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Fabio Capello- I only need 100 words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5061 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 1 of 13 30 March 2011 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read this on the BBC website this morning about a topic that seems to recur frequently here on the forum: 100 Words of English- How Far Can It Get You?
The article expands on something that England's new Italian football manager recently claimed: "Despite his sometimes colourful language, communicating with Wayne Rooney does not require a Shakespearean command of English." "That's just as well, as the England manager has admitted he's having problems learning some of the basics. "If I need to speak about the economy or other things, I can't speak," he told reporters "But when you speak about tactics, you don't use a lot of words. I don't have to speak about a lot of different things. Maximum 100 words." The article goes on to explain (for those of you who don't want to follow the link) that a person would need a much larger vocabulary to communicate at an intermediate level and native level. At the side of the article the 100 most common English words are listed- interesting. Edited by iguanamon on 30 March 2011 at 2:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5217 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 2 of 13 30 March 2011 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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This reminds me of an Alistair McGowan impersonation of Capello: Youtube Video
Skip to 5:04, does a little introduction and then the impression. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5252 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 13 30 March 2011 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Two of them from French (people, because), the rest Germanic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 4802 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 13 30 March 2011 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, as long as it works :-)
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| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 4991 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 5 of 13 30 March 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would suspect 100 words is a bit of an exaggeration on his part. Once you get through pronouns, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, adverbs, interrogatives, and the numbers less than five you're pretty much at 100 and you still need the basic football terminology, if nothing else, kick, ball, run, goal, etc. If you examine a list of high frequency English words, some words (just) outside of the top 100 are: me, go, before, much, back, through, three, any, and why. It's hard to imagine getting very far without those.
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| JimC Senior Member United Kingdom tinyurl.com/aberdeen Joined 5346 days ago 199 posts - 317 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 13 31 March 2011 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Capello claimed to use 100 words, not the top 100 words. Obviously the 100 words required for football would differ from the 100 words required for other subjects
Jim 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magictom123 Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 272 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 7 of 13 31 March 2011 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think he has really sat down and counted the words he knows and uses and his
total was 100. It seems obvious that it's just a smallish number when referring to foreign words you know that he plucked out of his head and used in the press conference. His English is pretty bad though when you consider the amount of time he has spent here in England. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ikipou Diglot Newbie Norway lingua.ikipou.com/ Joined 4789 days ago 24 posts - 23 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 8 of 13 31 March 2011 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is likely just exaggeration. I think we tend to underestimate how many words are needed for basic communication.
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