I like to at least think my vocabulary's increasing as I perform my own many-other functions day to day. I did notice, as I read good fiction, my ability to formulate sentences improving. But I can't say I've necessarily realized an improvement in my vocabulary, via reading, playing word games, and doing whatever else I might be doing in an attempt to improve it. Maybe I'm describing an effect of age on memory. I still struggle trying to recall this word or that; end up searching for it online.What amazes me about the English language is just how huge the vocabulary is. I game in English, watch movies in English, read in English, pc's are mostly in English. I daily look up most any word I don't know, and still you always come across new ones. And not only very complex words for highly specialized fields, different words for ordinary things.
It's also striking that what's roughly the same word in one language, can mean something quite different in another language - the words come from a similar basic meaning, but just got used differently in different countries. This goes for most any language it seems. It's frustrating, because you tend to choose the meaning of the word from your first language and use that in English where it means something different.
Is it actually the same for people who were raised in English that you find new words you had never read or heard before all the time?
I don't know other languages; can't compare any vs English in terms of complexity or degree of difficulty learning and executing the performance of. But I've heard that English is quite the challenge to master.