[soc]

5000? I have close to 8000 in japanese and I consider myself still a beginner.

Native is at least 20000-25000.

As long as you are continuing to learn then 5000 is a nice start, but you are not going to read novels and speak about broad topics with that vocabulary.

[_delirium]

Are we talking about vocabulary usage or recognition? Estimates vary, but the rough consensus for English seems to be that the educated native speaker recognizes around 15,000-25,000 words, but only uses around 5,000-8,000 in their own speech/writing.

[chastened]

The average vocabulary of the average person in their NATIVE TONGUE is just over 3500 words (it varies a lot from culture to culture).

The average vocabulary of a University Graduate in the Arts is 10-12000 words. In the sciences it varies greatly, chemistry, biology and medicine being the most demanding at >15,000.

Someone with a vocabulary of 20-25000 words would be highly educated or very well read, or an specialist in a field.

If you have a Japanese vocabulary of 8000 words, you already have a bigger vocabulary than 74.13% of the population (if you understand what that percentage represents, you already have a larger vocabulary than the majority of people).

[w1ntermute]

I don't know where you got that idea from, but I took an online test for English (which is my native language) vocabulary, and found that I knew about 30000 words. And I wouldn't consider myself to be that unusual.