By calculation from the best dictionaries, for each of the following languages there are about 20,000 words in the Spanish, 22,000 in the English, 38,000 in the Latin, 30,000 in the French, 45,000 in the Italian, 50,000 in the Greek, and 80,000 in the German.
In the estimate of the number of words in the English language it includes, of course, not only the radical words, but also derivatives, except the preterites and participles of verbs; to which must be added some few terms which, though set down in the dictionaries, are either obsolete or have never ceased to be considered foreign. Of these about 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, are of Anglo-Saxon origin.
The alphabets of different nations contain the following number of letters:—English, 26; French, 23; Italian, 20; Spanish, 27; German, 26; Sclavonic, 27; Russian, 41; Latin, 22; Hebrew, 22; Greek, 24;[8] Arabic, 28; Persian, 32; Turkish, 33; Sanscrit, 50; Chinese, 214.
Anthony Brewer (1617) thus characterized those best known:—
“The ancient Hebrew, clad with mysteries;
The learned Greek, rich in fit epithets,
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words;
The Chaldean wise; the Arabian physical;
The Roman eloquent; the Tuscan grave;
The braving Spanish, and the smooth-tong’d