How many words is B2? 4,000 of 170,000

Video · 0:43 · published 21 October 2026

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Read the transcript
  1. 0:00English has about 170,000 words in use, German 148,000, Spanish 93,000.
  2. 0:10A B2 speaker, the level most people call fluent, knows about 4,000 of them.
  3. 0:16That is under five percent of the dictionary, in every one of these languages.
  4. 0:21And the first 1,000 words already cover about 85 percent of everyday speech.
  5. 0:27So the real question is not how big the language is. It is how many of the 4,000 you already know.
  6. 0:34Test your vocabulary size free: about three minutes, no account. The link is in the pinned comment.

English has about 170,000 words in use, German 148,000, Spanish 93,000. A B2 speaker, the level most people call fluent, knows about 4,000 of them: under 5% of the dictionary. And the first 1,000 words already cover about 85% of everyday speech. So the question is not how big the language is. It is how many of the 4,000 you already know.