<p>It's really impossible to pick a specific number, like &quot;you need at least 3,427 words to make yourself understandable&quot;, without making such claim look ridiculous. The easy rejoinder --- &quot;well, my invented language can make itself perfectly understandable using only 3,426 words: <em>so there!</em>&quot; --- only serves to demonstrate the somewhat absurd nature of the argument.</p>
<p>That said, minimalist invented languages are a thing! (And so are maximal...)</p>
<p>We could look at a couple historical examples of both kinds of language to see what answers our fellow language inventors and natural cultures have come upon:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English" rel="noreferrer">Basic English</a> is a good starting point as it's an old project (nearly a century old) and is what the Simple English version of Wikipedia is based on. Basic English seems to get by with 2000 words or so.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona" rel="noreferrer">Toki Pona</a>, on the other hand, a philosophical language rather than an international auxiliary language or an artistic language, makes do with about 120 root words. In the article, it's noted that speakers have to resort to combining these root words in order to get their meaning across when they wish to communicate anything that isn't, strictly speaking, minimalist in nature.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary" rel="noreferrer">Esperanto</a> has somewhere between 2500 and 5000 basic roots, but again, combining roots allows for greater understandability.</li>
<li>At the other end of the spectrum, <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/how-many-words-in-english/" rel="noreferrer">English</a> probably exceeds a million words. And even then, we are as prone to forming compound words as anyone else!</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong><br>
I'd argue that that actual answer to your marquee query is <strong>NOT ENOUGH BY HALF</strong>.</p>
<p>Obviously, 120 words is far too few to really properly communicate anything but the uttermost basics in the most simplistic terms. 2500 is not enough either, because speakers of languages with so few root words end up relying heavily on affixes and compounds to improve communication. And lastly, I'd argue that even a million words is not nearly enough! Even with a million words, English speakers make use of affixes, compounding, abbreviation and we're sprathingly good at just plain making up words on top of everything else.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-26T16:35:24.730Z
Does anybody actually _use_ Basic English? The criticism I have heard is that English speakers speak the full language anyway, so won't bother, and learners would prefer to learn "full English", as it's both more useful and more prestigious. So it seems more like a philosophical exercise to me.
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-27T00:48:45.353Z
@OliverMason -- I'm sure there are some educators who use it, or some form of it. I'm neither supporting nor denigrating BE as useful of course! Except in so far as determining a potential range for the question at hand. So, it was useful for something!
elemtilas
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-27T08:12:49.180Z
- I hope you didn't interpret this as a criticism of any sort! I was asking merely  out of interest. AFAIK it also highlighted a basic problem with just counting words, if all words have multiple meanings/uses. For example "have" and "get" -- what do they actually mean ;)
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-27T11:38:04.867Z
@OliverMason -- Not at all! It is an interesting diversion. As a tool for immigrants, I can see how it might be useful for a very short period of time -- 2 or 3 months max -- just to get used to the language and learn some basic and useful vocabulary. Ultimately, long term use will just be a handicap and a disservice to most ESOL folks in my opinion.
elemtilas
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-01T03:24:21.223Z
2021-07-01T03:24:21.223Z
elemtilas
<p>It depends on your definition of 'word'.</p>
<p>Tokin pona has 120 word forms, but they are routinely combined into compounds which express more specific information. In Esperanto, as elemtilas said, there are roots which are combined into words — effectively similar to toki pona, only with no spaces in-between:</p>
<p>English: <em>queen</em><br />
Esperanto: <em>reĝino</em>  (<em>-in-</em> indicates 'female')<br />
toki pona: <em>jan lawa meli</em> ('person' 'lead' 'female')</p>
<p>English has a single <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme" rel="nofollow noreferrer">morpheme</a>, Esperanto has three morphemes, and so does toki pona. But both Esperanto and English have one word, wheras toki pona has three. So the question of the number of words is not really all that meaningful, as it depends on the structure of your language.</p>
<p>The real question is how many morphemes you need, but even then it's difficult. In toki pona you can combine morphemes to form bigger elements, and each morpheme arguably has a whole range of meanings; from the context you choose the one that is most likely. The word <em>lili</em> means little, small, young, etc. so you cannot know whether <em>jan lili</em> is a young person or a small one. You will typically know from context.</p>
<p>So when thinking about vocabulary size there are several aspects to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li>Language structure: do you have self-standing morphemes that are combined to phrases (like toki pona), morphemes that are stuck together in compound words (like Esperanto), or single morphemes that express multiple meanings at once (like English <em>king</em>: 'ruler' and 'male' vs <em>queen</em>: 'ruler' and 'female'). If — like Esperanto — you stick to one basic meaning component per morpheme, then the gender of the ruler would have to be expressed in a different morpheme (or it could be omitted altogether). The same also applies to verbs and tenses, pronouns, etc.</li>
<li>Specificity: How accurate do you want your language to be? If you want to be able to express exact meanings, then you need different morphemes. In English there are many words such as <em>Earl</em>, <em>Duke</em>, <em>Count</em>, <em>Margrave</em>, etc. which in toki pona would just be <em>jan lawa</em> ('leader'). Toki pona is good for epics, where such distinctions are not relevant, but if you want to write a detailed history of the Norman conquest, then maybe choose a different language.</li>
<li>Target domain: It also makes a difference what you want to use your language for. If it is an intergalactic <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca" rel="nofollow noreferrer">lingua franca</a></em> to be used for trading, then you'd need to be specific about prices and descriptions of objects, but not so much about family relationships. Klingon famously has a vocabulary dominated by words related to fighting and killing, so it might be hard to write a love poem in it (though not impossible). A general purpose language needs to be able to express a wider range of meanings than a domain-specific one.</li>
<li>Overall complexity of your language: How many cases do you have? How many numbers? Grammatical genders? Any such feature needs to be expressed in some way, which could result in more words. If you have singular/dual/plural, you might need three pronouns <em>I</em>, <em>us-two</em>, and <em>us-more-than-two</em>. But you could choose not to have that at all and simply use <em>us-any-number-from-one-to-many</em>. Hawai'ian has a different set of pronouns to distinguish between <em>us all, including you</em> and <em>us all, but not you</em>. If you have a politeness system based on relative ages, then you might want to distinguish between <em>you-who-is-younger-than-me</em> and a more polite <em>you-who-is-older-than-me</em></li>
<li>Aesthetics: you can make do with one word for <em>move-from-A-to-B</em>. And one word for <em>ingest</em>. But any story you write will quickly become very boring, as you will use the same word over and over again. So you want <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym" rel="nofollow noreferrer">synonyms</a> to introduce some variation (see the remarks about Klingon above). The more synonyms you have, the more words. They're not strictly necessary, but make your language more pleasant to use. In AI, the opposite is actually used to make it easier for computers to handle events: you have a small set of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_dependency_theory" rel="nofollow noreferrer">semantic primitives</a> for the basic events (movement, transfer of objects, etc). But you wouldn't want to read such representations for fun.</li>
</ol>
<p>To summarise: The right number of words for a conlang is how many you need for it to work, given the purpose and structure of the language. It is a bit of an irrelevant question, really, because you won't know that you have enough words until you're happy that your language is usable. And even then, new words are likely to develop over time. In my view, number of words is not a useful metric when developing a language, unless you want to use it as a constraint (as in toki pona).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-22T19:57:34.077Z
Toki pona, like many minimalist languages, also cheats in that in order to effectively communicate you need to learn concepts that are expressed by specific word groups, in effective treating the entire phrase as a single word because you can't remove any part of it without referring to a different concept, similar to the way removing a phoneme can utterly change the meaning of a single word. It would be the same as eliminating the word "blizzard" and replace it by "snow storm". Sure, one less word, but you still need to learn what "snow storm" means.
Keith Morrison
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-22T20:14:01.167Z
@KeithMorrison True -- but if you don't know what it means, you can always synthesise it. Like replacing "snow storm" with "solid cold water rain with strong wind". Might be harder to understand for someone who has to decode it first, but still possible.
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-26T15:24:24.510Z
Does "solid cold water rain with strong wind" mean a blizzard or a hailstorm? Two very different things but both someone will come across on moderately normal basis (depending where they live). And humans being humans, phrases that long to explain something that's a reasonably normal thing that people will routinely run across will either collapse into a novel word (thus increasing vocabulary) or will co-opt a word from another language (thus increasing vocabulary), especially if you have to distinguish it from something else that the same words could describe.
Keith Morrison
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-26T15:40:56.197Z
If you want to be able to distinguish between a blizzard and a hail storm (which I have never had the need to do so far...), then I suggest toki pona is the wrong language to use. Just like I wouldn't want to write legal or academic texts in it.
Oliver Mason
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-26T16:29:06.750Z
A blizzard isn't likely to smash windows and can last days. You're unlikely to freeze to death in a hail storm which typically only lasts a few minutes. But the analogy can be extended to other things in other circumstances: a minimalist language can't stay minimalist in order to be useful.
Keith Morrison
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-01T08:55:27.523Z
2021-07-01T09:35:45.140Z
2021-07-01T09:35:45.140Z
Oliver Mason
<p>What would the minimum number of words needed for a conlang, while still being able to speak with about the same level of information passed as a natural language?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-01T08:16:24.583Z
If you're asking about a naturalistic conlang, then [this question](https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/1103/how-many-words-should-i-create-in-a-conlang) has answer already. But I'm a bit confused by the tags you used - you talk about natural language, but tagged it with unnatural-features.
curiousdannii
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-01T16:52:36.300Z
No I want it be able to be able to express the same as a natural language not that this is one.
Gabriel Tellez
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-01T20:20:40.570Z
@GabrielTellez In that case pick a natural language that is close to your conlang and take that as a guideline.
Oliver Mason
<conlang-creation><vocabulary>
What is the minimum number of words needed for a conlang?
# What is the minimum number of words needed for a conlang?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-07-01)

What would the minimum number of words needed for a conlang, while still being able to speak with about the same level of information passed as a natural language?

**Tags:** conlang-creation, vocabulary
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: If you're asking about a naturalistic conlang, then [this question](https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/1103/how-many-words-should-i-create-in-a-conlang) has answer already. But I'm a bit confused by the tags you used - you talk about natural language, but tagged it with unnatural-features.  
> **username_0**: No I want it be able to be able to express the same as a natural language not that this is one.  
> **username_2**: @GabrielTellez In that case pick a natural language that is close to your conlang and take that as a guideline.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2021-07-01. Score: 6

It's really impossible to pick a specific number, like "you need at least 3,427 words to make yourself understandable", without making such claim look ridiculous. The easy rejoinder --- "well, my invented language can make itself perfectly understandable using only 3,426 words: *so there!*" --- only serves to demonstrate the somewhat absurd nature of the argument.

That said, minimalist invented languages are a thing! (And so are maximal...)

We could look at a couple historical examples of both kinds of language to see what answers our fellow language inventors and natural cultures have come upon:

* [Basic English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English) is a good starting point as it's an old project (nearly a century old) and is what the Simple English version of Wikipedia is based on. Basic English seems to get by with 2000 words or so.
* [Toki Pona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona), on the other hand, a philosophical language rather than an international auxiliary language or an artistic language, makes do with about 120 root words. In the article, it's noted that speakers have to resort to combining these root words in order to get their meaning across when they wish to communicate anything that isn't, strictly speaking, minimalist in nature.
* [Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary) has somewhere between 2500 and 5000 basic roots, but again, combining roots allows for greater understandability.
* At the other end of the spectrum, [English](https://www.dictionary.com/e/how-many-words-in-english/) probably exceeds a million words. And even then, we are as prone to forming compound words as anyone else!

**Analysis:**  
I'd argue that that actual answer to your marquee query is **NOT ENOUGH BY HALF**.

Obviously, 120 words is far too few to really properly communicate anything but the uttermost basics in the most simplistic terms. 2500 is not enough either, because speakers of languages with so few root words end up relying heavily on affixes and compounds to improve communication. And lastly, I'd argue that even a million words is not nearly enough! Even with a million words, English speakers make use of affixes, compounding, abbreviation and we're sprathingly good at just plain making up words on top of everything else.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Does anybody actually _use_ Basic English? The criticism I have heard is that English speakers speak the full language anyway, so won't bother, and learners would prefer to learn "full English", as it's both more useful and more prestigious. So it seems more like a philosophical exercise to me.  
> **username_3**: @OliverMason -- I'm sure there are some educators who use it, or some form of it. I'm neither supporting nor denigrating BE as useful of course! Except in so far as determining a potential range for the question at hand. So, it was useful for something!  
> **username_2**: - I hope you didn't interpret this as a criticism of any sort! I was asking merely  out of interest. AFAIK it also highlighted a basic problem with just counting words, if all words have multiple meanings/uses. For example "have" and "get" -- what do they actually mean ;)  
> **username_3**: @OliverMason -- Not at all! It is an interesting diversion. As a tool for immigrants, I can see how it might be useful for a very short period of time -- 2 or 3 months max -- just to get used to the language and learn some basic and useful vocabulary. Ultimately, long term use will just be a handicap and a disservice to most ESOL folks in my opinion.  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2021-07-01. Score: 2

It depends on your definition of 'word'.

Tokin pona has 120 word forms, but they are routinely combined into compounds which express more specific information. In Esperanto, as elemtilas said, there are roots which are combined into words — effectively similar to toki pona, only with no spaces in-between:

English: *queen*  
Esperanto: *reĝino* (*-in-* indicates 'female')  
toki pona: *jan lawa meli* ('person' 'lead' 'female')

English has a single [morpheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme), Esperanto has three morphemes, and so does toki pona. But both Esperanto and English have one word, wheras toki pona has three. So the question of the number of words is not really all that meaningful, as it depends on the structure of your language.

The real question is how many morphemes you need, but even then it's difficult. In toki pona you can combine morphemes to form bigger elements, and each morpheme arguably has a whole range of meanings; from the context you choose the one that is most likely. The word *lili* means little, small, young, etc. so you cannot know whether *jan lili* is a young person or a small one. You will typically know from context.

So when thinking about vocabulary size there are several aspects to consider:

1. Language structure: do you have self-standing morphemes that are combined to phrases (like toki pona), morphemes that are stuck together in compound words (like Esperanto), or single morphemes that express multiple meanings at once (like English *king*: 'ruler' and 'male' vs *queen*: 'ruler' and 'female'). If — like Esperanto — you stick to one basic meaning component per morpheme, then the gender of the ruler would have to be expressed in a different morpheme (or it could be omitted altogether). The same also applies to verbs and tenses, pronouns, etc.
2. Specificity: How accurate do you want your language to be? If you want to be able to express exact meanings, then you need different morphemes. In English there are many words such as *Earl*, *Duke*, *Count*, *Margrave*, etc. which in toki pona would just be *jan lawa* ('leader'). Toki pona is good for epics, where such distinctions are not relevant, but if you want to write a detailed history of the Norman conquest, then maybe choose a different language.
3. Target domain: It also makes a difference what you want to use your language for. If it is an intergalactic *[lingua franca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca)* to be used for trading, then you'd need to be specific about prices and descriptions of objects, but not so much about family relationships. Klingon famously has a vocabulary dominated by words related to fighting and killing, so it might be hard to write a love poem in it (though not impossible). A general purpose language needs to be able to express a wider range of meanings than a domain-specific one.
4. Overall complexity of your language: How many cases do you have? How many numbers? Grammatical genders? Any such feature needs to be expressed in some way, which could result in more words. If you have singular/dual/plural, you might need three pronouns *I*, *us-two*, and *us-more-than-two*. But you could choose not to have that at all and simply use *us-any-number-from-one-to-many*. Hawai'ian has a different set of pronouns to distinguish between *us all, including you* and *us all, but not you*. If you have a politeness system based on relative ages, then you might want to distinguish between *you-who-is-younger-than-me* and a more polite *you-who-is-older-than-me*
5. Aesthetics: you can make do with one word for *move-from-A-to-B*. And one word for *ingest*. But any story you write will quickly become very boring, as you will use the same word over and over again. So you want [synonyms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym) to introduce some variation (see the remarks about Klingon above). The more synonyms you have, the more words. They're not strictly necessary, but make your language more pleasant to use. In AI, the opposite is actually used to make it easier for computers to handle events: you have a small set of [semantic primitives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_dependency_theory) for the basic events (movement, transfer of objects, etc). But you wouldn't want to read such representations for fun.

To summarise: The right number of words for a conlang is how many you need for it to work, given the purpose and structure of the language. It is a bit of an irrelevant question, really, because you won't know that you have enough words until you're happy that your language is usable. And even then, new words are likely to develop over time. In my view, number of words is not a useful metric when developing a language, unless you want to use it as a constraint (as in toki pona).

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: Toki pona, like many minimalist languages, also cheats in that in order to effectively communicate you need to learn concepts that are expressed by specific word groups, in effective treating the entire phrase as a single word because you can't remove any part of it without referring to a different concept, similar to the way removing a phoneme can utterly change the meaning of a single word. It would be the same as eliminating the word "blizzard" and replace it by "snow storm". Sure, one less word, but you still need to learn what "snow storm" means.  
> **username_2**: @KeithMorrison True -- but if you don't know what it means, you can always synthesise it. Like replacing "snow storm" with "solid cold water rain with strong wind". Might be harder to understand for someone who has to decode it first, but still possible.  
> **username_4**: Does "solid cold water rain with strong wind" mean a blizzard or a hailstorm? Two very different things but both someone will come across on moderately normal basis (depending where they live). And humans being humans, phrases that long to explain something that's a reasonably normal thing that people will routinely run across will either collapse into a novel word (thus increasing vocabulary) or will co-opt a word from another language (thus increasing vocabulary), especially if you have to distinguish it from something else that the same words could describe.  
> **username_2**: If you want to be able to distinguish between a blizzard and a hail storm (which I have never had the need to do so far...), then I suggest toki pona is the wrong language to use. Just like I wouldn't want to write legal or academic texts in it.  
> **username_4**: A blizzard isn't likely to smash windows and can last days. You're unlikely to freeze to death in a hail storm which typically only lasts a few minutes. But the analogy can be extended to other things in other circumstances: a minimalist language can't stay minimalist in order to be useful.  

---

