ordforrådet

Ordforrådet refers to the total set of words that a person knows and can use, or the lexicon of a language or community. It includes single words as well as fixed expressions and collocations. An individual's ordforråd typically divides into receptive (passive) vocabulary and productive (active) vocabulary. It can also be described as core vocabulary, consisting of high-frequency words, and peripheral vocabulary, comprising less common or domain-specific terms.

Development and acquisition: A person's ordforråd grows through exposure to language in reading and listening, and through speaking and deliberate study. Frequency, context, and repeated use strongly influence retention. Danish, like many languages, relies on productive word formation through compounding and derivation, expanding the lexicon with new combinations of existing words. Explicit vocabulary instruction, semantic mapping, and learning collocations also support growth.

Assessment and variation: Researchers assess vocabulary size and knowledge using tests of receptive and productive knowledge, and by analyzing responses to frequency lists or definition tasks. Ordforrådet varies across ages, education, social background, and dialect. It also changes with registers, with formal language often requiring more specialized terms and loanwords.

Importance and applications: A well-developed ordforråd underpins reading comprehension, speaking fluency, and overall language proficiency. It is a focus of language teaching and learning, lexicography, and natural language processing, where robust word knowledge informs parsing, semantic understanding, and generation.