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Experimenting with French word frequency | ||
Tags: Word Frequency | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4627 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 41 of 55 06 September 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And even the oft-referred-to visit to the bakers could involve slightly more vocabulary than "baguette", even if the baker or assistant didn't enquire about the book you were carelessly displaying under his nose. For example the many varieties of bread or other delicacies particular to this area. Or the woman behind you in the queue might start talking about her ailments. And you are expected to commiserate with her on the failings of the local health service. One thing can lead to another before you know it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5229 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 42 of 55 06 September 2014 at 5:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You never know what can happen when you go to the bakery in French. The way I look at it is that if you are afraid of what trouble you might get into at the bakery with your limited French, then you should not leave the house. For those who want to improve their French, then you take your chances. Personally, I would love it if people spoke to me in whatever language I'm learning and not automatically in English as happens so often today. Actually, yesterday I purchased two baguettes, The dialogue went exactly like this: - Bonjour, mademoiselle. - Bonjour, monsieur - Je voudrais deux baguettes, s'il vous plaît. - Il m'en reste trois. - Très bien, j'en veux deux. Bien cuites, s'il vous plaît. - Comme ça, ça vous va? - C'est très bien. - Voilà. C'est tout? - Oui, c'est tout. - Alors. Ça fait quatre dollars cinquante. - Voilà. - Merci. Bonne soirée. - Merci à vous, mademoiselle. This is simple real French. Nothing that someone with 300 of the right words couldn't master in 30 minutes or less. No complicated questions from the salesperson. No major complications with the other customers. In my experience, this is about as complicated as it gets. The nice thing is that this little interaction is very encouraging for the learner and can be transposed to many other situations. If you're afraid of potential complicated questions, stay home. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3898 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 43 of 55 06 September 2014 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't really want to get into what words are the most necessary ones, but this stuck out like a sore thumb... cuit/cuite is a top 300 word to learn to get by in French? Having lived here for three years I've probably used it twice at most (albeit I've read it more often, but then again I read French recipes frequently). Understanding numbers is something you want to put a lot of focus on at the very very beginning of language learning unless your primary goal is to haggle at vide-greniers?
What precisely is supposed to be the benefit with this particular method over, say, grabbing a phrase book, prepping minimally each time you go out, and going out there talking every chance you get. With this method, it seems to me, you get much the same result except the benefit of a wider vocabulary when necessary and less time spent actively memorising. Plus, you get the benefit of being able to "get by" straight away, as opposed to learning a set number of words and being really disappointed with what you can say (not to mention what you can understand) because you honestly thought you'd now attain some particular level of "speaking". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5229 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 44 of 55 06 September 2014 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I actually agree with this post. It's just that I think the poster has not been following the entire discussion. There is no top 300-word method. If I dare repeat what I have been saying over many pages is that I believe that around 300 words broken down into certain categories will get you started speaking French. That's it. The choice of words, especially the verbs and the nouns depends on your circumstances and needs. If the word cuit/cuite is of no interest to you, then don't learn it. I would certainly not take one of the many frequency lists that abound here and try to learn the first 300 words. That would be the height of folly. The thrust of my argument with regards to the bakery example is that you do not need a huge vocabulary to buy a baguette and, above all, you mustn't be afraid to go into a boulangerie because you never know what the salesperson or other persons may say to you. Edited by s_allard on 06 September 2014 at 1:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5229 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 45 of 55 06 September 2014 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My interest in this question of minimum vocabulary size stems from my observation as a teacher that many
students make speaking French into something that is more difficult than it should be. And I'm talking about hearing and speaking, not reading, not writing. I find it intriguing that many people have studied French for years and are unable to order a coffee in a café, as I see regularly. I'm not kidding. At the other extreme, I see people, like a young woman from China recently, who can get by very nicely after a month. And there are all the people in between. My explanation is that the early speakers have figured out that in most everyday simple situations, you can get by with very little. You can start interacting with native speakers with some key words and phrases. This is exciting and very motivating because the language is no longer this insurmountable mass of words and rules. Some people say this is all small-talk and you can't say anything serious. How can you have a discussion on some heavy topic with 300 words? You can't. So what? At least you're talking. One day you'll get there. And then there's the argument that you never know what native speakers might say to you. I love this argument. Don't start speaking until you know at least 2,000 words. Suppose the salesperson at the bakery asks you something about gene sequencing, what will you do? Better to stay home and learn how to say gene sequencing in French before venturing out to buy a baguette. OK I'm being a bit facetious but it's to make a point. If your goal is to speak French - I say this because not all learners of French want to speak - get out there with those ten key verbs that make up around 60% of spoken French and start opening your mouth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5331 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 55 06 September 2014 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
For those of you who know your way around a command-line, and who have a basic knowledge of SQL, here are some notes on setting up your own queryable version of the Lexique database.
Since I'm pretty sure that HTLAL will somehow corrupt the code above, there's also a complete version on GitHub with several more useful tables. Edited by emk on 06 September 2014 at 3:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4708 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 47 of 55 07 September 2014 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Dirty mind that I have, I read "consummate" rather than "commiserate" on my first glance.
This put me in mind of Boris Shekhtman's language island technique. If you take a limited number of words (carefully chosen for the individual student as s_allard says) you could potentially create several usable language islands. Edited by Jeffers on 07 September 2014 at 2:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5331 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 48 of 55 07 September 2014 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For those of you who'd like to play around with this data, all my code and data is now available on GitHub.
For those of you who like pretty graphs and data analysis, check out this iPython notebook page. Some highlights: 
And the same data as a table: 
One thing really stands out here: Nouns are just brutal. They may only make up 15% of a typical text, but you need far more nouns than anything else. Seeing this, I'm actually prepared to believe that if you didn't count the nouns, you could construct a 250–500 word beginner vocabulary that would take you surprisingly far. But then you need to add over a thousand nouns to get any kind of reasonable coverage. Or you need to spend a whole lot of time saying, C'est quoi, ce truc? "What's this thing?" Life's pretty miserable when you're missing two or three key nouns in a single conversation. If you don't have "train" or "station" or "ticket", for example, you're going to a really vague and awkward conversation. "I want to buy a thing to go on a choo-choo!. Where is the big place with the choo-choo?" Even if you've mastered the basics of sentence construction, missing nouns can reduce you pantomime and sound effects in no time. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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