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How fast can you learn 2500 words? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| JordanB8m Newbie Hong Kong Joined 4921 days ago 23 posts - 27 votes | Message 1 of 66 28 August 2012 at 6:16am | IP Logged |
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How long does it take you to learn 2500 words, and what method(s) do you use?
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 66 28 August 2012 at 10:07am | IP Logged |
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This question is impossible to answer - it is like asking "how long is a rubber band" without specifiying which rubber band we are speaking about.
You could ask me how long time it takes to learn 100 words, and I could give an answer which would depend on the language (releated or exotic), my level in that language, whether I had chosen the words or just got them from somebody else and finally whether I was in the mood for heroic deeds that day. But answering the same question for 2500 words would be tantamount to predicting how I would spend my time for months or years ahead. Maybe it would take half a year to learn 2500 words if you worked at it every day using the tools which suit you best, but then you go on holiday, your child is ill, you have a busy period at the job or you simply lose steam, and all your meticulous calculations are awash. Or inversely, you move to X-country bringing all your dictionaries and your positive attitude to hard work (but leaving your family at home), and suddenly you are way ahead of your schedule. Besides most people will probably have a better chance to stay motivated if they split their ultimate goals up in nice small manageable packages. Like 100 words in a day or a week, depending on the factors I mentioned above. Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2012 at 10:13am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6105 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 66 28 August 2012 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
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It's taken me 2 years to learn 2900 words.
So 2500 words in my target language would have taken about 21 months. Considering that there is very little shared vocabulary between my native language and Polish, slower progress is perhaps expected. I also try to learn words (especially verbs) thoroughly and in context which takes time. Had I been learning a language with greater transparency to English (e.g French) then I guess my vocab would be about 4000+ by now. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 4 of 66 28 August 2012 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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As pointed out above, there is no single answer to this question. All depends e.g. on
your current level, the number of cognates, the time you can spend on vocabulary every day, whether the vocabulary items are completely new or not etc. I'm pretty sure I've managed to learn about 2500 words (incl. quite many cognates and some words that were vaguely familiar) in a couple of months (2? 3?) using SRS software (and a ready-made databese). I actually drilled even more items but not all of that could stick. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Zimena Tetraglot Groupie Norway Joined 4592 days ago 75 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish Studies: Czech, Mandarin | Message 5 of 66 28 August 2012 at 11:14am | IP Logged |
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One question: How do you even know how many words you know of this or that language?
Personally, I have no idea how many words I know - neither in my native language nor in any of the ones I'm studying and/or using actively. I am, however, very aware that my vocabulary is lacking in some situations - and obviously more so in the languages I don't know very well. While I always try to expand my vocabulary to be able to express myself better, I don't think I've ever studied words from a list - of course other than if we were going to have a vocabulary test in school, but that's already years ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 66 28 August 2012 at 2:14pm | IP Logged |
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Well, Julie and I have had a bit of a debate in my log about getting, or not getting,
too hung up on numbers, and I find myself in a slightly contradictory position. While I don't want to just concentrate on learning "n" words per day or per week, I am, at a slightly more abstract level, quite interested to know the percentage of words or absolute number of words that people know in their native and target languages, and there have been quite a few threads on that theme or related themes. There are various experiments one can do with texts and dictionaries (Iversen has suggested various things in various threads), and one can read research articles on the theme which provide food for endless argument! v:-) It's a fascinating theme, but a bit contentious as well. The question being, not just how long would it take to learn 2,500 words, but is it necessary to learn that many, or could you get by on 300? Or should you really be aiming for 10,000, or 25,000, or some other number? Swallowing my purism, and doing a quick count-up of my word-list book, it looks like I've tried to learn, and I emphasise tried, around 1400 Danish words in around 3 months. That of course includes a lot of cognates or lookalikes from English, German, and sometimes French. Unsurprising fact: it's much harder to learn the non-cognates! :-) Not really very meaningful though, and wouldn't translate to a European learning an Asian language, for example. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 66 28 August 2012 at 3:38pm | IP Logged |
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I actually think that the answer is quite simple. Divide 2500 by the number of words per unit. So, let's say you can learn a 100 words a month, which seems pretty doable, I don't see why you couldn't learn 2500 words in two years. If you can do 150 a month, it's much faster.
Now, the big problem is what is a word, what do you mean by learning a word, and what do you intend to do with them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5219 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 8 of 66 28 August 2012 at 4:04pm | IP Logged |
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92 days.
I agree with Iversen - how long is your rubber band? Take my last ab initio event: English native 'crash' learning Vietnamese so not so many cognates. I can (make myself) learn 30 headwords per day @ >90% retention so say 27 headwords. In two weeks - 270 headwords and about hundred phrase chunks so I had a working vocab of over 300 words. This included a 'basic' grasp of verb tenses. It was enough to get by ..... (impressively in some cases) but I didn't have the vocab or local nous to be more than a tourist. I do have the experience of intense training in 'difficult' languages and know roughly how my head is wired. Intense courses such as DSL recommend 50 (head)words per week for up to 18 months. Theoretically, therefore, I could have any 2500 words/facts in 92 days. Now the problem is to pick my 2500 words ..... most frequently written, most used in speech, funniest, rudest? Edited by maydayayday on 28 August 2012 at 4:06pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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