Directions: Read the passage given below and answer the questions by selecting the correct/most appropriate options : With more then 3,000 languages currently spoken, English undoubtedly is amongst the richest of all languages. The Oxford English Dictionary lists about half a million words of which only 2,00,000 are frequently used. This is because, the latter 3,00,000 words are technical and not found in ordinary dictionaries. The only language that can come near English is Chinese. Apart from being the richest language, English also boasts of being one of the most widely spoken, second only to Mandarin Chinese. This remarkable achievement is only because of the one thing that we all love to do – copy! 'Siesta' for example is of Spanish origin. 'Sputnik' as you must be aware of, has a Russian origin. 'Restaurant' is from France and 'Super' from Germany. Even before the birth of the 'genius' of 'drama', William Shakespeare, the words 'genius' and 'drama' were adapted from Greek. Now, you must be wondering if English has anything original about it. Well, find it out! Did you ever try to find out how many different words of English we use in our daily life? Try to guess and then read on. A modern novelist has a vocabulary of anywhere between ten to fifteen thousand words. William Shakespeare used thirty thousand words and the only writer to come close to him was James Joyce in 'Ulysses'. We normally have a vocabulary of about ten thousand words of which only five thousand are used in everyday conversation. This leads to a limited variety of words. This is because we repeat a lot of words. In conversation and in writing, it is 'the'. (Try counting it in this article and you will have proof of it.) English is the most widely used language in the world because :