Lexicon

The basic vocabulary (also: basic vocabulary, use of vocabulary, minimal vocabulary) can be defined as the set of words of a language that are needed to understand about 85 % of any text of a particular language in a particular stage of development. This is followed by the so-called building vocabulary that is needed to cope with higher proportions of text and can be tailored to different needs.

Basic English

For Basic English Charles Kay Ogden struck in the 1930s, before the application of a reduced English vocabulary, which should facilitate international understanding through reduction to the basic vocabulary. The number of words is limited in the Basic English 850 words.

Basic vocabulary of the German

Pepper determined for the current German 1285 words, with which, depending on the type of text between 85.9 % and 92.2 % of the texts are understandable. Lewandowski indicates that the 1000 most frequent words suffice to understand about 80% of the German text; with 2000 words, 90 % are read.

Importance of basic vocabulary

The exploration of the basic vocabulary is important both for the teaching of the mother tongue as well as for foreign languages ​​, are they but an indication of which parts of the vocabulary are especially needed to come up with as little learning curve to a very high reading comprehension. However, there's one problem: the most frequent words have the same very many different meanings.

Basic vocabulary in various areas of communication

A basic vocabulary can also be determined for the various communication fields of a speech community separated, for example for the different disciplines or sociolects. Such approaches are useful when it comes to the teaching of certain technical languages ​​or language- sociological questions. In technical language we come to similar dimensions, as were described above for the default language: with the 1100 - 1200 most frequent words can be " an average of 80 - 90% of each text " understand.

Word lists in the glottochronology

The glottochronology developed for their linguistic history questions lists of basic words that be independent of cultural influences and should therefore prove to be historically stable as possible. Due to the decay rates of these words, the relationships should be determined between languages. The approach may be regarded essentially as a failure.