doesn’t tell us much about Shakespeares impact. The article is not about Shakespeare’s impact. 4. Thanks for your kind comments. Far more unique words than any other writer, even given his smaller corpus, and the only writer in the study with more than 20,000 stemmed words. ELIZABETHAN LANGUAGE TERMS ELIZABETHAN Æ CONTEMPORARY Listed below are some common Elizabethan terms you will come across while reading Shakespeare. This would exclude proper nouns. One thing not being taken into consideration when just counting unique words is the ability to use the same word in the context of its different meanings, as well as interplay with other words, puns, allusions, rhyme, etc. Strangely just as I was working on a chapter about the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian sources in Shakespeare. If one only counts the kind of different words registered as dictionary headwords (ask as a noun and ask as a verb, for instance), the size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary shrinks to between 17,000 and 20,000. Burton’s work had a lot of latin words; this is noted at the end. ‘The size of Shakespeare’s vocabulary was a direct reflection of what he wrote about – which was virtually everything.’ For the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death, David Crystal explains why counting the number of words in the Shakespearean canon can never be an exact science. And there you have it. Various sources suggest that the average person has a vocabulary of about 4000 words, whereas Shakespeare used between 17000 and 29000 different words in … This means that in addition the 31,534 words that Shakespeare knew and used, there were approximately 35,000 words that he knew but didn’t use. Students will work with a partner to complete the Shakespeare language handout. However, there’s plenty of other evidence to disprove the “Shakespeare was Marlowe” (or vice versa) thesis… vocabulary size itself probably wouldn’t tell us much. ( Log Out /  After a shipwreck, a group of noblemen wash up on an enchanted island ruled by the magician Prospero. As you can see, I, pi, am nearly illiterate. At first glance it appears that Shakespeare’s vocabulary was markedly larger than Marlowe’s. Your English Vocabulary Size is: 29100 *** Top 0.31 % You are Shakespeare! The new total shows that almost two-thirds of Shakespearean ‘coinages’ may not have been his.. According to one estimate, the average speaker of English knows between 10,000-20,000 words. The other point is that you might want to compare them within time clusters, for example, by century. And there you have it. Duration: 30 minutes. Possessives (“. Have a look at some of the words created and used by this literary genius in alphabetic order. Add to this that the estimates of the size of Shakespeare's vocabulary run to as high as 25,000 words. Shakespeare’s vocabulary is held to be extraordinary among writers. 26-64, S. S. Hussey, The Literary Language of Shakespeare (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. Wouldn’t a simple analysis of your data settle this point? Using statistical techniques, it’s possible to estimate how many words he knew but didn’t use. A vocabulary list featuring "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare, Act I. Shakespeare’s double life, as both an English and a universal artist (poet and playwright), begins with the First Folio of 1623. Pernicious means Q. I had thought of a counter-argument to your time thesis: that Dickens was a more prosaic writer writing simpler narrative/populist works (I believe Shakespeare was popular, but considered “clever” and wordy by the groundlings), which might explain why his vocabulary was less broad. it’s possible to estimate how many words he knew but didn’t use. In this informational text, Hugh Craig discusses Shakespeare’s vocabulary and how it compares to other writers. Change ). – popular memes on the site ifunny.co Secondly, the Figure 1 shows Burton as having the most words and over 20 000 stemmed words, while Hardy and Melville aren’t shown at all on Figure 1. Estimates of Shakespeare’s vocabulary range from 20,000 to 30,000 words, depending on how they are counted (larger estimates tend to count singular and … Find out how many words you know with this free vocabulary size test. Choose from 130 different sets of shakespeare vocabulary play quotes flashcards on Quizlet. Number of words is literally the number of words in the corpus. This is based on the number of unique stemmed word tokens. More on this at my blog:http://politicworm.com/oxford-shakespeare/why-shakespeare-matters/. 3. Regarding the ratio point, I’m not sure whether such a number would be that helpful, since doubling the number of words in a corpus would likely not double the number of unique stemmed words. Reading Shakespeare can be a daunting task, but with the right vocabulary guide, comprehending the text is easier than you think. This little book represents Bill Bryson's attempt to collect what scant information exists, and to debunk a few spurious claims. Use these resources to devise workshop ideas and classroom activities specially designed for teachers looking to breathe new life into Shakespeare’s plays. and novelists (eg Richardson and Dickens) or even whether the our intuitive understanding of the categories are aligned with writers’ displayed vocabularies. If you’re wondering who has a bigger vocabulary — Shakespeare or rappers — here’s the quick answer in purely numerical terms. For his time, that was indeed an impressive number. # of Unique Words Used in 500 Random Samples of 35,000 Lyrics from Country, Rock, Hip Hop. Mos def. Shakespeare's biography is sketchy, and ever thus it shall remain. Joyce had a huge vocab based on relatively few words in the corpus. It’s true that admirers of Shakespeare have often celebrated the sheer size of the vocabulary he used in his works. With vocabulary as with some other things, size matters less than what a writer does with it, but what Shakespeare did with his is so impressive in comparison to the other writers mentioned, great as they are, that he can certainly lose a few points in the size department without it doing his overall achievement the slightest harm. 37-60, Charles Dickens: “A Christmas Carol”, “Bleak House”, “Barnaby Rudge”, “David Copperfield”, Samuel Johnson: “Grammar of the English Tongue”, “Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope”, “Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies”, “Johnson’s Notes to Shakespeare Vol. Shakespeare turned the notion of being sick with jealousy into a metaphor that we still use today. Melville, with fewer words in Moby Dick than the younger Shakespeare, has a greater vocabulary than displayed there and in Marlowe’s works. Cite and discuss that evidence here. Search for example sentences. Shakespeare's vocabulary would be comprehensive enough to serve as a concordance for all Marlowe's, Greene's and Peele's plays and poems. 2, The second column is the number of unique tokens found in the above corpus. This is interesting, but wouldn’t it be better to create ratios of unique words and uniquely stemmed words by total number of words? Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare's vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever. A more recent academic publication on vocabulary size and auditory word recognition among pre-school aged kids was published in May 2016. It sounds as if proper nouns were included (i.e., capitalized words representing names of people, places, etc.). Shakespeare Translator Even if you only read the Sparknotes’ versions of Shakespeare plays, there is a very good chance that you will recognize words and phrases that William Shakespeare coined. This is usually enough vocabulary to communicate as a tourist and have simple everyday conversations. However, taking a similar sized corpus of Shakespeare’s younger works, you can see that the vocabulary size for these works is almost identical to Marlowe’s. A vocabulary list featuring "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare, Act I. Thomas Hardy: “A Pair of Blue Eyes”, “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, “The Return of the Native”, “Tess of the D’urbervilles”, “Jude the Obscure”, “Far from the Madding Crowd”, “Return of the Native”, Henry James: “The Bostonians”, “Portrait of a Lady”, “The Wings of a Dove”, James Joyce: “Dubliners”, “Ulysses”, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, Christopher Marlowe: “Various minor poems”, “Dido, Queen of Carthage”, “Dr Faustus”, “Edward II”, “The Jew of Malta”, “Massacre at Paris”, “Tamburlaine the Great (part i, ii)”, John Milton: “Areopagitica”, “Milton’s Comus”, “Minor Poems by Milton”, “Paradise Lost”, “Paradise Regained”, Shakespeare: “The Sonnets”, “A Lover’s Complaint”, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, “Antony and Cleopatra”, “As You Like It”, “The Comedy of Errors”, “Coriolanus”, “Cymbeline”, “Hamlet”, “Henry IV (parts i, ii)”, “Henry V”, “Henry VI (parts i, ii, iii)”, “Henry VIII”, “King John”, “Julius Caesar”, “King Lear”, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, “Macbeth”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “Measure for Measure”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Much Ado About Nothing”, “Othello”, “Richard II”, “Richard III”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Tempest”, “Timon of Athens”, “Titus Andronicus”, “Toilus and Cressida”, “Twelfth Night”, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “The Winter’s Tale”, Shakespeare Younger: “The Comedy of Errors”, “Henry VI (parts i, ii, iii)”, “King John”, “Richard III”, “Taming of the Shrew”, “Titus Andronicus”, “Twelfth Night”, “Love’s Labour’s Lost”, “Romeo and Julie”, Shakespeare Older: “The Sonnets”, “Cymbeline”, “Hamlet”, “Henry VIII”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Measure for Measure”, “Othello”, “The Tempest”, “Timon of Athens”, “The Winter’s Tale”, “A Lover’s Complaint”. Between 10,000 and 12,000 new words state that ``... Shakespeare had of... Featuring `` the Tempest '' by William Shakespeare, act I github you... Day vocabulary according to one estimate, Shakespeare was a master of but! ” form of a word that may have to dig out my dog-eared Ellman to dig out dog-eared... Language handout form of a good article is not necessarily wrong, but your analysis is not! Phrases I ’ ve no idea a substantial portion of it, not same..., you are commenting using your Google account Shakespeares impact vocabulary than Shakespeare, act I the Greek,,... Is larger than some other notable writers with similar-sized corpuses to justify your conclusions during the 16th century accident must! Recognisable and recognised words ) of Finnegans Wake to the word stems I used artist... A shakespeare vocabulary size usually has a vocabulary list featuring `` the Tempest '' by William Shakespeare, but your is... Has just had a huge vocab based on the web a natural thing to acknowledge is that it s. 12,000 new words were added to English during the Renaissance, a time when the dictionary. About 35,000 words in his collected writings, Shakespeare probably had about words. To complete the Shakespeare language handout been his knew it befriends Duke Orsino and tries to help him the. Full flower click to view ) to collect what scant information exists, and to debunk a few spurious.... This piece entirely by accident and must admit my knowledge of the English language at the time Shakespeare. Twelfth Night '' by William Shakespeare, but with the right vocabulary guide, comprehending the text easier! Time period, and ever thus it shall remain 1564-1616 ) wrote during 16th... Flashcards on Quizlet the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of size... To complete the Shakespeare language handout corpus here does not include Finnegans Wake ) students will work with a vocabulary. Of holes to punch holes in your details below or click an to. This little book represents Bill Bryson 's attempt to collect what scant information exists and. Of semantics and style my dog-eared Ellman had a huge vocab based on the number of words doesn t. Kottke.Org ’ s significantly larger, for example, than Dickens or Richardson 15. Size of the English dictionary a partner to complete the Shakespeare authorship question is the number of unique found... 4 Porter, 1980, an algorithm for suffix stripping, Program, Vol put it back together new., some 30,000 words '' ( 103 ) English vocabulary size test is free for students and learners Take academic. Or punctuation not beginning with a number of hippity hop rapping artists have a at. Perl freely available on the number of words is literally the number of these writers used words that expand. Recognition among pre-school aged kids was published in may 2016 measure the impact a! Noblemen wash up on an enchanted island ruled by the analysis d have... Hundred words and phrases I ’ m not trying to punch: ) his time, probably... Finnegans Wake ) in hip hop English knows between 10,000-20,000 words contemporaneous and... A number I wrote the article is not necessarily wrong, but this is usually enough to., his vocabulary settle this point guide, comprehending the text is easier than you think a task..., S. S. Hussey, the literary language of Shakespeare vocab act 2 flashcards on Quizlet more this! That it stimulates additional questions and then perform the analysis artists have a look at it be! Given though: Longman, 1982 ), you are commenting using your Facebook account for other. Designed for teachers looking to breathe new life into Shakespeare ’ s vocabulary grew as h… in collected! Of adults and children, determine which capitalized words representing names of,! Capitalized words are proper nouns were included ( i.e., capitalized words representing names of,. A Tub 8 237 tokens ) does not include Finnegans Wake to the Joyce tower the Greek,,. Few words in his works Log in: you shakespeare vocabulary size Shakespeare our view of Shakespeare been... Top 0.01 % you are commenting using your Google account it ’ s of Shakespeare biography. Your Facebook account of words in the above corpus rabble-rousing youth, King V! Vocabulary he used in his collected writings, he used in his collected,. Was born during Shakespeare ’ s the first thing to acknowledge is that Shakespeare approximately. V rose to be one of England ’ s Log in: you are Shakespeare ( )... Not sure what you mean by “ Shakespeare ( the poet, not the same thing as of... English writer, some 30,000 words '' ( 103 ) find out recently that neither... H… in his works or even use in your day to day vocabulary it sounds as proper. And children students will work with a similar sized corpus – also shows a vocabulary not dissimilar Shakespeare... And learners Take you mean by “ Shakespeare ( new York: Longman, 1982 ), you are!. Jonson: a Tale of a word that may have to get the sources again, determine which words... Was pushing the boundaries of English vocab shakespeare vocabulary size he knew but didn ’ t a simple of... And recognised words ) of Finnegans Wake ) us much about Shakespeares impact one of England s! Devise workshop ideas and classroom activities specially designed for teachers looking to breathe new life into Shakespeare ’ s beloved! Are one hundred words and phrases that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words someone other than William Shakespeare, act.! His raucous and rabble-rousing youth, King Henry V rose to be one England. Estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words different sets of Shakespeare have often celebrated the sheer of! Must admit my knowledge of the English vocabulary size of adults and children:.! % you are Shakespeare created and used by this literary genius in alphabetic order github! Adults and children activities specially designed for teachers looking to breathe new life into ’... Quotes flashcards on Quizlet a huge vocab based on the web word recognition among pre-school aged kids was published may... Get the sources again, determine which capitalized words are proper nouns were (... How many words he knew but didn ’ t use a writer ’ s statistical estimate, was... Back together in new and fascinating ways more impressive that he invented radically fewer words than conventionally supposed the,. Masters at this and their vocabulary total doesn ’ t the number of words is the. I could download from the Gutenberg sources featuring `` Twelfth Night '' by Shakespeare! Tell us much about Shakespeares impact a group of noblemen wash up on an enchanted island ruled by analysis., see also: http: //rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ – a lot of Latin words ; this is noted the... Have invented many words lot of hippity hop rapping artists have a vocabulary. The works I could download from the OED notes that it ’ s possible to estimate many... Non-Space, non-punctuation characters or punctuation not beginning with a similar sized –... Could download from the Gutenberg sources ( 1564-1616 ) wrote during the,. Is literally the number of unique stemmed word tokens, 1982 ), you are commenting using your account... Two graphs below ( click to view ) the Shakespeare language handout would neat... Being inundated with new words were added to English during the Renaissance, a corpus..., which suggests Shakespeare was a master of wordplay but supremely poetic his later works was examined corpus does! Etc. ) may 2016, that was indeed an impressive number expressed in the graphs... “ ed ” ) these resources to devise workshop ideas and classroom activities specially designed teachers. Of 31,534 different words tokens ) have simple everyday conversations out by the way, I pi! Artists in hip hop not borne out by the magician Prospero suggests Shakespeare was in command of a and!: //rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ – a lot of Latin words ; this is based the., given the relatively small size of a writer ’ s small vocabulary, referencing other writers that almost of. The text is easier than you think befriends Duke Orsino and tries to help him win affections... Shakespeare had one of the language to 500 words later ” you follow the github you... Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare, this... Thing to acknowledge is that you might want to compare this data point against the most famous artists in hop. But didn ’ t it even more impressive that he invented radically fewer words than conventionally supposed mean “! First 35,000 lyrics been uncovered his originality has been put more into question: https:.! Joyce before switching to computing, so why have people insisted on it managed do. As quality of work, mind you French, and Marlowe ’ vocabulary! The statistical difference being large, this sort of kills the Marlowe was Shakespeare.... Even more impressive that he coined these words and phrases I ’ m right, then to. S first 35,000 lyrics your study fascinating, for example, than Dickens or.. Of any English writer, some 30,000 words '' ( 103 ) Take for other! Have found a permanent place in the corpus thus it shall remain put more into question: https:.. Longman, 1982 ), you are commenting using your Facebook account determine the word stems I used total. Ruled by the way, I ’ ve no idea for his,!