Old English or Modern English?

There were only 30,000 words in Old English. Modern English has the largest vocabulary in the world more than 600,000 words. About 450-500 words are added to the English vocabulary every year. Only 30 per cent of the words are native. The most frequently used words in written English are: the, of, and, to, a, in, that, is, I, it, for and as. The most frequently used word in conversation is “is”. The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultamicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a lung disease), with 45 letters. The longest words in common use are disproportionableness and incomprehensibilities (21 letters). The commonest letter is e. More words begin with the letter s than any other. The most overworked word in English is the word set. It has 126 verbal uses and 58 noun uses. The largest English-language dictionary is the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, with 21,728 pages. In Shakespeare time only a few million people spoke English. All of them lived in what is now Great Britain. Today, English is represented in every continent.