How many words are there in Norwegian?

Answer 1

That is a very difficult question to answer because:

In norwegian, you are allowed to put different words together, on order to form new words! Let us compare to english, shall we? :P

Say I want to speak about a bottle that's meant to contain soda:

I'd refer to it as a soda bottle, right? That's two words to describe one thing.

In norwegian, you'd simply put the two words together, in order to form a new word, refering only to this particular item:

Brus (=soda) Flaske (=bottle), brusflaske (=soda bottle)

Ok, taking it up a notch: Soda bottle lable

Etikett (=lable), Brusflaskeetikett (= soda bottle lable)

Nice, huh? but it makes it really hard to count how many words there are, as I just "made up" two, and they're both perfectly valid norwegian words :P

Also, there are two (very similar but) different written languages in Norway, so essentially, you have a slightly altered valid version of most words(!)

so it's pretty much impossible to say it accurately, but I don't think I'm far off if I say that at the very least there are no fewer valid norwegian words, than there are valid english words.

Answer 2

It's not possible to count the words in any language, because there is no universal definition of what a word is. But most estimates place the number between 40,000 and 160,000words (which is the same range for almost all other languages).

Note: English is an exception. It has the largest number of words of any language in the world, estimated at 170,000 to 250,000 words. No language has more words than English.