Hi, I'm Georgiana, your English teacher.

Thanks for joining me for a new episode of the Speak English Now podcast.

If you want to help, please share the podcast on social media.

That would mean a lot. Thanks.

Before we start, visit my website, speakEnglishpodcast.com, and subscribe to my free mini-course. Okay, let's start. In 2010, during a project to search for words in digitized books, researchers

estimated a total of one million words. Yeah, I was a bit surprised by this too, but there's

an explanation for all of this.

First of all, you need to take into account that they have included different forms of the same word. Also, many words are archaic, since they are not used in modern English.

Speaking of archaic words, in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, there are

approximately 600,000 defined word forms, but that's because it includes many old-fashioned

words.

And also, the dictionary expands every year to keep up with the new words

being invented. However, according to the BBC, the good news is that we only use 170,000 words in English.

Yeah, I know. It's still a considerable number of words. But you don't

need to know all these words to be able to have a conversation in English. I actually believe

it's a mistake to keep track of the number of words you know. If you want to learn English

effectively, remember how you

learn your mother tongue. And let's face it, you don't know all the words that are included

in the dictionary of your mother tongue, but that doesn't stop you from speaking fluently and eloquently.

Let's not forget that words are a powerful form of communication.

I have selected the ones that I consider to be the most beautiful out of all the words in English.

Let's start with the word cherish.

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