Where to get a list of almost all the words in English language?

Question

I want to get some random text generated.

I tried writing a basic Java programme,

int nowords = r.nextInt(2000);
        int i, j;

        for (i = 0; i < nowords; i++) {
            int lengthofword = r.nextInt(10) + 2;
            for (j = 0; j < lengthofword; j++) {
                int ch = r.nextInt(26);
                System.out.print(alphabet[ch]);
            }
            System.out.print(" ");
        }

and the result is something like:

tafawc flnqhabhv mqceuoqy rttzckzqa bdyxzod zbxweclvia wegmxvuoqez ijwauhmzw joxm zvphbs ogpjyip qxoymxkxv yrfoifig fbhecph izxcyfma xarzse srwic jgi fkbcdcydpz qpdvsz rqhjieqno fmelfmtgqe qozenjlxtg vfxd lkmkrksgw ytuaduknsl let ao bm lsfjednsa qouinii yrwzerdck yb kszttly zmwflwevyix kdg qpnkzuijva ssau yc wxews drqsdwbc glxb gokunixldec lznuwdvksx zkzhsirruxc sqplhv fzixywkaft fqdkumfgddn bcqp oiwwbo emhk kv qhm xkjp kacbmcd ojh wzvukx oztbexkf lylyv kdspqpa zbykj lnprtlxp af bne ryamumcg oyhldwdlq bqyfxrszuf wyrijnr ysnefsz lhhazrdwsev tll ikibsnpqwg ntzlgc aahfsdeups rushos ihqzyucd mjorscchszm tuppz hxi ssumrevg

It would be helpful if instead of this, it is atleast readable.

I am thinking of using English words and randomly pick from among them to make sentences. Where can I get a big list of words in English language?

Answer 1

A big list I found on the Freebsd CVS

Answer 2

The Wordlist project has some lists. I think it's hard to find a complete list, natural languages don't work like that.

Answer 3

CUVPlus is a good machine readable dictionary (the link goes straight to the download page). This is "for research purposes only" (non-commercial licence). It includes classification into nouns, verbs, and so on, so it may be more useful for generating random sentences than just a list of words.

Answer 4

The gold standard for natural language processing is Wordnet at http://wordnet.princeton.edu/. This has an active user group, has semantics and syntax associated with words, and interfaces with other NLP tools. If you are thinking of doing computation with the words you should definitely have a look.

However selecting words at random does not generate a useful sentence and I suspect you will be disappointed with the results. Have a look at toolkits such as OpenNLP where there are many tools including part-of-speech (POS) which you will certainly need.

Even when you have sentences that may have valid syntax, you will need to read the work of Chomsky and others. His "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless%5Fgreen%5Fideas%5Fsleep%5Ffuriously illustrates the problem.

Answer 5

You want to look up "Lorem Ipsum". There is bound to be some sort of library for generating it in Java.

Answer 6

I would suggest to use a lorem ipsum generator. For Java there is this on. Online Version is available here.

Answer 7

The Scrabble wordlists may be worth a look. There's two variations: SOWPODS (everywhere except USA and Canada) and TWL (for the US and Canada). Both word lists are readily downloadable from various sites.

However, for what you need, you may want to considering also using Lorem Ipsum (aka 'lipsum'). One popular Lipsum generator is here, although there are many others.

Answer 8

Check for Lorem Ipsum on site http://www.lipsum.com/ for generating "Void text"

There are lot of generators on net http://loremipsum.sourceforge.net/

Reference text: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed consectetur viverra fringilla. Donec at lectus at turpis bibendum placerat. Vivamus non nibh mauris. Nulla metus metus, sollicitudin nec egestas id, fermentum at nisl. Pellentesque at nisl est. In nec sem tellus, ac imperdiet lectus. Pellentesque tortor turpis, sagittis vel facilisis tristique, cursus in tortor. Mauris non neque magna, vel dignissim sem. Suspendisse interdum diam tempus dui mattis molestie. Donec in mauris urna, at vulputate ipsum. Sed sodales venenatis quam non tincidunt.

Answer 9

Download the openOffice dictionary:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries#English%5F.28AU.2CCA.2CGB.2CNZ.2CUS.2CZA.29

Answer 10

if you are on a linux pc try /usr/share/dict

Answer 11

When I did this in 12th grade, back in 1972, I made a list of all the possible second letters in English. In other words, a vector of 26 strings. The first string was all the possible letters that could follow A, the second was all the possible letters that could follow B, and so on.

I made the lists just by trying to think of a word with each possible two letter sequence, and if it was too hard to think of one, I did not include it. Therefore I ended up with all of the common two letter sequences in English.

I do remember that the generated text was pronounceable, and that there were often real words, or almost real words in it.

I was written on OCR mark sense cards in BASIC for the HP 2100A minicomputer with 8k of core memory.

I've since learned that you can usually identify a language by examining the frequency of letter triplets, so I suspect that if you do this to one more level, you will end up with a lot more real words, and a much greater eerie resemblance to some form of English.