It has a total of 550,000 words

But 2,000 words make up 90% of most speech

400 words make up 65% of most writing

English has 26 letters and only 44 sounds

There are only 70 main spelling combinations

Half the key words are phonetic, half are not

GORDON DRYDEN. Adapted from slide presentation to The Peoples Network Mastermind conference, Dallas, Texas, June 1996.