|
 |
UK Teens: Active vocabularly of 800 words | ||
Tags: Teenagers | Vocabulary learning | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5735 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 57 of 94 21 March 2010 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Interesting! I"ve heard Ja and Jawohl, but the only people who I've ever heard saying "genau" were former exchange students to Germany. They said it whenever they could though :D It is handy! :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 58 of 94 21 March 2010 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I've mainly heard Jawohl... mockingly, at best. As for genau, the person I know who uses it in English most frequently does have a partner who speaks German natively. That said, it is a very praktisch word; I find myself using it in English when I think it'll be understood. Edit: the closest English word I can think of to 'genau' is " 'xactly", a shortened, casual version of "exactly". Edited by Volte on 21 March 2010 at 1:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5986 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 59 of 94 21 March 2010 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I've never heard an English speaker use "genau", nor would anyone here understand it. Actually, I never even heard the word genau in 4 years of high-school German classes. I first learned it when I went to Germany after high-school, and wondered "what is this genau that everyone says all the time?"
Some good ones that I hear sometimes, though, are "Schadenfreude" and "Fahrvergnügen" (although the pronunciation of the latter is always horribly butchered). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 60 of 94 21 March 2010 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I wouldn't try using it in North America.
Schadenfreude is a good one, and fairly common in English. Fahrvergnügen is unfamiliar to me, even though I'm studying German. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5735 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 61 of 94 21 March 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's from some BMW ads. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5470 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 62 of 94 21 March 2010 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Actually those three aren't at all the same kind of thing. The first one is a actual mistake, the second one an omission due to the reduction of "are", and the third is accepted in the UK for example. Now "I got twenty dollars", without the "'ve", is another matter. Edit: I see wildweasel has already answered this, although he/she took the problem from a foreign language perspective. I don't really think teen speech is an independant language (I know, there are no independant languages...) As far as having a passive vocabulary of 40,000 words I'm not surprised though although I think 4,000 active words is more that more adults can boast to have Edited by joanthemaid on 21 March 2010 at 5:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 63 of 94 21 March 2010 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I am very dubious about the 40K. I don't believe I have a 40K passive vocabulary in English, and I am quite literate. I don't accept that people with an active vocabulary of only 800 (which I believe is just a little bit larger than a bonobo chimpanzee's) can make it to a passive vocabulary of 40,000.
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 64 of 94 22 March 2010 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I really think most popular articles about vocabulary size and the language of teenagers, including this one, are totally useless. They are usually little more than pretexts to bash teenagers or poor people for their so-called limited vocabulary.
This is nothing new. Every generation laments the decline of the language of the following generation. Teenagers are a particular focus and are universally accused of debasing or dumbing down the language with their limited vocabulary, lexical inventions and overuse of certain words. All of these studies suffer from the same methodological problem: how do you define a word other than just a unit between two blank spaces? We all know that the most common lexical (as opposed to grammatical) words in a language have the most different meanings. If you look up common English verbs like in "do, see, want, have" in a dictionary, you will see the enormous breadth of their different usages. I don't have the exact figures, but we all know that a very small number of words make up the bulk of the usage of any language. What's wrong with an active speaking vocabulary of 800 words well used? Nothing, in my opinion. In fact, I prefer that to 10,000 words full of pretentious display of word science. I could never finish the book "The Anatomy of Swearing" by Ashley Montagu because of an extremely erudite vocabulary that made reading very tiresome. On Saturday, March 20, I saw President Obama make a speech to the Democratic caucus on the eve the historic vote on health care reform. I don't care what one thinks of Obama's politics, but you have to admit that he is a master orator. I would be surprised if this 25 minute speech contained more than 750 different words, maybe even 500. But what a magnificent display of public speaking. Certain words were used over and over again to wonderful effect. Now, I'm not equating all teenagers with President Obama. I'm a great admirer of proper use of language. But rather than counting words, I'm think it's more important, albeit more difficult, to see how the words are actually used. Of course, writing a historical novel, a scientific article or even most newspaper articles requires more than a 800 word vocabulary, but we're talking about different things here. Edited by s_allard on 23 March 2010 at 3:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
