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How many words for conversation? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Conversation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4707 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 81 of 100 21 August 2011 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
You would have had the same experience if you tried to bring up Kant with an American doctor. And even a history professor would stare at you blankly if you recited material you had memorized at him. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| AriD2385 Groupie United States Joined 4648 days ago 44 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 82 of 100 21 August 2011 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, a quite brilliant American med school friend of mine would say that Kant made his brain hurt. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5029 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 83 of 100 25 August 2011 at 4:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here is a thread which has a link for a vocabulary counter. Native speaking adults usually know around 20-30k words. My wife, who has been speaking English for ten years, scored 10k. It would be interesting to have non-native Enlish speakers take the test, post their scores, and describe their English level. Perhaps that will give us a better idea of how many words for conversation.
Last night, I counted how many words I have already learned from my textbooks, then factored in how many words I learned otherwise, and came to a rough estimate of about 2,000 words. I don't think this is enough for me to feel comfortable in a conversation. Based off of how many words I know and how many words my wife knows, I really feel that 3-5k words would make someone reasonably comfortable in a conversation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4663 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 100 25 August 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can't help but wonder what the world would be like if everybody quoted Kant. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Barrabbas Newbie Joined 5859 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Studies: German | Message 85 of 100 11 September 2011 at 11:56am | IP Logged | |||||
You totally misunderstood my example. I was exploring a "definition of fluency" by showing that it IS in fact possible to be fluent, or even expert, in one area of a language and not in another. I think what makes a person "fluent" in any given language is cultural understanding. For example, if I wanted to I could study to learn how to order food, travel, work, pay bills and live in Japan. I could get by, but what does this mean with respect to my overall 'understanding' of the culture? Absolutely nothing since I would be "fluent" here and there, but not everywhere. In the same cultural sense I was illustrating that the good doctor is fluent in otolaryngology, but not in philosophy or (Western) history, (in English). So is he "fluent"? The answer is that it depends on the subject. He was smart enough to become a doctor, yet his overall cultural understanding is lopsided. Perhaps my examples were too extreme. Instead of Kant's categorical imperative what about more generalized knowledge such as for example The American Civil Rights Movement or The Civil War or the impact of the JFK assassination? I'm sure he wouldn't fair too well in a discussion on these either. Does "fluency" not imply some familiarity with culture? Edited by Barrabbas on 11 September 2011 at 12:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5883 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 86 of 100 11 September 2011 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread has gone from the importance of using most frequently-used words in a foreign language to being the equivalent of a scholar in a foreign language. That's thorough! ;)
What made me click was the title, How Many Words for Conversation, so I'll quickly say one thing and then it can go back to the debate on fluency. I have experience working with people whose native language is not English and yet they work in an (almost) all-English environment. It's always interesting to me how they can go to work for 10 hours and get their job done, knowing -just the basic fundamentals-. This includes, of course, how to affirm (yes) and negate something (not). How to direct attention at something (this), and how to say that there's something right (good) or wrong (problem). A conversation is most likely based on common words used in 2-3 languages (again, like "problem" or "okay") The more appropriate topic might be how far we define conversation, rather than how far we define fluency. There's already enough threads about fluency, but that's just my opinion. EDIT: there's also a usually a common business vernacular that gets used, which includes some technical language or company-based terms, but whether this is a criteria for conversation?... Actually, I think what I deal with mostly is "communication" and not conversation! Edited by Sunja on 11 September 2011 at 2:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| learnvietnamese Diglot Groupie Singapore yourvietnamese.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4747 days ago 98 posts - 132 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 87 of 100 11 September 2011 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is the link that jasoninchina mentioned: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Cervatiuc-VocabularyAcquisition.h tml
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6501 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 88 of 100 11 September 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
No - at least not on the lower levels. Fluency is essentially the ability to speak like water running out of a faucet. However even at the bottom level you would normally also demand that the speech is understandable, which entails that it to some extent is correct and that the pronuncation isn't way off. But these things properly belong to the realm of proficiency. Finally you have to speak about something, so you need at least a modest vocabulary - but if you only speak about the weather and sports and your job you may not need to know the specific vocabulary of philosophy or science or literature or politics. When you advance to the level of advanced fluency it is expected not only that you can speak, but also that you make few errors, that your accent is under control and that you can speak about a wide array of subjects. But even native speakers can't speak about everything (although some are more versatile than others), and you will find many native speakers who haven't ever heard about Kant. You will also find native speakers who don't care about fashion or cooking or birds and who therefore have a deficient vocabulary in those areas. Learners at any level will by definition have more holes and bigger holes in their vocabulary than the average native speaker, but the principle must be that you can't demand more of a learner than you would of a randomly selected native speaker. Edited by Iversen on 11 September 2011 at 8:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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