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Picking up words from the dictionary | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| AntoniusBlock Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5923 days ago 31 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 41 of 60 28 June 2009 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
I have more or less the same vocabulary goal in French as you do, and I think the easiest way to accomplish this is to use thematic vocabulary books. They list all the relevant vocabulary and avoid unnecessary super rare words. A good intermediate thematic vocabulary book is Mastering French Vocabulary by Fischer and Le Plouhinec. It has 12,000 terms. A very nice advanced thematic vocabulary book is Vocabulaire de l'anglais contemporain by Jacqueline Fromonot. It has 20,000 terms and is available from Amazon France. It is written for French people studying English, but it can also be used by English speakers learning French. I use them both, and I like them a lot. If you learn the words in these two books, perhaps starting with the intermediate book and then continuing on with the advanced one, you will have reached your goal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5744 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 42 of 60 28 June 2009 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks AntoniusBlock
I think I am going to give a go to the Mastering French Vocabulary by Fischer and Le Plouhinec, 12000 terms is well adapted to my tempo of learning, the second book is not for French, it's from French targeting English . For now, I am only sourcing my words from a BASIC dictionary of 20000 lexems so I can ensure that I don't learn unusful words, I don't learn through a thematic book because I think that they're too basic and dedicated for beginners . Thanx again for youe help 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 43 of 60 29 June 2009 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
It depends a lot on what we count as a word. Some people checked their vocabulary by the "dictionary lookup" method, and got a result of around twice as many dictionary entries as the number of words they scored on that vocab-testing page. I read somewhere that the vocabulary of educated native speakers is around 60.000 - 70.000 words. This too might well be correct but it will again depend very much on what we count as a word. Edited by Hencke on 29 June 2009 at 11:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5744 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 44 of 60 29 June 2009 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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@ Hencke
I think the the main reason they settled on 20000 words as a vocabulary of a well educated adult is that they counted just the root word or as Iverson put it: base word meaning that : The word for instence: to illustrate, all it's derivatives won't be considered as independent words, like Illustration, illustrative, illustrious, illustrator and so on, so if those words were to count, the number will far exeed 20000 words to somewhere near 60000-80000 words. Iverson is the one who put that idea in motion for me, and he is correct, so now I learn the bas word and just glance at its derivatives to make them stick into my mind without attempting to learn all of them independently, so I stuff ~5 words into just one base lexem . Thanx you 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 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 45 of 60 29 June 2009 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Many of the estimates of vocabulary are expressly based not on words, but on something called "word families", which is fairly close to the notion of a "root word" plus its derivates. And this of course lowers the count considerably, compared to the situation where you count every word form.
As Toufik18 writes it is normally enough to memorize one 'base' member of each 'family' in a session, - when your knowledge of that word is rock solid the rest of the family will follow almost for free later. I use the word 'base' member and not root because the most logical word to choose isn't automatically the shortest. For instance you could decide to learn the word "logical" first and then add "logic" later. Edited by Iversen on 29 June 2009 at 7:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 60 29 June 2009 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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The figure of 20.000 actually came as an approximation of real test results from an on-line vocab test. The information about what kind of counting it was based on is not available I think, but the questions did not appear to test for variations of one root word.
As a study technique, I am sure you are right that it is an effective strategy to learn the base word and just glance at the derivatives. And learning some special derivatives later will of course be much easier. If we are talking about vocabulary size it is not quite correct though, to count just base words. To take your example, if you learn "Illustrate" it might be perfectly clear and intuitive what "Illustration" and "Illustrator" means, and "Illustrative" as well, but "Illustrious" is rather far from intuitive and you would need to learn its meaning as a separate entitity. Another difficulty in counting vocabulary are homographs with different meanings. The word "pen" can mean: 1. A small enclosure for animals 2. an implement for writing with ink 3. a female swan 4. penitentiary 5. peninsula - plus various additional meanings within some of these main entries, and that is just as a noun. "pen" can have a number of different meanings as a verb too. It doesn't seem fair, or accurate, if someone who knows just one of these meanings is considered to have the same vocabulary knowledge as someone who is familiar with all of them. Edited by Hencke on 29 June 2009 at 7:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 47 of 60 29 June 2009 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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. (where's that danged "delete" button now?) Edited by Hencke on 30 June 2009 at 10:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5744 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English | Message 48 of 60 29 June 2009 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
You got me busted there :) Nevertheless, I am not saying that the overall sum of your vocabulary should exclude the derivatives, but the learning process should .It is a lot easier to learn just the base word and cheak the other meanings as well. But should the total number of vocabulary include ALL the known words? Hell yeah ! Because they are words after all and you use them the same way as you use the base word, besides, is a lot more fun to say I know 60000 words instead of 20000 :) Thanx 1 person has voted this message useful |
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