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Assimil- vocabulary | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Thunter Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 3332 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, French, Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 6 29 March 2015 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
after having learned several languages with Assimil I wonder whether they have about 2000 words or more, as claimed, or much less. (information from : assimilwelt.com/amazon.de) I've witten how many lessons they have to not mix the different versions up) Here what they claimed and what stands in their own glossary. Chinese(105 lessons) ~ 1500 to 2000 (without the words that are found both in book 1 and 2) Hindi (55 lessons)~ 2100 to 1800 (actually more than they claimed) French (113 lessons) seems to be the same Russian (71 lessons) ~ 1100 to 3000 ( how can there be such a huge difference?) Hebrew (85 lessons) ~1000 to 2000 What about Netherlands (83? lessons), Italien(105 lessons) , Portuguese (100 lessons) and Arabic(77 lessons)? For me it is quite important because I rehear one of the above mentioned course every 2 months and it makes a huge difference for me if Assimil gives a sufficent basis or not, especially in regard to Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese. Edited by Thunter on 29 March 2015 at 10:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3342 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 2 of 6 29 March 2015 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
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The exact numbers probably depend on how you count words. In some of my language programs I've done my own vocabulary lists and counted them and arrived at numbers similar to those in your list. But I like to count what I consider "lexical items" for this purpose. For example
alleen alleen maar maar is for me 3 lexical items in Dutch, but only 2 unique words. Also languages can vary on how much information they write on average into a "word". For example broodbakmachine It is one word, but in the English translation we would write it as three, perhaps hyphenated. Whether the material gives you a sufficient basis or not can probably only be tested through your experience. That is, if you *only* read that one book and know those few thousand words like the back of your hand, how much of what goes on in "real life" are you really going to understand? Knowing the basics helps, but it is probably not enough. Probably if you think you ought to know 2000 words, then what you should really be doing is trying to learn 20000. If you think you need 3000 words for a basis, then go ahead and try to learn 30000. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3342 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 3 of 6 29 March 2015 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I was curious about this question and looked again at my basic word list (the one from my basic language programs that I used to learn Dutch). It has about 2200 words, and from my experience it is a pretty good coverage of words that come up in real life.
Next, I read a random short news article (not intended for learners) containing 97 words. I had no problem understanding it; maybe there were one or two words I didn't know--but I can also see that these words are domain-specific terms that may be just as foreign to me in my own tongue. How well could I understand this article if I "only" knew the 2200 words from my language program? I looked at each word and crossed it out if the word or an easily derived word (e.g "totaalbedrag" is easily derived from "totaal" and "bedrag") failed to appear in my basic word list. In the end, I had to cross out more than 20% of the words in that article - let's say this 20% represents the quantity of words that you would be very uncertain about, having only the "basics" mastered. I don't know about other people, but if I failed to understand 1 out of every 5 words that I heard, I would quickly lose the message. And if it was delivered via conversation, radio or television, I would have no hope. Edited by chaotic_thought on 29 March 2015 at 11:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lsilvaj Diglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 3930 days ago 34 posts - 42 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Russian | Message 4 of 6 30 March 2015 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Once while I was learning German I used Anki with German With Ease (80s edition), and I could barely get to 1000 words.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kaikai Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5555 days ago 27 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 5 of 6 30 March 2015 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
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For Assimil Chinese, I took the entire 105 chapters into the Dimsum tool and exported the vocabulary. I only
got about 1200 words in my count. I'm kind of curious to where the discrepancy of 300 words lies. Either way it falls fairly short of the 2k. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4709 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 6 31 March 2015 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
What is a "sufficient basis"? A course with 200 words is sufficient for some things, a course with 2000 words is insufficient for other things. No matter how many words your course has, it does give you a sufficient basis for one thing: to learn more. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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