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How many words do we actually need? | ||
Tags: Number of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 115 24 January 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a link to an article in the British paperThe Guardian about an online challenge on explaining complex subjects with the one thousand most common words of the English language.
This challenge got me thinking once again about how here at HTLAL we focus a lot on learning many words in our target languages. While there's nothing wrong with expanding one's vocabulary, it's interesting to see how well one can do with fewer rather than more words. It seems that one can do quite well. I'm not suggesting of course that one should limit oneself to a specific number of words, but I think it would be intriguing to challenge oneself to use, let's say, only the 100 most common verbs or the 500 most common words. It probably would not be the end of the world. Edited by s_allard on 24 January 2013 at 1:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4657 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 115 24 January 2013 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me the point of learning many words is not so much to be able to use all of them regularly (after all, even in English I never use "refulgent" or "supercilious" or "uxorious" in conversations :-P), but rather to understand all the things I hear and read. When I talk to a French native I'd rather that vocabulary at least not be a stumbling block in my understanding them (coping with the verb forms and grammar at a normal speed is hard enough for me!). Edited by tastyonions on 24 January 2013 at 1:44pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4631 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3 of 115 24 January 2013 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting article. Clearly you can get a message across limiting yourself to the thousand most common words of a language. However, as the article itslef shows, you lose precision. "Important people" really does not explain the concept "civil servant", not all "people with big brains" are scientists, and "a car that drives into space" to me sounds inaccurate. A car is a very specific concept. Would't "thing that goes into space" be better?
I would never put a limit to the number of words I aim at learning. It is in any case limited by outside factors, like lack of time or not enough exposure to a certain type of vocabulary etc. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 115 24 January 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are we also forbidden to use certain grammar?
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| Quique Diglot Senior Member Spain cronopios.net/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4674 days ago 183 posts - 313 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, German | Message 5 of 115 24 January 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Let me quote this conversation from The Last Emperor:
- Words are important. - Why are words important? - If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman should always mean what he says. There is a reason that article proposes that exercise as a challenge: it is a challenge. 1000 words are barely enough to get by; to communicate effectively, a minimum of about 2000 words is a must. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 115 24 January 2013 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the link, s_allard. That's a fun read. It reminds me of how I sound in Portuguese or Spanish when I don't know a word or concept and have to describe what I want to say on the fly.
An interesting challenge would be to see what one could do in a language with as you suggest the 100 most common verbs and 500 most common words. I would say, you could express quite a lot. The nub comes in understanding the responses. Natives won't have those restrictions. Conversations would likely become tiresome for native speakers who would have to endure circumlocutions like the following comment on the article from a reader:
So imagine you just used all this vocabulary in a TL in response to the question- "What do you do?". obviously, the above circumlocution could be shortened considerably. Still, after all this you'd get in return- "Oh, you're an actor."- one word. So, yes, you can communicate but how many people will actually want to talk with you for an extended length of time? You'd quickly figure out that you need more to fully understand native speech. Hence the frustration learners feel when they can "get by"in a language but still feel on the outside when they can't engage comfortably in a social setting or even understand a tv show or movie. Of course, as learners, we all do this until we gain the vocabulary. For me, circumlocution is a very important skill to acquire and master in language learning. There are always going to be words we do not know and yet have to communicate the concepts they represent when we are speaking a second language. Fortunately, as reasonably intelligent people, when we are given the word "actor" for the unnaturally long circumlocution above, we generally tend to learn that that word is the one we want to use to represent the concept we've just described. The next time we need the word it should be fairly easy to recall. I value circumlocution in language learning. It helps me to learn a word or concept without having to resort to a dictionary. I am thrilled when I learn the word or concept in the TL and no longer have to resort to the circumlocution in order to express myself. So, I think one can go quite far in a language with a limited vocabulary to express oneself in a monologue. In a dialog, native speakers will have to adjust to your limited vocabulary and be very patient. In a lot of places they'll just switch to English. Engaging with native material will be frustrating to not possible because of such a limited vocabulary- although you'd learn through context and inference. On the plus side, I think it would be extremely difficult, to next to impossible, to avoid learning new vocabulary and concepts with such a solid, well known and well manipulated base in a TL. Maybe that should be the next challenge after the current Assimil challenge ends. Master the 500 most common words and the 100 most common verbs and describe what you are able to do as a result. Though, I would be a poor participant because I don't count words and I tend to use a lot of reinforcing native materials very early on. I just seem to pick up vocabulary that is outside of the most common words as I'm learning. I don't think, in such a challenge, I would be able to avoid learning more vocabulary. Edited by iguanamon on 24 January 2013 at 2:16pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4614 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 115 24 January 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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When my German was developing, I had to use work-around techniques all the time when trying to explain things to native speakers. One early conversation I recall involved describing wildlife in my garden and I didn't know the word for hedgehog. I described it literally as "small animal with sharp nails on back" and my father-in-law nodded his understanding. These humorous moments are actually good learning experiences because they stick in your mind.
Thinking on your feet and trying to find an alternative path to explain what you are thinking because the direct route seems out reach is an essential skill in spontaneous spoken language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5422 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 115 24 January 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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The fun thing about this idea of using a limited vocabulary is that it forces you to be nimble, linguistically speaking, because you have to use the same words to convey different meanings. Although I love words, as do most people around here, I'm also struck by how certain words can be used in so many different ways. Just the other day I was looking at the Spanish "cuenta" in a dictionary and the results were just staggering. This happens in all languages I imagine. So I think part of the challenge of using fewer words is learning how to squeeze the most out of what we have.
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