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How fast can you learn 2500 words?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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clumsy
Octoglot
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Poland
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Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

 
 Message 41 of 66
08 September 2012 at 9:35pm | IP Logged 
Around 36 days of hard study (~6 hours per day).


Edited by clumsy on 08 September 2012 at 9:36pm

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zerrubabbel
Senior Member
United States
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 Message 42 of 66
10 September 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged 
Id rather not rush it :P besides, I would spend more time deciding what to learn then actually learning it
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leonidus
Triglot
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Russian Federation
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 Message 43 of 66
10 September 2012 at 8:19pm | IP Logged 
It depends on whether these are your "first" most basic 2500 words or the next 2500 words grouping, and the next, and the next, you get the point. The time required to learn each next group of more obscure words gets longer and longer, because you simply don't see them often enough in books and don't hear very much in speech.

Let's say there is a multiplier of 1.5, and it would take 1 year to learn your first basic 2500 words, then to get your entire vocabulary to 10 000 words it would take:

1 + 1.5x1 + 1.5x1.5 + 2.25x1.5 = 8.1 years

this may sound like a stretch, but ok, this may be a really difficult language with no cognates at all, like Mandarin. For languages with cognates you get a discount, but the point remains, each next thousand of words takes longer than the previous thousand.
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fiolmattias
Triglot
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Sweden
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 Message 44 of 66
10 September 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged 
leonidus wrote:
It depends on whether these are your "first" most basic 2500 words or
the next 2500 words grouping, and the next, and the next, you get the point. The time
required to learn each next group of more obscure words gets longer and longer, because
you simply don't see them often enough in books and don't hear very much in speech.


I don't agree. Let's say it takes a year to learn the first 2500 words. When you start
you have never heard any of them. When you start the second year there will be thousands
of words that you have heard and read but not learned yet.
I know that I have a larger vocabulary in Swedish than most Swedes, but it is not harder
for me to learn a new word than a person with a smaller vocabulary, since I read more
among other things.
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leonidus
Triglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*, English, French
Studies: German, Mandarin

 
 Message 45 of 66
10 September 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged 
fiolmattias wrote:

I don't agree. Let's say it takes a year to learn the first 2500 words. When you start
you have never heard any of them. When you start the second year there will be thousands
of words that you have heard and read but not learned yet.
I know that I have a larger vocabulary in Swedish than most Swedes, but it is not harder
for me to learn a new word than a person with a smaller vocabulary, since I read more
among other things.


With the first 2500 or whatever number it is (1-3 000) words, although you have never heard any of them, you will be hearing them and reading them all the time, because their occurrence is very high, both in everyday life and in textbooks/audio lessons, that's why you acquire them quickest of all.

The next 2500 words, their occurrence is lower. I don't agree that at this stage you will come across many words that you had previously seen or heard, if you had only read adapted texts/textbooks and listened to basic everyday life dialogues for training. But what makes these words more difficult relative to the first group is that you have to read/listen to much more (authentic) material to get enough of occurrences of them in context. Thus more work gets you the same results. And more work = longer time spent.

I understand your point when you say you just need to read a lot and get enough of exposure to those more rare words, but that only validates my claim about longer time required. The first basic words are almost effortless as you hear/see them all the time.
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Rob Tickner
Senior Member
New Zealand
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Speaks: English*
Studies: GermanB1, French, Swedish

 
 Message 46 of 66
11 September 2012 at 12:28am | IP Logged 
For a closely related language, I did it in 12.5 days for the initial learning period,
plus time for the subsequent scheduled reviews for maintenance (which any decent SRS will
calculate for you). No reason why anybody else on this forum could not replicate this (or
even improve on this time).

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=33590&PN=1&TPN=1

I imagine unrelated languages would push this time out significantly.

Edited by Rob Tickner on 11 September 2012 at 12:31am

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s_allard
Triglot
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Canada
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 Message 47 of 66
11 September 2012 at 9:44am | IP Logged 
I'm really impressed that people are able to calculate so precisely the number of words they are able to learn in a given time period. I don't doubt the veracity of the facts, but I really wonder what one can do with those words. For example, what exactly does having learned 2500 words in 12.5 days mean?
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Rob Tickner
Senior Member
New Zealand
Joined 4488 days ago

126 posts - 158 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: GermanB1, French, Swedish

 
 Message 48 of 66
11 September 2012 at 10:15am | IP Logged 
For me, it means having seen the word and it's accompanying meaning, letting my brain
join a link between that arrangement of letters and the object it relates to, then a
short time later, seeing that arrangement of letters, and recalling the object it
relates to. For example, seeing the word "cheval", letting my brain make the link
between "cheval" and an actual horse (prompted by the English word "horse", which I
learnt a long time ago), and then being periodically prompted with "cheval" at
scheduled intervals, and reproducing the horse in my mind.

I was able to form 2500 of these mappings in my brain between objects, verbs,
grammatical concepts, etc. and the Swedish words that represent these entities, over
the space of 12.5 days.

For me, this builds a passive repository of words in my mind, which I can then call on
later for activation. It doesn't mean that these 2500 words are immediately in my
active vocabulary. They are in there, though.


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