How Many Spanish Words Do You Use?

As times change and technology advances, do we lose our ability to communicate or do we simply become too lazy to express our own thoughts, just keeping them simple and direct? Learners will likely enjoy the benefits of Spanish, a language rich in expressions and meanings.  

According to data from the Royal Spanish Academy updated in 2010, an average native Spanish speaker uses between 500 and 1000 Spanish words to communicate daily. Young people use less, approximately 240 words. Castilian has nearly 100,000 words; this means that, of the great range of possible words, young people in Spain use just 0.03%. Are young people deliberately limiting their language use? Or can the blame be attributed to the infiltration of other languages and commercialization? An article by Peter Barcia in The Nation newspaper definitively put: “When there is no ability to express, thoughts narrow. We see it every day with young people; they do not read, cannot write properly and end up with weak language skills”.

Is it true that young people lose the ability to express themselves? According to a study conducted by the Cervantes Institute, Castilian is the third most used language on the internet and the second most used on Twitter. Trying to save time when sending text messages may lead people to use less words and/or shorter sentences. In this context, young people’s creativity can be considered as an advantage. They create new words; and although today they might seem ridiculous, tomorrow they will surely be featured in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Espanola, and other dictionaries, as new vocabulary. Some groups have a wider vocabulary and a better knowledge of the language because they make more use of the language to express their ideas. For example, Cervantes used 8000 words and any writer who has read and written all of his/her life uses nearly 3000 words.

However, sometimes it’s not taken into account that language is a living, ever-changing entity. It can be hard to sense its richness and flexibility. What do you think? Do we use fewer words each day therefore losing our ability to speak Spanish?