Choice of lexicon matters?

[Mwita Chacha]

Mine is Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictonary, and yours is presumably Merriam-Webster. I have been using it since I started my campaign to expand my word stock, but it appears to me that I am not making any heartening step forward towards accomplishing that end. So will I be accurate if I put down my slowly growing vocabulary to my seems-to-be wrong choice of wordbook. 

[Joe Carillo]

My standard reference is the print and digital edition of Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, but for cross-referencing, I also use the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Both of these dictionaries use the American English standard, the variety of English used in the Philippines where I am based. I would think that since you live in a country that uses the British English standard, you made a very sensible and logical choice in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. There simply are too many differences in spelling, definitions, pronunciations, usage, idioms, and figurative expressions between British English and American English that to interchangeably use dictionaries in either standard could mongrelize your English, so to speak. I therefore suggest that you stick to dictionaries using the British English standard.

As to enriching your English vocabulary, however, I don’t think the outright reading of dictionaries and the memorizing of word definitions are advisable ways of achieving that goal. A much more effective way is to read well-written English-language fiction and nonfiction books as well as magazines, and to listen to high-quality TV or radio programs in English. Each time you encounter a new or unfamiliar word, simply check out its definition and usage with your dictionary. By doing this routine, you’ll be amazed at how much you can enrich your vocabulary over the years.

I understand that despite recent claims that the English lexicon has already grown to over 1,000,000 words, the Oxford English Dictionary stands pat on its official word count of 615,000 for English. Even that is still much too many words to cram one’s brain with, I think. After all, some language experts say that only about 200,000 of those words are in common usage, and all that a typical native-English-speaking college graduate needs to be functionally literate in English is about 20,000-25,000 words. I’d say that unless you are gunning to compete in big-league English Scrabble, a personal English lexicon of 40,000-50,000 words by the time you are 40 or 50 years of age won’t be bad at all.

[Mwita Chacha]

I'm glad that you've told me my country's English standard is that approved by Britain; I admit I wasn't aware of the fact. Indeed,  living in a country whose president's speech itself can be found to have such words as 'recognize' and 'organise' in the same paragraph, I find it almost impossible to tell which form of English standard we're observing. Instinctually, though, I find myself so preferring American English standard to British--perhaps because most of the books we use for classwork come from America. I think I should rationally resolve to stick to the American English standard and eschew the British English for good.

[Joe Carillo]

Writers and speakers must communicate in a language that their target audience will clearly understand. If your target audience is steeped in British English, you hardly have any choice but to write or speak to them in British English—even if your workbooks right now are largely in American English. You should make American English your standard only if you intend to move permanently to the United States or to another country that uses American English, for then you'd have to write and speak American English to be perfectly understood by your readers or listeners.