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How many words do we actually need? | ||
Tags: Number of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5300 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 25 of 115 25 January 2013 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
And every flashcard is a long long list with many many items? Like this: go go about go against go ahead go along go around go at somebody go at something go away go back go back on go back to . . . . . . . . . go with go without (To keep things simple we make another card for the noun go). What a relieve for the learner ... Only one single flashcard! 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 26 of 115 25 January 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder how many people have ever looked at a frequency list or understand how such lists are made. Basically, you start with a corpus of samples representing certain registers of language, e.g. fiction, non-fiction, spoken, newspapers, scientific journals, etc. A word is anything that is separated by a space. Then you lemmatize to reduce the various forms to a representative token within its grammatical category. And then you count the number of various tokens.
This is a mechanical affair that has its limitations. Meanings, idioms, multi-word units, derived forms are not taken into account. At best, frequency lists are rather crude tools but they give us some idea of the statistical importance of certain word forms. But they are not dictionaries. The verbs do, go and get appear only once in most lists but at near the very top of the frequency lists of verbs in English because they appear in so many different combinations, as others have pointed out. Now, the real question is how to use these lists. Let's say that you are a fan of flashcards, do you make one card per token and try to put all the known combinations of that word on one card? Do you try to put an entire conjugation table of a verb on one card? Or do you make a card for each separate combination or meaning? Do you make 100 cards for go? 200 cards for get? I don't know what other people would do. Here is what I do. I don't bother making cards for the things I already know. I make cards for things I want to learn. I'll put a few examples phrases on one card or make different cards. So, I'll have multiple cards for go, get, do but I won't have any cards for I, you, he, she, the, a, an, and, you. For that challenge of using the most 1000 most common words, I may have 990 or 1000 or 1023 cards, Big deal. A deck of cards is a memory tool. It's not a method. I'll modify, add or delete as I need. I don't see a problem. Some people don't like flashcards and work with lists. That's fine too. Maybe they want to list all the possible uses of go on a few pages and learn that way. That's fine too if it works for them. Other people don't believe in frequency lists at all and prefer to learn willy-nilly. If that works, why not? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5300 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 27 of 115 25 January 2013 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When someone starts a new thread with "pay attention to phrasal verbs in English" or "the many different uses of ficar in Portuguese" etc. he gets my full agreement because he does something useful. I can make use of it and begin studying.
The same theme with the headline "How many words do you need in language xy?" is only usable as a starting point for the usual arguments about words, lexical units, lemmata, composita in one language vs. disparate units in another ... What I as a simple learner am interested in is not a semantic trick, which reduces the workload by a different counting algorithm ("cool, 500 words, but sheet, 5000 "things" I have to study and remember"). People should have the frequency of words, units, whatever, in mind, of course, this is a clever operational plan, starting with the more common words and expanding from there. Learning random words, like some not very experienced learners seem to do, is not clever and should be avoided. But despite of that I dislike the perspective from which you use to look at these things. I am sure the more or less automatic replies contra by some people are due to this slightly distorted or polemic point of view of the presentation, while the matter per se is of course valid and would be extremely useful when offered without the problematic twist. ("Better and more idiomatic English by using phrasal verbs", beside other improvements, is on my to do list for the future, it is something I never payed enough attention to. Just to say what is probably obvious. But I certainly won't approach this from a word counting angle.) Edited by lingoleng on 25 January 2013 at 5:23pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 28 of 115 25 January 2013 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
''Quite+ comparatives 66d Quite is not used alone before a comparative. Normally ''a lot'' or ''a bit'' is added: He was quite a lot older than her, and had children that needed looking after. (NOT: He was quite older than her …) As I say, I had my babies quite a bit earlier than these ladies. (NOT:… I had my babies quite earlier than these ladies. )'' Cambridge Grammar of English I've never heard a native speaker of English use QUITE + comparative, but 99% of L2 English speakers use it. --- The 5k frequency list of US English can be found here: http://www.wordfrequency.info/5k_lemmas_download.asphttp://www.wordfrequency.info/5k_lemmas_download.asp Edited by Medulin on 25 January 2013 at 7:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 29 of 115 25 January 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Only to a rigid prescriptivist. "Quite" used as an adverb is no different than using "much", and is actually heard in many parts of the English-speaking world. By native speakers, even! R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 30 of 115 25 January 2013 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I asked native speakers, and got a different answer here:
http://tinilink.com/KfOTnSI ''quite better, quite happier, quite worse.. I would never say any of those things, nor do I recall ever having heard them, even in the laziest and most careless speech. If this is a bad habit that's crept into British English somewhere, it hasn't crossed the Atlantic yet! '' Edited by Medulin on 25 January 2013 at 7:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5132 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 31 of 115 25 January 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
You should probably have waited for more than one answer that agrees with you before announcing you've got proof. And perhaps from more than just one English-speaking place. On the internet, I suppose we can find anything to back up our own beliefs. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 32 of 115 25 January 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never heard a learner say "quite better" :)
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