Ængelfolc: Good. I almost put "biggen" instead of "enlarge" (vocabulary) on a student report, but sadly we have to teach the "normal" words first. I don't find "enlarge" too bad; better than "expand" anyway. Norman french words have been around a long time. BTW I was taught at school (after the dinosaurs died out) that "big" and "get" were low class words and to be shunned; just because they are Norse perhaps.
Bug word of the day: "authoritative" - why do we have author AND writer? Why bring in the Greek? Oh no! it just LOOKS greek! really should AUGMENT my vocabulary!
A trustworthy source would be fine.
Nice word of the day: someone said "mother language" and I corrected to "mother tongue" as it is the standard phrase; whereas "tongue" for language usually sounds old-fashioned. Not often we can soundly switch to real English!

Ængelfolc: I have never heard the word biggen (although there is a fighter airfield near London called Biggin Hill). It may be in some dictionary, and maybe there are people out there using it, but I would call it uncommon/nonstandard English. I could not use this word in the real world, what about "greaten"?

Ængelfolc: you have been busy!
Wasn't "wanhope" or something like it used by Gerald Manly Hopkins?? "Hope hath grown grey hairs... (The Wrack of the Deutschland)??
"queasy" is excellent.
ad nauseam >> ad queasiam????
"foresight" for prudence already exists.
moonstruck already exists for lunatic.
"make something bigger" is simpler to use.

BTW which websit do you use for hungarian wordroots? All I get is one asserting links with sumerian.

Ængelfolc: "Although" can only be used as a conjunction (like "obschon", "obgleich". One cannot comma it off like "However". ("Obgleich, Sie Recht haben" would be wrong in German too). "Though" is the same as "although", but it can ALSO be used as an adverb (after a comma) at the end of a sentence, meaning roughly "allerdings" or "trotzdem". It's a bit informal.
"Dennoch" translates as "nonetheless"; but in English that's an awful mouthful!
"You are right, however" is good, though.
These little words indicating attitude I find really difficu

"Although, you are right." ->>> You are right, though. (Sie haben doch Recht.)
OMG Y am I so picky???

Ængelfolc:"...in the USA the count might be lower....... " Not to be taken seriously!!!
It would be surprising indeed if there really were any significant difference for the USA.

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh'
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest Du auch.

Still so beautiful; had to post it!

Ængelfolc: "15,000 (words) seems rather high." I based this figure on research done at Victoria University by Nation, Vine et al. They also compiled an academic word list used by Oxford University Press on the internet. Quite what counts as a "word" is of course not clear, nor can I remember how they arrived at this figure. Not really worth arguing about, although of course in the USA the count might be lower.......
The high wordcount for native speakers may include all those words one learns at school from reading Shakespeare, Chaucer, GM Hopkins etc. For instance I always remember "Wipfel" from "Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh'" but have never heard the word used..... Nice word, and Bing sang where the treetops glisten, but otherwise hardly key core wordstock; so what all these 15000 words are is a damn good ask, I agree

The high percentage of latin-rooted words does mean that romance language speakers can operate at a fairly advanced level of English in about a quarter of the time it takes someone from SE Asia. English does have its upside, for global communication even if it doesn't make purists happy.

Ængelfolc: "Hungarian kilincs "door handle" < Old French clinche < Frankish *klinka"
It is one of the ironies in Hungary; they are taught at school how their forefathers kept up the hungarian language and culture in the face of so much oppression since losing the battle at Mohacs in 1526. Unfortunately it turns out that it's just not true; hungarian is full of borrowings, mainly from turkish, schwab German, and slavic and other uncertain sources. DNA studies have shown that they are indistinguishable from surrounding slav/german people. "We are descended from Arpad, Kuba, Tas et al." is a convenient nationalistic myth. Much as I love hungary, hungarians, and hungarian, I think the constant demands for hungarian autonomy in Slovakia and Serbia, this whole backward-looking focus on Trianon, the situation of the gypsies and the activities of the Jobbik, are undermining the working-together of Europe. We have enough trouble holing Europe and the Euro together as is; and after two massive European wars last century we cannot let Europe fall into some sort of Balkan tragedy again.

"it might help to teach the word-bits if one were to put the English word akin to the Latin or Greek in its stead." Yes we we do but there are two issues. As a native speaker I learnt "contain" and "contents" from context without knowing or thinking about the wordroots, so wordroots are not always needed for learning. Secondly one had to contend with the sheer non-standardness of English. Eg retain->retention ; contain->containment; contend->contention; maintain-> maintenance; and so on. Likewise endings: no sooner has one said that -ance/ence are (Fr) noun endings than up comes "influence" which is also a verb. It is at best "highly idiomatic", or sometimes "highly idiotic". The other issue is that for non-native speakers we are in fact just concentrating on (highlighting?) the 5000 most common words plus another 2000 most common academic words. This is well below the 15000 plus that a native speaker entering university usually has at their command.