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How many words do you learn per day? | ||
Tags: Word Frequency | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6146 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 201 of 213 11 December 2010 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree that some of these things might be perceived as silly to someone who doesn't agree with their main principles. TAC is about setting goals and studying as hard as you can to achieve them, literally following your dreams. What's so terrible about that? Maybe people can learn 100 words per day. What's your issue with that? I doubt they would be able to remember them all perfectly a day later, but that's what review is for. I'm sure you're going to blow up on me for saying this, but between all of my Anki vocabulary lists I am introduced to approximately 285 new words per day, and usually review some 1200 others. Nowhere, however, am I saying that learn them perfectly. From continued exposure to them in daily reviews and from native materials, eventually the words stick. For me, this works quite well. Maybe this method is completely useless. If so, great. Find one that works for you, but don't condemn everyone who uses something besides what you do as wrong. I don't deny that 10 languages in a year is a lot. I don't deny that the person may not progress as quickly as if they concentrated on just one or two, or even three languages. But I also don't deny that if this is an activity that the person enjoys, what do you care? What business do you have in judging the validity of their hobby? It's a different matter entirely if they are complaining about why they're not making as much progress as they'd like--then you can tell them to either stop expecting so much or narrow down what they're studying. No one is making you stay. If you think everything here is so silly, pretentious, and annoying, then just leave.
Saying you speak a language is a very general term in English to indicate that a person has a knowledge of a language. If you want to be more specific, you can say "I speak, read, write, and understand fluent French, can read literary works with great ease in the original Latin, and can read and speak some basic Russian," but this is often far too detailed than what the person you're speaking to cares to hear. Saying "I speak French, Latin, and some Russian" is far more efficient. In German you could say "ich kann sehr gut Englisch" (lit: I "can" very good English), omitting a verb altogether, but this is not the case in English. Deal with it.
Gasp! What a catastrophe! I don't get this. Who is to say that he can't do it? Everyone has to start somewhere. This is not comical, this is a personal decision someone has made to embark on an exciting journey of discovery through three fascinating languages. Honestly... Edited by ellasevia on 12 December 2010 at 9:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5990 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 202 of 213 11 December 2010 at 7:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If we can get back on topic for a moment, Ellasevia has a great point there. By learning many new words in a day, and then reviewing them, it's quite easy to achieve 80% or 90% success. 80% of that 285 number is 228, which is still quite a healthy amount.
I usually find that the big time sink for me is that small percentage of "hard" words and phrases. I end up forgetting them every day and having to review them over and over. I save a lot of time by chopping them out and just deciding to learn them later. They usually make more sense when I encounter them in a different context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5119 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 203 of 213 11 December 2010 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
As much as I don't really want to get involved in this... I understand that many people in English speaking countries (especially the United States and to a certain extent Canada) don't speak any other languages. But I don't think it's fair that that leads to this kind of generalisation about all native English speakers. Because I speak English, does that mean it's less likely that I'll have success learning other languages? I don't think so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6146 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 204 of 213 11 December 2010 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Precisely. I should have made clearer though, that those 285 words are divided between my 15 Anki lists (one per language). So I'm not actually learning 285 each day for German, for example, but only 20. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6383 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 205 of 213 11 December 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Let's remove the acrimony please. Any more bickering messages will be deleted.
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| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5444 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 206 of 213 11 December 2010 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would like to speak up for those of us with long words lists that we haven't learned. I now have a Bengali word
list of 4,300, of which I probably know 30%. This is in a database on a mac. (This also represents years of work struggling with Bengali fonts for the mac, writing jukktakors etc, etc.) I would love to try ANKI but find many of these word learning systems will not accept the Bengali fonts. I tried learning 45 words per day, but this kind of "feeding " is hard for me, so I found myself dropping it. I "collect" words in when I read texts(with a teacher) and try to find a sample sentence for all the words I can. Since I want to sort my lists both in English and Bengali order, I have developed a number code for Bengali words--simple, just A-is-01, B-is-02, etc--but, of course, in Bengali alphabet order. (Madness ensues if you let your computer sort Bengali words in English alphabet order). It is somewhat deflating to have collected all of them and not know them all--but--what I DO have here is a pretty good little basic dictionary. Especially for those oh-damn-what-IS-that-word moments. I can look up words. It is actually better than 90% of the Bengali to English on-line dictionaries I have found (this is not saying much). I can also create a number field to sort for random ordering. I can make "cards", can't "turn them over" but I just make the English in teeny-weeny type, so it takes real effort to read. I know that people will be firmly in either the pro-computer or no-computer camp, but for me, putting your words on computer makes your list 80% more useful. On the other hand, not to agree with some of the ruder comments, but I have been exchanging chat with numbers of Bengalis through livemocha. I don't know if this "polyglot" thing is seeping out to the unwashed language masses, or what, but I have learned to steer clear of french chats with people who list three or more languages as "beginner". That may mean "I was THINKING about beginning". Or worse, "my french sounds like my spanish/Italian/german even after a fair bit of study." And I'm not getting mad at them just for the sake of getting mad--trying to help them get it right is frustrating for all concerned. I do notice that french is very hard for South-East Asians--who normally have 3-4 different languages. Perhaps because hindi et al is so WSIWYG. Spelling is very logical, if not always written in stone. Sometimes I feel as if I am constantly telling them "Why on earth do you think you would pronounce those consonants, just because they are WRITTEN there ?? Does anyone have any suggestions about wordlist programs that would be Hindi/Bengali friendly? But other than occasional trolling, I enjoy the debates on this site. It is by no means as cranky as some. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6146 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 207 of 213 11 December 2010 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I find it hard to believe that Anki wouldn't support Bengali/Hindi text. As a test, I just went to a random Wikipedia page in Bengali and copied a couple words into one of my decks, and then did the same for Hindi. It seems to work fine.
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| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5444 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 208 of 213 13 December 2010 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Alas, it doesn't work! Thank you for the effort. I was all excited at the thought--and probably could copy Bengali words from the internet--but if I copy them from my list this is what I get: bèMglA. Not this বাংলা. I CAN type Bengali into anki. Just not with the older, superior font layout that I use, which has most of the combined letters. If I wanted to retype the entire list into anki, though, I could do it. But at the end of the day, anki is just a better database than my simpler database. All font layouts are not created equal, and I really need to find someone Bengali who has a mac. Actually, I might just try using anki with Shubhamay Ray's dictionary. A Bilingual Dictionary of Words & Phrases (English-Bengali), one of the best resources. Thanks for the suggestion-- much appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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