The Mighty Mighty English

Unbeatable. Unstoppable. A most superlative cast of characters is literally a word or two shy of the million word mark. Tres cool tres cool all! Here's some more lingual trivia:

There are 6,912 living languages per the language clock on Language Monitor.

The top spoken languages, in order, per Info Please :
Chinese
English
Hindustani
Spanish
Russian
Arabic
Bengali
Portuguese
Malay-Indonesian
French

"According to traditional estimates, neighboring Germany has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000, including such Franglais as as le snacque-barre and le hit-parade." (This site has English at 500,000 official words and another 500,000 uncatalogued.)
Words in the Language

The lowdown on the English:
NPR: 900,000 Words and Counting
Chinglish: Word in a Million
USA Today: Do You Speak American?

ode to the word

onwards ho with the passage of time
out on a limb won't stop on a dime

what's a word to a lyric or a riddle in a drivel
lingo to a language or a tickle to a pickle

i'm plunking words on a rhyme, aiming for a pun
dining on a lentil under the singe-ing tropical sun

here a word defiled, and there spawns anew
so there you have it, now i have two

one word, two words, three, four
all else fades to myth and lore

lingual dexterity
on a vocal propensity

listen and hear
words daily appear