WO'N asked, how many words we actually need to get by in everyday life, or to hold an intelligent conversation, or to write with enough authority to be deemed literate.

I've been desperately scrabbling around in my old Adult Literacy Teaching packs for an article which gave an extremely low figure for the number of words needed to communicate effectively in ordinary, day-to-day life. It was over 100, but well under 200.

The second option (intelligent conversation) would need a far higher vocabulary and the third, higher still.

However, My guess is that an intelligent conversation can be held using rather less than a thousand different words. I base this on my experience of teaching young adults from very poor educational backgrounds but who were, nevertheless, of good intelligence. Discussions of current affairs and general, mundane philosophical matters were frequent and managed to reach a quite deep levels.

On another tack, I frequently use anecdotes as teaching tools and I definitely change the way I tell 'em depending on my audience, and the reason that I'm using that particular anecdote. But when I'm telling jokes, or recounting experiences to friends and family, they tend to become ossified into a fixed narrative, so that long suffering spouses and children can turn their eyes to heaven as the punch-line arrives.