The Top 20 Words in English
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide listeners through the 20 most commonly used words.
Word of Mouth · BBC Radio 4
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Show Notes
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright guide us through the top 20 words in English. Not the best or most popular (that would include tentacular, ping-pong and sesquipedalian (look it up - it's a cracker). Plus a lot of swearing. No this is the 20 most commonly used. It's actually quite a boring list - full of 'And', 'I', 'of' etc - but look a little closer and it tells you all about the structure of language. The little words you really can't do without that glue all the other ones together.
This kind of list comes from a branch of lingustics called Corpus Linguistics. It looks at the frequency and distribution of words in large bodies of text or speech. You can apply it to anything - political debates, lonely hearts columns or pop songs. Which is exactly what our guest Prof Jonathan Culpeper has done. That's high end linguistics and Pharrell Williams. Only on Word of Mouth.
APPENDIX 1 - THE LIST!
* the * be * to * of * and * a * in * that * have * I * it * for * not * on * with * he * as * you * do * at.