After a paircouple of years learning German I'm still not convinced that its number of words is finite (actually it's infinite). But as a guide to answer your question. Is there a language for which such an information is available? You might want to see in the Duden. After looking up a word there, it often appears
Dieses Wort gehört zum Wortschatz des Zertifikats Deutsch.
You can also infere a lot from the frequence it's used. For, say, the verb machen it appears
Häufigkeit:
■■■■■
Wheras for other less used words, like Unwort:
Häufigkeit:
■■□□□
There are more accurate dictionaries telling you how many inverse factors of two you need to multiply theout there which assign frequencies. For a word with a frequency of the word you look for6, so thatder would be 26 = 64 times as frequent as the frequency equals that of "der"word.