Vokabular

Vokabular is the German term for vocabulary, meaning the set of words and fixed expressions that constitute a language or the knowledge of words held by an individual. In linguistics, the term is closely aligned with lexicon and encompasses lemmas (dictionary forms), their inflected forms, and semantic relationships. A distinction is often made between a speaker's passive (receptive) vocabulary and active (productive) vocabulary, the latter consisting of words that a person can recall and use in speech and writing.

The Vokabular of a language includes lexemes, collocations, idioms, and technical terms. It varies by domain and register, with different vocabularies for daily conversation, literature, science, or professional fields. It is structured with pronunciation, part of speech, semantic fields, and frequency information, which can be derived from corpus data. In language education and acquisition, vocabulary is considered a core component; learners build both breadth (number of words) and depth (knowledge of usage, form, and collocations). Frequency lists and spaced-repetition tools are commonly used to improve retention.

In lexicography and corpus linguistics, the vocabulary of a language may be documented in dictionaries and lexical databases, and analyzed for frequency, polysemy, and semantic change. The term Vokabular is commonly used in German-language scholarship and is often translated as "vocabulary" or "lexicon" in English-language texts.