How the words we teach English language learners changed
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
A comparison of 1953 and 2023 English vocabulary lists reveals a shift from concrete to abstract words.
The article compares the 1953 General Service List (2,284 words) and the 2023 New General Service List (2,809 words), both designed to cover over 90% of everyday English for learners. About 600 words were dropped and over 1,100 added. Concrete words (e.g., goat, flour, bake, fork) declined from 21% to 14% of the lists, while abstract terms (e.g., mortgage, legislation, analysis) and adverbs specifying degree and certainty increased. Categories related to immediate physical life shrank; those tied to institutions, systems, and abstract reasoning grew. The shift reflects a move from hands-on, local life to navigating larger, systemic structures.
What commenters are saying
Commenters debated the cause of the lexical shift, with one camp attributing it to rising economic inequality and another to globalization. Several noted the difficulty of creating useful vocabulary lists, as word frequency depends heavily on context (travel, TV, newspapers, daily life). One commenter pointed out that normal everyday conversation is rarely transcribed, making frequency statistics incomplete. A minor subthread discussed the word 'keen,' with British commenters noting it remains common in the UK.