lingusitics

I am looking at the question: How many words are there in a language? I'd like to know for languages in general, comparatively, and for pedagogical reasons, in some well known western language which may as well be English. What I found quite incidentally is a hornets nest of curmudgeonistic pedanticmaniacal jibberishosity. (There. Whatever the count was, it is now N+3) (For more Falsehoods, click here. Also, listen to "Everything You Know is Sort of Wrong," on Skeptically Speaking Talk Radio. ) First I want to explain why I was interested in this at all. There has for some years been…