What is a word worth?

You breath in and you breath out.
Constantly.
From the day you are born.
Until the day you die.
It is not more than that.

But in between a few things happen.
Like learning words.
And mastering to speak and write those words.

That is all very fine.
Until an irrational and irritating question arises.
How many words are actually stored in our brain?

Data of a computer is stored on a hard disk.
And we have calculated what is the capacity and have a standard for this.
A hard drive can contain for example 1 terra byte of data.

But we have no standard for the memory capacity of our brain.
Hell, we even don't know how many words we have stored there!
We have no scientific or technical method to find this out.

The amazing thing is also that we don't even know exactly how many words there are.
It is known that the Oxford English Corpus has over 1 billion words.
But many are rarely used and daily new words are invented.

However, what we do know is which words we all together use the most frequent !
There is a list of the 100 most common English words.
With the word "the" on spot 1 and the word "us" on spot 100.

1 the
2 be
3 to
4 of
5 and
6 a
7 in
8 that
9 have
10 I
11 it
12 for
13 not
14 on
15 with
16 he
17 as
18 you
19 do
20 at
21 this
22 but
23 his
24 by
25 from
26 they
27 we
28 say
29 her
30 she
31 or
32 an
33 will
34 my
35 one
36 all
37 would
38 there
39 their
40 what
41 so
42 up
43 out
44 if
45 about
46 who
47 get
48 which
49 go
50 me
51 when
52 make
53 can
54 like
55 time
56 no
57 just
58 him
59 know
60 take
61 people
62 into
63 year
64 your
65 good
66 some
67 could
68 them
69 see
70 other
71 than
72 then
73 now
74 look
75 only
76 come
77 its
78 over
79 think
80 also
81 back
82 after
83 use
84 two
85 how
86 our
87 work
88 first
89 well
90 way
91 even
92 new
93 want
94 because
95 any
96 these
97 give
98 day
99 most
100 us

What is remarkable of this list of most common words is that words like "who" (46), "time" (55), "people" (61), "year" (63) and "work" (87) all made it to this exclusive list.
But not the word "love"…

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For more knowledge about words, check:
http://www.askoxford.com/oec/mainpage/oec02/?view=uk





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