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Everything suggests that it is the English language, with a total number of words estimated between 500,000 and 1.2 million. “But you can’t be sure, because the statistics we have only take into account a minority of languages. Furthermore, the lexicon count is very difficult to do. An example is German, rich in compound words that are usually counted as a single term”, says linguist Bruno Dallari, from the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC), in São Paulo. One of the explanations for English being the champion is the number of countries that speak the language (45 nations, totaling 322 million inhabitants) and the immense profusion of dialects. Linguist Deonisio da Silva, from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR), agrees that it is impossible to know exactly how many words each language has. “Dictionaries record words that are out of use and fail to mention many new words”, says Deonisio.
According to him, Portuguese – spoken in America, Europe, Asia and Africa by around 220 million people – could easily be included among the most numerous languages, with more than 400,000 words.