How many words do you know? How many have you looked up in a dictionary?

I think that I might know 50,000 or so words of English. That is what a college educated person is supposed to know in English. How often have I looked up a word in the dictionary? Not often, other then when playing scrabble and trying some word that just may be in the dictionary.

Apparently I only knew 7,000 words when I was seven and 14,000 when I was fourteen. I learned from exposure. Now things are not that easy in a second language, but it just shows that the brain can absorb information from sheer input.

Comments

[a bunch a noise]

I have English language dictionary where words are graded by their frequency of use. From that grading I could figure out that my vocabulary is somewhere near 10,000. I've been learning English quite actively for four years. At the moment I have the feeling that my vocabulary increases with some 5-15 words a week. I pushing myself to read at least two chapters a day of literature and at least two articles of the news media or other stuff like that. I feel quite comfortable with that. In practice you read more than that because always something special catches your attention and it is not an exception, that you find yourselve in a position when it is very hard to stop and do other important languge development activities as listening and writing.

[Shon]

Well...I guess it is okay if you want to take 7 years to become fluent in a language! LOL

Seriously though... do we ever get frustrated by our inability to achieve in 1 or 2 years, what took a native speaker a lifetime to master?

While there are certainly many things that can be done to assist our language learning retention, I firmly believe that there is no shortcut when it comes to language study. It requires hard work and persistence. While it certainly helps to have talent... talent doesn't make up for hard work either.

When I first started studying Chinese I had a friend with a remarkable nack for languages. He achieved in months, what took me years. He had a seemingly photographic memory...and it is not an exaggeration, when I say that after living in Hong Kong less than 6 months, he knew more Chinese Characters than most college educated natives.

While my friend certainly seemed to learn with ease...he was no slouch. He got up early in the morning, and stayed up late in the evening studying. He read Chinese Dictionaries for fun, and looked for unusual characters he didn't already know. He worked extremely hard to get to the level his Chinese was at.

Had he not studied like he did, he probably would have had the natural talent...but lacked the appropriate progress and language skills.

I don't have the natural talent like my friend. Instead...I plod along year after year, slowly building up my language fluency. Language learning is something that comes extremely difficult to me...but I have embraced the difficulty as a challenge, and have been edified by my small successes.

[Roy]

Since the brain is a neural network, it does not store a word in one place. You can't really say that you "know" a word just because you can recall it's meaning.

The brain examines the juxtaposition of other words, the sound of the word, it's utilisation. etc.

The word may pop in our minds while we are searching for words to construct a thought, a sentence. If we are trying to hear a radio broadcast that isn't quite clear, the vast network that our brain has constructed may use its knowledge of all these things, experiences, juxtapositions, sounds of this single word to help us guess it's position in this fuzzy unclear sentence.

The word may sound like other groups of words when said in a sentence, and even more constructions in our brain are created to guard against these initially "phantom" instances of this word.

For instance, a beginner in english may recognise the 3 words "come for the" in a sentence during rapid speech, while a more experienced person may override these simple patterns and see the larger word "comfortable". The appropriateness of these words in the overall meaning of the sentence makes even more connections in the brain.

So, at the end of the day, when people say they are learning 5 or 10 or 20 words a day, it may be a preliminary learning, but the conscious mind's version of "knowing" a word and the brains subconscious ability to recognise such words can be vastly different. One is a simply recollection of a fact/meaning. The other is a firing of countless neurons performing the incredible calculations necessary for us to arrive at an almost instantaneous understanding during the fluidity of rapid speech.

[fredrik_w]

Shon, interesting discussion about Talent.

Steve, maybe you can make a video about talent and how this affect language learning and the speed of progress.

I guess in most cases, the discussion about Talent often emerge when you feel frustrated about you speed or level of progress. You look at other people and say: My talent for language learning is so low I will never reach fluency. For that reason, I think many people give up language learning or they dont even have a try.

[Brian Barker]

As far as learning another language, is concerned, can I put in a word for the international language, Esperanto?

Although Esperanto is a living language, it helps language learning as well.

Five British schools have introduced Esperanto in order to test its propaedeutic values. The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester and the initial encouraging results can be seen at http://www.springboard2languages.org/Summary%20of%20evaluation,%20S2L%20Phase%201.pdf

An interesting video can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a former translator with the United Nations

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

[Rod]

Talent helps like in any other field. It's not the only factor. It will only take you so far.

Nice to see the Esperanto spammer back, though.

[Drake]

Steve,

Do you think that it is possible to be functional and capable in a language in as little as 4 months? I am asking this question with the assumption that I will put 3-4 hours a day into the language. Do you have experiences with languages where you were motivated to learn them in a very short period of time?

[Drake]

I forgot to mention in my last post. I am learning Arabic, it seems to be the only language that I cannt find good resources on the internet. Does anyone know of any good resources for content on the internet? Your help would be appreciated.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Drake,

If it is Arabic, a language that is quite different from yours, and if you are starting from scratch, this makes things more difficult. However, it all depends on your goals and how hard you go at it.In 3-4 months I suspect you can only learn some basics and not a great deal of vocabulary. I would buy or borrow 2 or 3 of the readily available starter kits for Arabic. I would focus on listening to them many many times. By buying 2-3 starter books you will cover the same ground from different angles. This should give you some sense of the language, some basic vocabulary and an ability to read. I would imagine that by the end of the 4 months you will be able to read enough to source content on the Web.

With any luck we will have Arabic at LingQ by that time. Good luck. Go for it. You have nothing to lose. You will learn as much as you learn.

[Drake]

I wanted to share a Lingq testimony with you. Yesterday I was in Barnes and Noble and this poor girl almost needed a dolly to carry all of the spanish verb and vocabulary books she was about ready to buy. I asked her if she was just beginning to learn Spanish. I thought maybe she was a teacher and was buying all of these books for her students. She said that she was a first time learner, so I interceded. I told her to put all of the books back get out a piece of paper and write down www.lingq.com, I told her that I was fluent in Spanish but unfortunately learned it the way she was about to. I also shared that I have used you system to learn Frech and Chinese and have made more progress than 10 years of formal Spanish classes. She put all of the books back and walked out excited to use your system. It made me chuckle because she went from anxiety with an armful of books to empowered as I shared with her the natural way to learn a language. I certaintly don't want to put Barnes and Noble out of business but even more I don't want her to be frustrated with the way that language has been taught. Thought you would enjoy!

[Steve Kaufmann]

Thanks Drake,

I really appreciate this. We are working to improve LingQ in many ways. I think there will be a lot of new things and the site should also speed up over the next few weeks.

However, I just spent an hour and a half, reading content that I had imported, and that I am now listening to. I also spent some time on the Vocab page editing phrases and investing some time in my newly created LingQs. I checked out the Forum and I must say, as a language learner, while there are things that can improve, and will improve, there is a lot there for the person who knows how to use LingQ.

We just have to make it easier to understand how to use it.