How do the word numbers work?

[tedstone100]

I like the new design on the home pages, but I've been noticing that the number posted for the words I've supposedly learned keeps going down as I practice. How does this work? Or is there a glitch in my program? Or do I just need more practice and Duolingo is keeping track?

[quirem]

I believe they used to count every form of a word and now they only count actual words. But it doesn´t explain why the number goes down.

[severin]

it's the other way around, we used the count the words but now we count the word forms, so your number should have gone up, not down.

[VanX-IInX]

You have different numbers for different languages, try to check the other languages to see if they went down.

[jeanprendiville]

I have done two new lessons every day, one on web, one on app. For 19 days. I have peeked c. Three times. At 1150, my word count has not changed since i did the initial test. Why is this?