How many words is there in the American language?

Answer 1

There are 5 vowels and 2 semi-vowels (Y and W).

But there are from 11 to 20 "vowel sounds" in English, made by one or more vowels in various words.

Vowels in the English AlphabetThe 5 traditional vowels are A, E, I, O, and U. However, in English the the letters W and Y can also represent vowel sounds, but they don't always do so. Hence, they may be considered vowels "sometimes".

Examples with Y and W as vowels:

• In the word "by" [ˈbɑɪ], the Y represents the vowel diphthong [ɑɪ], sometimes called the "Long I" sound.
• In the word "cow" [ˈkaÊŠ], the W represents the vowel sound [ÊŠ].

Examples where Y and W do not represent vowels:

• In the word "yet" [jÉ›t], the Y represents the semi-vowel sound [j].
• In the word "we" [wi:], the W represents the semi-vowel sound [w].

Vowel Sounds in the English LanguageDepending on the accent, the English language can have anywhere from 11 to 20 vowel sounds. As evidenced above, the English alphabet only has 5 letters that are used exclusively to represent vowels.

Using the General American accent as an example, these are some of the vowel sounds that exist, excluding diphthongs:

• [É‘] - the A in father
• [æ] - the A in cat
• [É™] - the A in about
• [É›] - the E in bet
• [e] - the A in pay
• [Éœ]* - the UR in purple or the IRin bird, usually followed by an [ɹ]
• [i] - the I in machine
• [ɪ] - the I in big
• [o] - the O in toe
• [É”] - the O in cost
• [u] - the OO in cool
• [ÊŠ] - the OO in good
• [ÊŒ] - the U in bug

*R-colored (rhotic) vowels:

• [ɝ] - the OR in work
• [Éš] - the ER in butter

Answer 2

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

Answer 3

How many alphabet in english

26

Answer 4

about 6100