I am writing a book and need to know how many Greek words existed
around 10 AD and how many exist at present day.  I will also need the
same information for Hebrew as well.  If you could also please site
references it would be a big help.  If possible I would like to
know how many words existed for each language around 400 AD.

When I say existed I really mean two things.  Recorded (known) words,
and how many words where actually used in every day language.

Thank you,
Ed Nix

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 27 Sep 2002 06:58 PDT

Dear ednix,

Your question is, alas, impossible to answer, at least not with
serious figures. The reason for this is that we have lost
approximately 95% percent of ancient literature. About many works we
know not more than their authors and titles; and of even more works we
do not even know they ever existed. They have vanished in the floods
of time. What has survived to the present day is not even
representative for ancient literature, Greek and Latin.
And from the works we know we can not derive any reliable figures
concerning Greek vocabulary because we do not have all the words the
authors did *not* use. This makes it also impossible to count the
words used in everyday language. Our knowledge of the way the common
people spoke is very limited, based mainly on graffitti and similar
sources. But making a word count for ancient everyday-Greek from this
would be like reconstructing the vocabulary of an average late 20th
century New Yorker entirely from graffitti found in public toilets and
subway stations.

I am sorry I can't give you better information.
Regards,
Scriptor

The best way could be to use an academic database. None were testable
for free online, but it is possible that one of the products described
on this page might let you sort a Greek lexicon by the date a word was
first known to be used:
http://www.library.yale.edu/etc/grklat.html

For what it's worth, the site below describes dictionaries of both
modern and ancient Greek as follows:

http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/2530.htm

English-Greek Talking Dictionary 
Over 450,000 words and expressions including: 325,000 general words;
36,000 medical terms; 32,000 technical terms; 29,000 business terms,
28,000 legal terms

Langenscheidt: Taschenworterbusch Classical Greek<>German Dict
features 859 pages and approximately 56,000 entries

My dad just happens to be a Greek and Hebrew scholar. I gave him a
call, and unfortuantely for all of us I could hear him chuckle. But
this is what he told me.

Much of what we have from both languages is biblical. Most of the
people from that time could not read or write, and the few who could
wrote in a more formal style. So what the common man spoke is simply
not known.

There are about 6,000 words in the Greek New Testament. It wouldn't be
too much work to find out how many words are in th Hebrew Bible. 90%
of the Hebrew words we know come from biblical manuscripts, Dead Sea
Scrolls, etc. But beyond that there is no way to tell.

Sorry.

Prof

The Rosetta Project, building a permanent archive of 1000 languages.
(they don't have the information you are looking for...
yet)http://www.rosettaproject.org

Perseus Digital Library, 6 million words of Greek text.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

Ancient Greek-Modern Greek & Modern Greek-Ancient Greek
electronic translation dictionary
http://www.magenta.gr/en/lexicons/en_an_dictionary.htm