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What types of words are most efficient? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 1 of 21 24 January 2013 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Inspired by the "How many words do we actually need?" thread, I found myself wondering about the importance of not only vocabulary size, but also of vocabulary type.
Basically, my question is this: What class of words (eg: verbs, nouns, adj/adv) are most important to establish some sort of simplistic basic "fluency" (for lack of a better term). There are people here (I am certainly one) who feel that a smaller (500, 1000, 2000 words) vocabulary is sufficient for normal everyday simple communication and conversation. What mix of vocabulary do you think would produce the most optimal results? I personally get tripped up on verbs and nouns more often when reading as they appear to me to contain the most relevant information. Without the nouns, you don't know what is involved. Without verbs, you don't know what is happening to those nouns. Adjectives and adverbs are also fairly important, as there is a big difference between a pleasant, thoughtful girl and an evil, selfish girl. Additionally, I imagine that with enough adjectives and adverbs, you could properly describe any nouns you may not know well enough. What do you think? Could you make more efficient and expressive conversation with only a few verbs and adjectives/adverbs but many nouns? Fewer nouns but more verbs? Lot's of adjectives and adverbs to describe any nouns you may not know? Some other combination? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5386 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 21 24 January 2013 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Verbs and everything around them (pronouns, particles, endings, prefixes, auxiliaries, etc.) are at the core of any sentence and are probably the most important. Some languages require nothing more than a verb, or depending on how you look at it, absolutely require a verb, so you have to know how it works.
Adverbs are also important because there are few of them and they come up very often (yesterday, often, really, fast, etc.). But of course, all types of words are ultimately necessary :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 21 24 January 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tend to agree about verbs. One of the first things I did when I really dug into German and Spanish was to get the book "501 German Verbs" and "501 Spanish Verbs". I find it easier in conversation to mime (with hand gestures) or describe a noun I don't know than to try and do the same with a verb.
I tend to really focus on adverbs and adjectives as well. Once I have a solid foundation of verbs and adj/adv, I start learning sentence structures with unknown nouns to learn in context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chris Ford Groupie United States Joined 4748 days ago 65 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 4 of 21 24 January 2013 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Those magical words which can be used for nearly anything based on context. For example, in Portuguese ficar is an absolute joy: http://www.wordreference.com/pten/ficar
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| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5051 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 21 24 January 2013 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Arekkusu: "Verbs and everything around them (pronouns, particles, endings, prefixes, auxiliaries, etc.) are at the core of any sentence".
In fact "to verb" in Russian means to speak (it's slightly archaic/uncommon though). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rubencho Newbie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4345 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English | Message 6 of 21 24 January 2013 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion, the most important words are the conjunctions, adverbs and
pronous/articles, because they are like glue. Once you can maneuver these words, verbs and nouns are just corks that fill holes here and there. But overall, conjuctions. Without them, nobody would be able to chain ideas. I've been studying German for a little more and a month. I have an Anki deck with over 1600 flashcards, since I've been focused on vocabulary. Now that I feel I can handle most conjunctions, adverbs, reflexive particules and things like that, reading isn't as hellish as it was at the beginning. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 7 of 21 25 January 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably the most common verbs, personal pronouns, common nouns and common adverbs. Efficiency does seem related to frequency of use. There is little point in learning rare or recondite words, esp. if you do not yet know the more common ones. Edited by William Camden on 25 January 2013 at 3:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 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 8 of 21 25 January 2013 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
agreed about verbs. though in the beginning the words I know best are usually the adverbs, as they're needed a lot in football commentary and they're generally unchangeable. Edited by Serpent on 25 January 2013 at 8:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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