How Many English Words Do You Know?

Last Friday I took part in a game of ‘Call My Bluff’. For those readers who don’t know the rules, the object of the game is to guess the correct definition of an obscure word from the three or four different ones given to you by another team.

Although I work with words professionally on a daily basis, I was surprised to find that even I’d never heard of any of the words used in the game. Mind you, the English language is renowned for the richness of its vocabulary. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 600,000 different words and their definitions, and technical or scientific terms can add millions more to the total. Altogether, there are about 200,000 English words in common use whereas an average well-read educated person can have a total vocabulary of between 15,000 to 20,000 words, and only use about 1,500 of them in a normal week. So it is not surprising that such words as ‘laroid’, ‘lagan’ or ‘xebec’ are totally unknown to most people.

What is particularly interesting is that, despite being rather complex to learn and difficult to master, English is probably the most widely spoken language in the world. Approximately 375 million people speak it as a first language and up to 1,400 million more speak it as a second language. English is the dominant international language in aviation, business, communications, diplomacy, entertainment and science and is an official language in 53 different countries. And what is even more interesting is that each of these countries has its own version of English. We all know about the differences between American (US) English and British English, but what about Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, Caribbean English and South African English – all of which merit having their own specialized dictionary being published by the Oxford University Press. And then there is Indian English (the bain of all those British people who hate being put through to certain telephone call centres!), Malaysian English and Chinese English. Professor David Crystal, who specializes in linguistics, has claimed that if you combine native and non-native speakers, India now has more people who speak or understand English than any other country in the world. India is closely followed in this respect by the People’s Republic of China.

Coming closer to home, there is Scottish English, Welsh English and Irish English. Each region of England itself has its own dialect and even the Isle of Man and Guernsey have their own form of the language. So, you could say that there is no officially correct form of English – not even the ‘Queen’s English’ (after all, her family originally came from Germany and her husband is Greek!) – but this is probably the reason for its beauty, its flexibility and its attraction. Long may it continue!

Something Quite Interesting About Book Sales

I’m a member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and I’ve been following a recent thread about books sales on their e-mail discussion forum, SfEPLine.

Apparently, a book publisher told one of our members that over half of all the books published in the United Kingdom sell less than 200 copies in their entire lifetime (or should that be shelf life?), which at first sight may seem somewhat surprising. However, with the advent of self-publishing and print-on-demand services, this sort of statistic does have a ring of truth about it because a large number of self-publishers don’t print that many copies of their book anyway and would consider themselves extremely lucky to sell even 100 copies to their friends and family.

Then another SfEP member, who specializes in editing works of fiction, told us that sales of a first novel in hardback produced by a commercial publisher are commonly very low and that total sales of just 600 copies per book was not at all unusual. Although the traditional way of publishing a book is to bring it out first as a hardback and then in paperback if potential sales warrant it, a lot of novels are published just as paperbacks. On the other hand, a lot of hardbacks are sold to public libraries – in fact some books would never have been published in the first place if it hadn’t been for the library market. Unfortunately, the bottom has fallen out of this market recently, which has caused big problems for publishing companies who produce fiction titles.

However, to a certain extent these lost library sales have been replaced by sales to a new breed of ‘collectors’ who buy autographed hardbacks as an investment. The rumour is that these collectors don’t actually read the books but keep them locked away so that they remain in mint condition so that they can be sold at a premium at a later date – perhaps when the author’s later works have broken into the best-seller lists.

Nowadays, public libraries are buying as many books as possible in paperback in order to save money but publishers prefer to sell them hardbacks instead because they have to sell far more copies of a paperback in order to break even financially. This means that novels with a smaller market (e.g. by a first-time author) are not viable to publish as a paperback. So unless publishers feel that they can sell enough hardback copies of a novel (or any other book) to make even a small profit they will reject a first-time author’s manuscript every time. And that is why there are so many hardback copies of celebrities’ autobiographies, cookbooks, etc. on the shelves in bookshops irrespective of how good they are – enough people buy them to make it worthwhile for publishers to produce them.

So, my advice to anybody who is writing their first novel is to publish it yourself! It will give you a great deal more satisfaction than receiving all those rejection slips and you will learn what it takes to produce, promote and sell a book. Give it a go and see where it takes you!

Overheard in the Press (2)

For those of you who enjoy puns, here is another story, this time from Sandy Toksvig who related it in her column ‘Seven’ in the Sunday Telegraph last summer.

Two young men so enjoyed their fishing holiday beside a excellent trout brook that they made a vow to repeat the trip in twenty years’ time.

Two decades later they meet to try and find the nirvana of their youth. They search the woods, but for the life of them they cannot recall exactly where they had set up their tent all those years before. At last they reach a stream and one of the men shouts: ‘This is the place!’ ‘No, it’s not,’ says the other. ‘Yes, it is,’ says the first man, ‘I recognize the clover growing on the bank.’

The second man shakes his head and says, ‘Don’t be silly, you can’t tell a brook from its clover.’

Overheard in the Press

Some chess enthusiasts had booked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament successes.

After about an hour, the manager of the hotel came out of his office and asked them to leave.

‘But why?’ they asked, as they moved off.

‘Because’, the manager said, ‘I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.’

(Spotted in Link, the journal of the National Association of Writers’ Groups (NAWG), edited by Mike Wilson, who loves this kind of wordplay and who is asking his readers for more of it. He is even offering to give a prize to the person who submits the best example.)

A Case of ‘Man Proposes, God Disposes’

A few months ago, on 12 November to be precise, I resolved to get up early each morning so that I could spend time keeping this blog up to date with fresh content, and follow a regular schedule in the same way that I went jogging each evening.

However, shortly afterwards, on 15 November, I developed a deep vein thrombosis in my right leg, which not only put an end to my jogging but also made sitting down to try and write material for this blog very painful. I had to keep walking (which was painful in itself) to prevent my leg seizing up completely. So, for the past three months my blog has taken a back seat while my focus has firmly been on getting my health back.

Luckily, I have now substantially recovered and I am no longer in pain, so I can concentrate once more on my plans for this blog. So much has happened just recently that I have several writing projects that need my attention and I think it is important to make sure that I don’t repeat myself in any of them.

To assist me in this respect, I’m drawing up a list (or more precisely, a series of lists) of what needs to be done for each of these projects, including this blog. A list is a great tool if you have a great deal to do but don’t know where to start. Listing all the various tasks that need to be done can help you to prioritize your workload, and there is nothing more satisfying than to cross off an item on a list once you have completed the task that it relates to. But don’t make the list too long – there is a danger that it will become a vast, indigestible and growing heap of unfulfilled wishes and you will find that for every item you cross off the list you will think of least another three items to go on it. And if your list is more than one page long, there is the added danger that you will just concentrate on those tasks on the first page (i.e. the page on top) and forget about all those other tasks that have been relegated to the second, third and, heaven forbid, subsequent pages. Therefore, your list should never be more than one page long!

And finally, but most importantly, allow room on your list for the unexpected! A wise man once said that God looks at our plans and laughs. Remember that man proposes but God disposes. So, submit to the will of God and enjoy the ride!