vileru Wrote:

Fillanzea Wrote:There's a point where looking up every single word gets in the way of how much you can read, and to what extent you can stay in the flow of what you're reading.

Similarly, there's also a point where not looking up every single word gets in the way of the extent to which you can maintain your flow.

A year and a half ago or so I read a book, in English, called Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (which I highly recommend). The book teems with rare vocabulary used to describe, among other things, the flora, fauna, clothing, and gear of the American Southwest (here's a sample of the kind of words McCarthy uses).

Sure, I could have just skated over the words and visualized a scene based on my memories and assumptions about what the American Southwest was like. However, I would have lost the rich imagery McCarthy paints. As I was reading, I looked up every unfamiliar term that I came across either in the dictionary or through an online image search. Without having done so, I'm certain I would've enjoyed the novel less and I wouldn't have remembered the stunning imagery that I still recall today.

poblequadrat Wrote:A good J-E pocket dictionary has 20000 entries in each language. These are words every native speaker knows, but it's no big deal if you have to look up something like "gridiron", "valet", "turbot", "sciatica" or "creamer".

According to this study, which seems credible enough, the average university-educated, native speaker of English knows 17500 words. This figure doesn't include derived words ("govern" vs. "misgovern"; "do" vs. "redo") nor compounds ("blue-eyed", "ground control"; but it does include "pipecleaner" or "helmetpod").

I think the most essential thing is learning the nuances of common words. Quantifying the vocabulary one knows seems funny to me, but I guess it makes sense when talking about Anki.