Do newspapers have disproportionately rarer words?

[edmundangelson]

I often see things that knowing the X most common words will allow you to understand 80/90/98/99.5% of words in a text. However I think for newspapers this is a lot more skewed. Despite having a relatively large vocabulary for a beginner I still struggle with newspaper articles, even getting the jist of it. I think these statistics are far more accurate for everyday conversation and perhaps novels, but newspapers are still out of reach even with intermediate vocabulary it seems.

[Rooks57]

I think the rule is you have to master like ten thousand of most common words to be able to comfortably talk.  The problem you might have with newspapers is that they have a word count they have to keep to so instead of writing casually, they use more specific words to keep the word count down.  I still think reading newspaper and even magazine articles are great ways to practice reading and expanding the words you know.  You also get to learn more eloquent words to used when writing and speaking.

[Ling Lang]

I study English and during the reading classes I often work with various articles form newspapers. I agree that this is one of the best ways to expand your vocabulary. Some texts I've read were unfathomable at first glance, so I had a lot of work to do in order to understand them. But with every new article I have less doubts about the meaning of the specific words used in different contexts. 

[babelle]

I guess when you learn the so-called most frequently used words in a language, your list of words would consist mostly of words that are used in everyday common conversations. Newspapers, on the other hand, use a more formal language to bring the news or discuss the issues of the day. That is one of the challenges of language learning. 

[Lingua Franca]

Newspapers have limited space so they will use the shortest word possible to explain an event instead of writing a full sentence. I think even experienced speakers will have difficulty with one or two words that they use in order to save space. Books on the other hand are the direct opposite. They need to write longer sentences in order to reach a certain word count so it can be easier to read.

[takibari]

The statistics you presented may just be true to everyday conversation. As given, they're mostly "common words". While it may be true that someone has memorized or is very familiar with 100% common words of a specific language, that person's word database is at best still limited to "common words". Thus, the words in that list may not be represented nor is commonly used in newspaper reporting. I guess, what's common in everyday language may just be different to what's common in newspaper writing. Thus, it's expected that comprehension of newspaper articles might not be that great yet.

As the others said, due to space limitation, reporters tend to use the most 'apt' word for their story. Thus, not much explanation or sample contexts might be given. Also consider the purpose of news article writing. Mostly, newspaper writing's goal is to present 'facts' without embellishments compared to novels where authors are expected to be more descriptive.

[lingvo]

Newspapers journalist and writers have to compete each other to sell their press release, therefore, skill in rethorics is an important asset to handle properly while writing. You don't want to sound pedantic, but also, if you oversimplify your writing, the content might end up too bland.

By the way, Japanese language institutions has issued a number of Kanji characters that bounds newspaper writers into using only around 2000 of these when writing content.   

[Bokyy]

I started learning English by reading small and simple articles, which was often part of some newspapers. According to my experience, I found that English newspapers have been using the simplest possible words. Quickly, I advanced and began reading short stories and even books. I am not sure what language you learn, but I suppose it is Chinese. Unfortunately, I have not read their newspapers, because I do not understand even a word of Chinese. But, I suggest persistent reading, and you will slowly learn word by word. It is totally natural that you do not understand all words, because you are still in the learning process. 

[Lingua Franca]

57 minutes ago, Bokyy said:

I started learning English by reading small and simple articles, which was often part of some newspapers. According to my experience, I found that English newspapers have been using the simplest possible words. Quickly, I advanced and began reading short stories and even books. I am not sure what language you learn, but I suppose it is Chinese. Unfortunately, I have not read their newspapers, because I do not understand even a word of Chinese. But, I suggest persistent reading, and you will slowly learn word by word. It is totally natural that you do not understand all words, because you are still in the learning process. 

It depends what newspaper it is and who it's their target audience is. If the target is broader the vocabulary used tends to be simpler, but if they have a smaller target audience the vocabulary can be quite a bit more complex, you normally find this in business newspapers, on the other hand football newspapers tend to be the simplest. 

[17emilyhalko]

I do think that newspapers (especially ones that have been around for a long time) have a bigger vocabulary, because articles online, and even some novels construct the vocabulary in a way that most readers should be able to understand, like conversational text. I think that newspapers have harder vocabulary because they are, generally speaking, reputed sources and are not necessarily looking to write in a conversational style.