Whiskeyjack Newbie Canada Joined 5731 days ago 36 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Spanish, Russian
| Message 17 of 70 13 April 2009 at 3:37pm | IP Logged |
fair enough, good points.... I think when i reach 4,000 words then ill slowly move onto Russian... Mabye learning 5,000 Finnish words is what i want since i would like to be at a low level of fluency
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Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5743 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English
| Message 18 of 70 13 April 2009 at 3:45pm | IP Logged |
Whiskeyjack wrote:
fair enough, good points.... I think when i reach 4,000 words then ill slowly move onto Russian... Mabye learning 5,000 Finnish words is what i want since i would like to be at a low level of fluency |
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I don't think that 5000 words is a basic fluency, but rather more because the basic vocabulary of any given language is approximately 3500 words, so 1500 bonys words will get you somewhere around advanced fluency (my opinion) .
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poligloton Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5706 days ago 104 posts - 128 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Portuguese, Italian Studies: French, Romanian, Catalan
| Message 19 of 70 13 April 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
The point isn't to learn X amount of words. These numbers don't really tell how fluently one speaks. The point is to keep learning. You will know when you get to a basic level based on your own experiences with the language.
A vocabulary of 5,000 words definitely does not get you to advanced fluency. First of all, are these 5,000 words the most frequent words? If not, then you're missing a bunch of important things. Secondly, if they are the 5,000 most frequent, you're missing a lot of necessary vocabulary for advanced topics, like science, politics, etc.
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 20 of 70 13 April 2009 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
rlf1810 wrote:
Hello,
Here is the way I count how many words are necessary for each level of the CEF. They simply double with each level.
A1 - 500 words
A2 - 1000 words
B1 - 2000 words
B2 - 4000 words
C1 - 8000 words
C2 - 16000 words
It's a rough guide to be sure but still reasonably accurate I think.
-Robert
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This is an interesting table for me, Robert. It is according to my Turkish textbook which contains 1000 words and leads to level A 2.
Fasulye-Babylonia
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 21 of 70 13 April 2009 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
So how do you guys know how many words you know? I haven't got a clue how many I know in any language....
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Whiskeyjack Newbie Canada Joined 5731 days ago 36 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Spanish, Russian
| Message 22 of 70 13 April 2009 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
i went over my notes and guesstimated xD, but i still know i have much to learn
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icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5860 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 23 of 70 14 April 2009 at 8:44am | IP Logged |
SRS users usually know. Bwt, I think its 2500-3000 active words to be pretty comfortable in conversation. More like
10,000 active/20,000 passive for fluency.
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rlf1810 Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6339 days ago 122 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, German, Slovak
| Message 24 of 70 14 April 2009 at 10:13am | IP Logged |
The reason I devised the CEF word table was because I was curious about this exact same thing. How many words to which level. As icing_death mentioned, SRS users can have a good guess, and I use an SRS program (Mnemosyne).
According to my cards I know around 3,800 words. Of course this doesn't include the basics like food, body parts, days, and various other common words. Thus, I can accurately estimate that I know around 4,000 to 4,500 words. This, coupled with the description of a B2 level (which I mostly match) must mean I'm a level B2.
I'm not totally fluent by any means, but I can comfortably talk about any ordinary topics on a daily basis. So, all said and done, 4,000 words is when you can begin to really use the language.
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