The General Concept of Vocabulary

One thing that differentiates human from animals is verbal language or speaking besides mind to think. Humans can communicate with others through verbal language, either to apply or to receive the information the animal can’t do. When we observe a child acquiring first speech; we talk about a matter of learning new words or new vocabulary.

Studying a language cannot be separated from studying vocabulary because vocabulary is one of the components of a language, besides sound system, grammar, and culture. We know that words support the speakers in communication to express their ideas. For instance, if someone wants to say something, he/she should know and choose the appropriate words to express his/her ideas, so that people can understand.

            It is true that the vocabulary is the focus of language. It is in words that sounds and meaning interlock to allow us to communicate with one another, and it is a word that we arrange together to make sentences, conversations, and discourse of all kinds.

Vocabulary plays an important role because it appears in every language skills. Vocabulary building is really important in any language learning. We realizes how important the mastery of vocabulary is, particularly for people who study English as a foreign Language as stated in the Collier- Macmillan International (2000: 72) once a student has mastered the fundamental grammatical patterns of a language, his next task is to master its vocabulary that he needs. Nobody ever learns all the words in any language. We know and use the words that suit with our particular purposes and we continue to learn new words as long as we live.

It is clear enough that everybody who learns a language as a foreign language is hoped to know and master the vocabulary to improve the language skills. To know what vocabulary is, we would like to present several definitions as follows:

Charles (1971: 71) states that vocabulary is a stock or supply of words that a person uses or understands even if he does not use them in oral or written communication.

 Hatch and Brown (1975: 68) state that vocabulary is a list or set of words for a particular language or a set of word that individual speakers of language might use. 

Stahl (2005: 15) states that vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings.

Preece (1936: 1655) claims that vocabulary is a list of words with their meanings, glossary, some of words used in a language or particular books or a branch of science. 

Lado (1977: 182) states that vocabulary is words as units that were part of grammatical patterns. In that sense, a word could be an element which can stand alone as an utterance, it cannot be divided into two or more part. 

Harimurti Kridalaksana (1993: 127) states that vocabulary is a component of language that maintains all of information about meaning and using word in language. 

Nation (1990: 20) states that vocabulary is "all the words known and used by a particular person.  Knowing a word is knowing spelling and pronunciation.

Based on the theories above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is a lists of words with their meanings, spellings, pronunciations, and uses.