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Another language exercise idea. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6343 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 17 of 29 22 October 2007 at 10:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can memorize the cards of a shuffled deck in less than 5 minutes, it only takes mnemonics and practice.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6676 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 18 of 29 22 October 2007 at 11:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Very good. Here the ranking: http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/world_rankings.asp For example:
It seems incredible. Edited by slucido on 22 October 2007 at 11:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 19 of 29 22 October 2007 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have two, no three commentaries to this thread.
The first is that I'm impressed by the accomplishments of Asiafeverr, Dr. Yip and others, but I have no intention of trying to follow in their footsteps The second is that anything that can make you more attentive to the things you read and hear is helping you to learn from it, and this includes the strange practice of collecting -llow -words. The third comment is a dire warning against the mere thought that you just need to learn 1000 words (or another number) and then the rest are so rare that you can ignore them. True, item 17.435 on any frequency list is bound to be exceedingly rare, and even the sum of all words above no. 1000 will probably amount to just a fraction af any text. But these rare words carry a disproportionally large part of the meaning of most texts, so you can just as well start learning them. Luckily the task becomes easier and easier (within a given language or language family) because you can draw on more and more associations. A standard dictionary may contain 25-30.000 words. You may never learn them all, but the thought of learning most of them is not totally impossible - it is certainly not as preposterous as learning 7.000 dictionary pages by heart as Mr. Yip did. And no, you don't have to learn them in sequence from a dictionary. Edited by Iversen on 22 October 2007 at 12:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6619 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 20 of 29 22 October 2007 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Words above the 1000 most frequent words constitute a sizable portion of the words in a text. Approximate word coverage in English: Words Coverage 1 000 72% 2 000 80% 3 000 85% 4 000 87% 5 000 89% 6 000 90% With 1000 known words, almost three out of ten words are still unknown. Knowing 2000 words leaves two out of ten unknown. Knowing the 6000 most frequent words still leaves one out of ten unknown. Edited by Linguamor on 22 October 2007 at 2:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 21 of 29 22 October 2007 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Even 28% is just a fraction, though a fraction that is far to large for a smooth reading experience.
Even with 6000 words and 10% you are only just approaching the level where you can read an ordinary newspaper and expect to understand it without a dictionary. So basically I suppose we can agree that people should never set their targets for vocabulary acquisition too low - at least that was my message. I chose the number 1000 because at that level I would be certain not to hear from anybody who claimed that x000 words was enough. With 6000 that could have happened, with 2500 it HAS happened. By the way, I added the last sentence to avoid another prolonged discussion on how to accumulate all those words. At least that functioned.. EDIT: An old thread about this subject, referring to "a major New York newspaper" that claimed that they "used only 600 words on average in their newspaper daily" - maybe the result of a missing zero? Edited by Iversen on 22 October 2007 at 4:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 22 of 29 22 October 2007 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Linguamor mentioned before that 95% coverage is optimal for learning new words from context.
What is the number of words that provides 95% coverage in English? Is this data similar for other West European languages? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6619 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 23 of 29 22 October 2007 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have heard ridiculous claims that native speakers only use 600, 1000, or 1500 words when speaking. Those who make such claims simply do not know what they are talking about. As I said in the earlier thread - "The number of words needed to function in a language is often grossly underestimated. Numbers like 600 or 1000 words need not be taken seriously. Something like 2000-2500 words seems to be a threshold, but an active vocabulary nearer 10,000 words is probably necessary in order to communicate with ease in a language. Number of words is not the only factor in learning vocabulary. Knowing how to "put words together" is at least as important as knowing the meaning of a word. By this I don't mean grammar, but how words "pattern together" to express meaning. This is sometimes referred to as "usage" and is the most difficult part of learning a language well." Edited by Linguamor on 22 October 2007 at 4:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6619 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 24 of 29 22 October 2007 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
15000 words cover 95% of the COBUILD corpus. This corpus seeks to be representative of the whole range of text types in English. The number of words needed for 95% coverage is lower for specific types of text. Vocabulary size and coverage in teen novels: Words coverage 2000 90% 2600 96% 5000 98.5% www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/papers/cup.html Word frequency in Swedish: Words coverage (written/spoken) 1000 65.7%/84.5% 10000 87%/97% www.ling.gu.se/~jens/publications/docs076-100/084.pdf Edited by Linguamor on 22 October 2007 at 6:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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