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How many words for conversation? | ||
Tags: Number of words | Conversation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 57 of 100 10 August 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the mystery has been solved. If I remember correctly Splog was talking about "connectors" that serve to link conversational units. "By the way". "so", and "then" are classic connectors in English. I wouldn't exactly call them all chunks. I suggest that chunk be reserved for its more conventional use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5017 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 58 of 100 10 August 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
por otro lado (on the other hand) I suspect we all use a lot of chunks/fillers or connectors..... to join up thoughts but there are 'set phrases' that you should know because natives use them often which don't directly translate at all well. Tant pis (Fr Never mind/Ah well) being one that I understand and use, probably incorrectly, but could never decipher the literal translation. Someone here is probably going to pick that up and tell me when,what and where those seven letters come from and when it is correct to use them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4656 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 59 of 100 10 August 2011 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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for conversation you need just a few hundreeds, a thing i noted when i was in Australia studying English was that we learn to describe and improvise when we enter in contact with the language, for example if you dont know the English word for boar, you can describe it as a wild pig, you can describe a truck as a huge car that transport things.
Edited by Carlucio on 10 August 2011 at 6:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 60 of 100 10 August 2011 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the Tant pis is fine. I just wanted to add that the most common connector in Spanish is Bueno pues. Many connectors are somewhat meaningless in the sense that their primary function is to facilitate the flow of the conversation. Other examples in French would be "bien", "écoutez", "disons". Again, I would emphasize that all these connector words can have other functions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| oldearth Groupie United States Joined 4693 days ago 72 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 61 of 100 11 August 2011 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I defer to you and other more experienced language learners for the most part on deciding what is the "best" way to do anything. All I know is what's working for me. My number one priority as a first time foreign language learner is to not quit, so for the time being I've chosen to invest time in that which I am most comfortable doing. It seems to be working. As for seeing collocations and how words are used... that's the whole purpose of reading. Everyone has different reasons for learning a language, and my main motivation is the desire to not be a "stupid American" and to have a more international outlook. I doubt that I am alone in thinking conversation in the early stages is "scary" rather than "rewarding" and that learning to read a foreign newspaper brings greater personal rewards at the beginning of my study than I would get out of a halting verbal exchange with a native speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5179 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 62 of 100 11 August 2011 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You are definitely right that the most important thing is not giving up, and in that respect, doing what you enjoy most is certainly valuable; however, you shouldn't assume that because something is comfortable, it's necessarily what's best for you. If members come and challenge what you say is best for you, it's because they are challenging you to push your limits, to step out of your comfort zone and see what else might work for you. As for speaking, the first step is speaking to yourself. Next would be to speak to a language partner or a tutor. I certainly didn't imply to strike up conversations with strangers right off the bat. Edited by Arekkusu on 11 August 2011 at 2:36am 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 63 of 100 11 August 2011 at 3:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
tant pis = so much worse As for the chunks I did mean chunks, not connectors. I did a search in Google on "chunks language" and in the very first example I found not only "by the way", but also the following definition: "Language as used by native speakers consists substantially of memorized multi-word chunks (e.g. by the way)." (Helbling) No. 2 said this: "Chunks are groups of words – ‘Have a nice day.’ is a chunk, and so are ‘ID card’, ‘of vital importance’, ‘no problem’ – in fact any string of words that are regularly and often found together – either written or spoken." (Fielding) No. 3 this: In studies of language acquisition, several words that are customarily used together in a fixed expression, such as "in my opinion," "to make a long story short," "How are you?" or "Know what I mean?" I find these definitions too vague and general to be of any use - it seems that even "fixed expression" would be a 'chunk' according to the two last definitions. On the other hand 'connector' seems to be used mostly about conjunctions, i.e. mostly about single words with quite specific syntactical roles. And "filler" doesn't cover the cases where a chunk is used in a constructive way. So the loss of 'chunk' as a meaningfuld and useful term means that we don't have a term for expressions consisting of several words which are used in a rather loose way to glue conversations together. Edited by Iversen on 11 August 2011 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5228 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 64 of 100 11 August 2011 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think this is confusing things even more. If I remember something by Splog on conversational connectors, there are many multi-word connectors in addition to the usual conjunctions. Anthony Lauder is the person who has popularized the notion of conversational connectors. Here is a quote from his website (http://www.anthonylauder.com/): "A Springboard When I teach people about conversational intimacy, I give them a “starter pack” of about 100 connectors, and I present them here. There is nothing magical about these 100 or so connectors. They are just a springboard to get people going. As soon as possible you should be throwing out connectors from the starter pack that you don’t find useful and adding connectors you come across in real-life. I like to break the connectors into ten groups, based on the type of thing they do in a conversation: Opening Connectors Opening connectors are used when somebody has just asked a question, and you want to start answering it. thank you heartily děkuji srdečně that is a good question to je dobrá otázka that is such a difficult question to je taková těžká otázka once upon a time, long ago kdysi, dávno When you are asked a question, it can put you on the spot. Your mind can go blank, and soon you don't know how to even start answering. Opening connectors are really useful for getting the first few words out of your mouth (“breaking the silence”) while you settle down to give the real answer to the question. Imagine you are asked where you are from, and your brain is racing to first fully comprehend the question and second to come up with an answer. You can get some breathing space by starting out with: “To je dobrá otázka ...” then once the momentum is going your brain relaxes and it is much easier to keep going and say “… (I am from England) jsem z Anglie” Filler Connectors Filler connectors are throw-away phrases you can insert when you need a little more thinking time. They give the illusion of deep pondering, or sharing something personal, which is exactly what you want while you think of what you are going to say next: understandably pochopitelně frankly speaking upřímě řečeno" Nowhere does Lauder speak of "chunks." A multi-word conversational marker is undoubtedly a chunk as defined above by nearly all the observers in the field, but not all chunks are conversational markers. Now, Iversen can use the word chunk in an idiosyncratic way, but I'm simply pointing out that this usage is a) neither necessary nor useful, b) confusing and c) in disagreement with current practice in the field. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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