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Spanish Course, few words taught | ||
Tags: Number of words | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6741 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 17 of 51 02 September 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
The ability you crave, to discern and express fine distinctions, may be beyond C1. I suspect some of it is even beyond C2, requiring "near-native" knowledge. It's an interesting question how much the unerring sense for what's idiomatically correct and for the exact shade of meaning has to do with the vocabulary size and how much of it is that elusive "feel for the language". Edited by frenkeld on 02 September 2012 at 9:45pm 3 persons have 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 18 of 51 02 September 2012 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have no doubt that one can feel inadequate with 4500 words. I won't dispute that. I simply want to point out that 4500 is a lot. But in the other thread, one of the interesting statistics that appeared was in a post by @ivesen who, as regular readers will know, is the quintessential word counter in these parts.
He is one of few people I know who actually counted all the different words he used in three months of posts here on HTLAL. He arrived at 2400 head words. This is written English and does not reflect the entire productive vocabulary of @iversen. But it still shows that someone who is articulate and sophisticated as @iversen used only 2400 words in this forum. I'm not making any extrapolations or comparisons here. I am only suggesting that in actual fact we tend to use much fewer words that what we can recognize in a list. That said, it is certainly possible that people use their resources differently. So maybe 4500 words suffice for some people and for others it would be more like 6000 or more. In all of these discussions, it's interesting to see what people actually use. For this we have very few studies. In one little informal survey of a Spanish soap opera that I did a while back, I counted around 70 verbs in one 54-minute episode. After seeing quite a few episodes over an entire year, I came to the conclusion that with less than 150 verbs you would cover nearly all the verbs used. Such is the nature of these kinds of shows. 2 persons have 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 19 of 51 02 September 2012 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
My own experience with Spanish has been somewhat the opposite of @ramdom review's. I started out with the belief that more vocabulary was important. I diligently read all these books and looked up words that made their way on to flashcards. That was all interesting but how come I couldn't have a fluid conversation with a couple of Spanish speakers just sitting around a table? Part of the problem was not having some technical vocabulary (parts of the car, for example.) But in my opinion the fundamental problem was that my basics were not really solid. My command of the verb system and the pronouns was not really solid. And just the idiomatic way of speaking eluded me. I knew a bunch of words, but I couldn't put them together quickly and smoothly. One thing I did notice was the importance of idioms. They are very common and this is what distinguishes native speakers from wannabes like me. And a lot of these idioms were actually made up of very words that I already knew; it's just they were combined in different ways. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 20 of 51 02 September 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@s allard: oddly enough I actually had your experience too.
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| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 21 of 51 03 September 2012 at 12:10am | IP Logged | |||||
What book is this? I've never studied any book specifically focused on vocabulary (nor have I used vocab. flashcards), but have been thinking lately that maybe I should. The thing is, all such books I know of are for beginners and have a much lower word-count. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| grunts67 Diglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5100 days ago 215 posts - 252 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 22 of 51 03 September 2012 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||
I just *cough* downloaded *cough* this book to have a look because I was intrigued. I have to say, I am quiet impress. It doesn't only give you vocabulary but also the basic grammar to be able to express yourself in a everyday conversation. It's quiet basic but it really nice and i guess effective to get people started. I wish I had this book 7 weeks ago, it would have made my life easier. I will probably give it a read just to see if I can get something out of it. EDIT: I am atking about Spanish synergy not the Barron's one Edited by grunts67 on 03 September 2012 at 1:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6741 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 23 of 51 03 September 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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It must be "Mastering Spanish Vocabulary" from Barron's - the preface to the first English edition (the original being in German) states quite precisely that it covers 5,245 words. :) These days it even comes with mp3 recordings.
Edited by frenkeld on 03 September 2012 at 12:40am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 24 of 51 03 September 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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