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Is counting your vocabulary size useless? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6689 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 81 of 210 20 August 2012 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hehe, most Swedes are able to read Strindberg without a dicionary, even thou there are some words that most of us don't understand or have a different interpretation of the word, then Strindberg had.
In swedish (and perhaps danish?) we can form new words very easily, and we can all grasp the meaning quite easily by using compound words. On the first paragraph of Röda Rummet (The Red Room) by Strindberg we have these words (with Schleussner's translation in paranthesis): Kärleksfilter (cover for love-making) navigationsskolans (of the Navigation School) höstfyrverkeriet (autumn's fireworks) Josefinadagen (Josephine's day) None of these words are used in modern Swedish, as far as I know, but we all grasp the meaning of them. And compound words are seperate entries in the dictionary :) SAOL, the dictionary published by The Swedish Academy contains almost 125.000 words in it's 13'th edition. SAOB, their complete dicionary of the Swedish language is only published up to the letter "T", and contains so far 53.396 non-compound words, and 369.325 compunds Swedish is perhaps easy to learn to _understand_ in that sense, because if you know most of the 53xxx words you can guess the meaning of the 369xxx words. Atleast in most cases you won't be to far off :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 82 of 210 20 August 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that I've finally figured out what @emb attempted to prove. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If you look at where all the words in the sample rank in a frequency list, you can assume that the speaker has to know all the preceding words. So let's say "bubble" is word 8000 in the frequency list, you would need a vocabulary of 7999 words before knowing "bubble." Am I correct?
I see the logic of this, but there is a fundamental fallacy that derives from how frequency lists are compiled. @emb's assumption is that all speakers share the same frequency distribution. This is not the case. Individual vocabulary sets will vary considerably outside a very tiny core of functional words and reflect an individual's experiences and situation. For example, two 14-year old students will have a vocabulary set that differs markedly from that of two retired plumbers. After pooling their vocabulary, it would be misleading to say that, based on the frequency of these words, you need X number of words to understand the students and Y number of words to understand the plumbers. What I think is valuable in @emb's comment, if I understand correctly, is that my assumption is that the 300 word minimum that I keep talking about is necessarily the same 300 most frequent words in the language. I may have been misleading, for which I apologize. While it is true that a 300 word vocabulary would necessary include many of the most frequent words in the language, these are not equally represented in all the individuals. So, all the 300 word vocabularies are not identical although they would have very much in common. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 83 of 210 20 August 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yesterday, I came across an English word I had never heard before:
JETTISON. In case you're interested it's the 16,717th most frequent word of American English (according to the Mark Davies 20K dictionary of American English). Many foreigners wouldn't understand this word, even though it's in the 20K most frequent word list (20K is the vocabulary of an American junior high student). :) Edited by Medulin on 20 August 2012 at 7:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 84 of 210 20 August 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
They use simple sentences that employ normative grammar. Is that what is meant by them being based on the "written language"? If so, doesn't one need to be able to say things like, "Do you speak English?", anyway? What else should one be teaching in the very beginning? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 85 of 210 20 August 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just a quote from the Grand Larousse de la langue française:
"C'est-à-dire que celui qui connaît ces 38 mots les plus fréquents du français est en mesure d'identifier la moitié des mots d'une conversation : avec 278 mots connus le pourcentage d'identification atteint 80 p 100. On ne doit évidemment pas en conclure que le sens du texte sera compris à 50 p. 100 ou 80 p. 100, car les mots les plus fréquents sont d'abord exclusivement, puis dans une large proportion, des mots grammaticaux, c'est-à-dire exprimant une détermination ou une relation, mais n'apportant qu'une information sémantique imprécise." "That is to say that a person who knows these 38 most frequent words of French is able to identify half of the words of a conversation : with 278 known words the percentage of identification reaches 80%. One must not conclude, of course, that 50% or 80% of the meaning of the text will be understood because the most common words are, in the beginning and afterward to a lesser extent, all grammar words, i.e. words that convey a determination or a relation and only very imprecise semantic information." The translation may not be great, but I think everybody gets the message. 278 words will allow you to identify 80% of most conversations. This also means that with those same 278 words you could produce 80% of most conversations. Here we are looking at the most frequent words. Any given conversation does not use necessarily all 278 words but certainly a large number of them. When you mix all that together, one sees that you can do quite a bit with 300 words, more with 500 and a lot with 1000. In the spoken language of course. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 86 of 210 20 August 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Where in the western world can one find a person younger than 80 who does n o t know DJ or online? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiolmattias Triglot Groupie Sweden geocities.com/fiolmaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6689 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Arabic (Written) | Message 87 of 210 20 August 2012 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nope. You will understand 80% of the words, not 80% of the sentences. And if you only can produce 80% of a sentence, you can't produce a single one. Here is one example, "I need to XXXXXX home." We all understand 80% of the words in that one, but what does it mean? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 88 of 210 20 August 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wonder if some people understand only 80% of what I write. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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