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How long for you to learn 2000 words? | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| eugio Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4887 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes | Message 1 of 27 26 June 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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If you're studying a new language, how long would it take you to learn 2000 words, and how would you do it?
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 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 2 of 27 26 June 2011 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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It is not that simple. You say "a new language". Well, is it something that ressembles one you already know? Is it a language that has many loanwords from known languages? Is it a language with a known and reasonably clear writing system? Can you pronounce the words more or less directly from the written form? ... and only when we have settled those questions we can start the discussion about learning methods, possible overload and availability of resources.
To take the optimal situation first: a language at least at the intermediate stage, preferably more, where the spelling is a good guide to the pronunciation, and where I choose both 'easy' and 'difficult' words (ease defined on the basis of my ability to form associations and imagery). In my wordlists I have columns of 30 words (because I have a small handwriting) so my systematic vocabulary acquisition goes in blocks of 30. I also fold my A4 pages so on one half page I can have around 60 new words. I have found out that my feeling of 'flow' in retention sets in after maybe a quarter of an hour so one half page is the least I bother to do. On the other hand I rarely do more than 4 halfpages in one language, i.e. 240 words, because I then get tired. I made some experiments some years ago to test my retention rate, and a day or so later I had passive retention of something of 80-90% of the words. Of course this doesn't mean that they stay in my memory, but it is a good start. NB: Active vocabulary is of course something entirely different. So this means that I in principle could learn 2000 words in a fortnight or so? NO!! I would get totally fed up, I would start confusing the stream of new words, I have other things to do ... and and on top of that you ask about a new language. "New languages" means that my framework of references to known words and situations where I have used the language and so on to some degree breaks down - it depends on the language to which degree. With a close relative to something I know exceeding well there will be a lot of words I get for free (I just just have to tick them off on some mental list, with special notes for false friends). Besides I can immediately go out and read texts in a such a language (at least with the help of a dictionary or translation), which is important for the ability to remember things. With an unrelated language I have to learn most words from scratch, and then it depends very much on my resources and my current workload how long time those 2000 words will take. But even under optimal conditions (which would be an immersion stay, good dictionaries, access to bilingual texts, no other projects and a fixed deadline) it would take several months to get there, - probably longer. And with my current study habits/conditions we are speaking about years, not months. I haven't counted words in Bahasa Indonesia yet, but for me it would be the ideal test because it is unrelated to my other languages (even loanwords look funny!), it has a exemplary clear spelling, I own one sufficiently good dictionary (built on word roots) and I have spent a fair amount of time on it. I'll do that word count soon, because it would actually be interesting also for myself to see how far I have come. Edited by Iversen on 26 June 2011 at 11:22am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6258 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 3 of 27 26 June 2011 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Anyway, what does "learn" mean in this context? Know the word in all its forms (probably a lot of forms, especially if it is a verb). Vaguely recognise the word on the printed page? Understand it when you hear it spoken?
I could probably learn to vaguely recognise 2,000 words of any Germanic, Romance or Slavic language within a couple of weeks, even if I had never studied the language before. Because I know cognates from related languages I have studied. But could I necessarily use the words actively? No. To do that properly might take at least six months of study, perhaps longer. Totally new languages, unrelated to anything previously studied and perhaps using a difficult script, would take longer. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6929 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 4 of 27 30 June 2011 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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As others have pointed out, it is may not be straightforward to define how many words you actually know. To lessen the impact of this ambiguity, I would like to suggest the following way of counting words.
Let's say you go through a language course, and you learn it well. Just count the number of words it covers. For example, a typical 'with Ease' Assimil course (for a European language) covers a little over 2,000 words. So, you can assume that when you have gone through such a course, you will know about 2,000 words. Such a course takes about 6 months, so that's one estimate for how long it takes to learn the first 2,000 words. You can, of course, do the word count for any other course or textbook you may be using. Many foundational courses aim for a more modest number, closer to a 1,000 than 2,000 words - Assimil is known to be rather vocabulary-rich for a first course. You then expand your vocabulary further by reading, listening, writing and speaking. A typical first-year US college foreign languagae course aims to impart about 1,000 words of active vocabulary to the student, although passive vocabulary acquired may be somewhat larger. Still, the 2,000 count will likely only be reached at some point in the second year of study. So, that's a reasonable time benchmark if you are learning a foreing language by taking a college course. Based on the above, I would guess that a reasonably, but not exceptionally motivated self-learner will spend between 6 months and 1 year to learn his or her first 2,000 words in a language reasonably well. Edited by frenkeld on 30 June 2011 at 6:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6689 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 5 of 27 30 June 2011 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
Can you? I would feel more on safe ground if I actually had done a wordcount based on a reasonably large sample. The techniques for assessing your vocabulary have been discussed elsewhere, so I won't go too much into details. Personally I take at last 10 random pages in a middle size dictionary and divide the words into those I know I know (i.e. "just being able to guess" is not enough) and those I don't know (whether I can guess them or not). Of course there are border line cases, but if I know the total number of headwords in the dictionary I can estimate my total number of words. NB: "words" in this context include short two or three-word combinations, provided they are listed as headwords in the dictionary. The main weakness of this method is that I can cheat myself by reading the translations and convincing myself that I know more words thn I actually do. A list without translations would eliminate that risk. I know that people who use LingQ speak about the number of words they know as if it is something they directly can get by pressing a button somewhere - however the numbers I have seen seem extraordinarily high, so there may be a definition problem. In other systems you may know that you have demonstrated knowledge of X words (which however leaves out words which never went into that system). But again: where is the control? I don't remember all words now which I have learnt at some time or another. The only relevant value is the number of words I know TODAY. And the only way to assess this value is to take a random sample of all words in the language and test yourself on that sample. Edited by Iversen on 30 June 2011 at 10:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5367 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 27 30 June 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can study a language, learn 1000 words and make sensible conversation, but you could also just learn 2000 words and not be able to make the most basic sentences. There is a lot more to a language than only learning words.
In a difficult language like Japanese, for me to learn 2000 words and be able to use them in real life would probably take about 2 years, or maybe a tad bit less. I estimate an average of 3 to 4 words a day. For a much easier language like Spanish, you could probably cut the time down to a third or a quarter. Of course, we are talking about acquiring an active knowledge of the 2000 most common words of a language, because you could probably already recognize way over 2000 words without any study in most European languages. Edited by Arekkusu on 30 June 2011 at 5:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6091 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 7 of 27 30 June 2011 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the 10 months I've been actively studying Polish I have just 1043 words added
to Anki. But I actively know at least a hundred more, and passively know yet a few more. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and for some words that are a little ambiguous I check several dictionaries and 'test' the word using google. Sometimes I can spend an hour teasing out the distinctions between similar words. For example: szczególnie = especially [PARTICULARLY] zwłaszcza = especially [CHEIFLY, MOST OF ALL] Consequently I can get a little bogged down at times. Am I too afraid of learning a word poorly (impricisely)? Yes, maybe. Which is why I know that continued exposure to the words in context is the where meaning is revealed more fully. >Slow steady precise vocabularly aquisition. >Thorough long-term comprehension of meaning that minimises confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Liface Triglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Lif Joined 5844 days ago 150 posts - 237 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Dutch, French | Message 8 of 27 01 July 2011 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
I do the same. Google is genius for figuring out differences between words. So is Wikipedia in the target language. I think it's really important to do this as well. I've learned false definitions before when I misinterpreted something from WordReference and then ended up using them in situations where the native speakers had no idea what I was talking about. eugio, I grabbed some numbers from my Anki decks to give you a better idea: Spanish - 2927 words (3.5 years of study) Dutch - 1518 words (just under two years of study) French - 979 words (2.5 months of study) As you can see, the amount of new words you learn decreases somewhat exponentially with time. Now, keep in mind that this does not include cognates, as was mentioned above. I probably know 2000 cognates in Dutch from speaking German as well, but I almost never add these in Anki because I feel that I know them already. Edited by Liface on 01 July 2011 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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