Language Comparison: Number of Different Words

We compare some of the most popular languages in the world, what are the odds and probability of speaking certain language, which language has the most alphabets. Which language has the most words? How many words does English, Spanish, Arabic or Hindi have? What is the most difficult language to learn? What are the major languages of the world? We visualize the animated scale of alphabets, characters and words.

Disclaimer:
Only words of languages with over 20 million speakers are included otherwise the video would get too long. The only exceptions are the top 5. Thus apologies if your language is not included.
Only Alphabets with a usage of above 50 million, according to World Atlas, are included, with some exceptions. Video makes no distinction between speech, dialect and literacy.
Number referenced for words tend to be the largest dictionary that can be found online. Dictionary referenced in video. There may be bigger dictionaries though.
Usage or number of words may be outdated, but are often after 2010. More info in references.
There is difficulty researching between different formal definition of letters, diacritics and circumflexes, whichever probability and number given for the Alphabets are stated in the sources. There may be unintentional mistake, kindly comment if spotted.

Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

List of Languages and Words featured:
Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Latin, Malay, Marathi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese.

List of Alphabets and Scripts featured:
Arabic Alphabet, Armenian Alphabet, Bengali Alphabet, Burmese Alphabet, Chinese Characters, Cyrillic Alphabet, Danish Alphabet, Devanagari Alphabet, Dutch Alphabet, Filipino Alphabet, Finnish Alphabet, French Alphabet, German Alphabet, Greek Alphabet, Hebrew Alphabet, Hungarian Alphabet, Icelandic Alphabet, Italian Alphabet, Japanese Kana, Japanese Kanji, Kangxi Radicals, Khmer Alphabet, Hangul Alphabet, Kurdish Alphabet, Latin Alphabet, Lithuanian Alphabet, Polish Alphabet, Portuguese Alphabet, Spanish Alphabet, Swedish Alphabet, Tamil Alphabet, Telugu Alphabet, Thai Alphabet,Turkish Alphabet, Vietnamese Alphabet, Welsh Alphabet.

[reigarw]

Do pause the video when the "English Words" appear. What is the first word that you see?

[hungryfareasternslav]

YouTube: Just one more video.
Netflix: Just one more episode.
Chinese: Just one more character.

[Alexable]

when you realize that Iceland has more words than citiziens...

[tahamohammad]

You forgot one language tho’




*The doctors handwriting*

[k]

As a native speaker of musical melodies, I can confirm that this is the number of words we have.

[jamesgraham]

“What language do you speak?”
“Mathematics symbols.”

[wow]

Everyone: finally a video that doesn’t end with YOU

Reigarw Comparisons: 3:31

[tjxbk_seo]

Korean letters: 24
Korean words: 1, 100, 000

[kingterminator]

German- 5.3 million
Arabic - 12 million
Sanskrit- 102.78 BILLION
Sanskrit : sips tea
Arabic : Should we tell them?
German : Naww... let them cook.

[luongngo]

So unique, crazy how people create so many different ways to communicate with each other.

[crimsonfenrir]

Everyone gangsta until someone speak in fluent MUSICAL LANGUAGE

[brapa]

Theres still this one dude that thinks English came from USA

[leshagamer]

10 Arabic Numberals
22 Herbew Alphabet
24 Korean Alphabet
24 Greek Alphabet
26 Latin Alphabet
28 Arabic Alphabet
30 Tamil Alphabet
33 Cyrillic Alphabet
38 Armenian Alphabet
43 Burmese Alphabet
44 Devangari Alphabet
50 Bengali Alphabet
54 Telugu Alphabet
60 Thai Alphabet
74 Khmer Alphabet
94 Japanese Kana
123 Matematics Symbols
214 Kangxi Radicals
247 Tamil Characters
1, 071 Egyptian Hieroglyphs
2, 136 Japanese Kanji
8, 105 Chinese Characters
18, 000 Filipino Words
20, 300 Swahili Words
25, 500 Javanese Words
39, 600 Classical Latin Words
42, 000 Vietnamese Words
44, 800 Azerbaijani Words
51, 000 Thai Words
75, 000 Bengali Words
89, 200 Malay Words
93, 000 Spanish Words
100, 000 Polish Words
100, 000 Marathi Words
115, 000 Turkish Words
120, 000 Arabic Words
127, 000 Indonesian Words
135, 000 French Words
150, 000 Russian Words
180, 000 Romanian Words
183, 000 Hindi Words
200, 000 Greek Words
241, 000 Serbo-Croatian Words
253, 000 Ukrainian Words
264, 000 Urdu Words
281, 000 Gujarati Words
330, 000 German Words
343, 000 Persian Words
370, 000 Chinese Words
380, 000 Tamil Words
400, 000 Dutch Words
435, 000 Portugese Words
500, 000 Japanese Words
500, 000 Italian Words
520, 000 English Words
560, 000 Icelandic Words
600, 000 Swedish Words
800, 000 Finnish Words
1, 100, 000 Korean Words
68, 700, 000, 000 Musical Melodies

[lucylerma]

And this is why learning multiple languages is an extremely respectable feat.

[kaiwut]

*Oh you're a musician?*
*Name every melody.*
_Musician is typing..._

[zitop]

Thanks for sharing this video! While it's interesting to learn about the number of words in different languages, it's important to ensure that the information we share is accurate. In the case of Arabic, the figure mentioned in the video (120, 000 words) is incorrect.

This number could be a misconception based on the fact that Arabic has around 120, 000 root words, which are the basic building blocks of its vocabulary. However, these roots can be combined and modified in countless ways to create new words, so the actual number of words in Arabic far exceeds 120, 000. In fact, Arabic is a very rich and complex language, with a vast vocabulary that exceeds 12 million words when we consider all its different dialects and variations.

It's worth noting that Arabic is not only spoken in the Arab world, but also in many other countries, and its vocabulary has been constantly evolving throughout history. It's always fascinating to learn more about the diversity and complexity of languages, and I appreciate this video for sparking this conversation.

[creativethemememan]

Somebody online: So what language do you speak?
Me: *starts typing musical notes*

[alancosta]

A Chinese's teacher said "don't worry about being fluent in chinese, few chinese are"

[polgarsandor]

When you realize that Icelandic has more words than speakers

[jamesedition]

If you use Korean Alphabet, you can describe whole of universe with only 24 letters.