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Routledge Frequency Dictionaries | ||
Tags: Word Frequency | Dictionaries | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4479 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 9 of 21 14 March 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
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C2 is educated near-native.
C1 is needed to enroll a university course. The vocabulary of an18 year old American is around 20 000 words. So, you need 20 000 words for C1 (in English). In China, you would be a Nobel prize winner with vocabulary that huge. But in Western languages, a 16 year old kid has a vocabulary of 18 000 words. Read this: http://testyourvocab.com/blog.php That being said, I bought myself a 20 000 frequency dictionary of American English, the extended version of the Routledge paper dictionary (and made by the same author). The Portuguese frequency dictionary is bad, it is somewhat Continental-Portuguese-centered, so there are many words used only in Portugal high in the list which are never used in Brazil. A ''normalized'' dictionary should have 90% of Brazilian words and 10 % of Continental Portuguese words to respect the ratio of the speakers. The Spanish frequency dictionary is okay, but without meanings used in South America, Only meanings and words used in Spain&Mexico are given. The German frequency dictionary got terrible user reviews on Amazon. I haven't used it, so I cannot comment on it. I would try it before I buy it. Edited by Medulin on 14 March 2012 at 1:36am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4512 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 10 of 21 14 March 2012 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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If you assume 20.000 words to be C1, and C1 to be entry level for university, almost no foreign speaker of English could enter. Look at the blog you linked. The median vocab size is around 7000. The highest percentage of users was around 4500 words.
According to your math, most non-English speaking Euros would be classified "caveman" and barely be able to enter Kindergarten. To be honest... I'm not quite sure if I want to approve :p 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 4827 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 11 of 21 14 March 2012 at 11:29am | IP Logged |
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I took the test @testyourvocab.com and got a score of 34,100 words.
Yeah!!! :D Not sure if I believe it though. :p Napoleon 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 21 14 March 2012 at 11:33am | IP Logged |
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20,000 words is definitely excessive for C1. University requirements vary.
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| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5962 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 13 of 21 14 March 2012 at 12:16pm | IP Logged |
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I ended up purchasing the Routledge Russian Learners dictionary which has 10,000 entries in frequency order. Taking a quick look at the entries beyond 5,000 it becomes clear that the other frequency dictionaries must miss out on some core vocabulary. One criticism on Amazon was there were no sentences after entry 600, but that's not quite true. There isn't a sentence for every entry after 600, but there are further examples and idioms up to the last entry. I don't plan on brute force learning the 10,000 entries. I'm not a fan of flash cards, and only use word lists on a limited basis. Instead I'll read through the entries noting useful words that fall outside typical vocabulary lists. E.g. In Spanish, destacar - highlight, emphasise, is very common in writing, yet rarely appears in vocabulary books. PS: That vocabulary test was interesting. Thankfully I scored 37,900. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4489 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 14 of 21 14 March 2012 at 1:06pm | IP Logged |
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I remember a vocabulary test (in one of Pr. Arguelles's videos about extensive reading it's mentioned at the beginning) in which I scored significantly lower than this one (19k instead of 26k), and it seems to me that it was much more scientifically grounded.
Moreover, this test just asks you if you know a word, it's quite easy to say yes, but the other test I'm mentioning asked you to choose between several meanings of a given word, so that you couldn't really cheat. It was also much longer to take. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 4827 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 15 of 21 14 March 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
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@Vermillon:
Yes, a vocab test that gives you multiple options to choose from should definitely be more accurate. Do you have the URL by any chance? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4489 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 16 of 21 14 March 2012 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
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@napoleon: here it is: http://my.vocabularysize.com/
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