Exactly, you don't need 20,000 words to be able to use a language effectively. You don't need to be intellegent to be fluent in a language. Look at me. :\
2010-06-14, 10:31 pm
gyuujuice Wrote:Exactly, you don't need 20,000 words to be able to use a language effectively. You don't need to be intellegent to be fluent in a language. Look at me. :\True, not sure how much words I know in english, but whenever I read a novel there's always a few words I never seen/heard of, but due to context I can still understand it.
2010-06-15, 12:29 am
As far as I can tell, even professional linguists can't agree on how many words are "in" the vocabulary of a native speaker. For one thing, people actively use only a small portion of the words they passively recognize. For another, there's the problem of deciding what counts as a distinct word -- are "teach" and "taught" two different words? Word counts from books can give us some clues. The seven Harry Potter books supposedly have 12,000 distinct words; the collected works of Shakespeare, about 30,000, of which about 12,000 occur only once. I would think the average American's vocabulary fell somewhere between those two markers, as Harry Potter can be read by a pre-teen (although it contains some arcane words that adults might fumble), while Shakespeare is a full plate for even a well-educated adult.
As for the person who learned 50,000 words from a dictionary: c'mon! I've never heard of anyone learning anywhere near that number of words from a dictionary. Aijin, do you really believe your tutee memorized all those words -- did you quiz him or her on them? How much time did he or she spend on the task? I teach for a living, and I've learned to be skeptical of my students' claims that they've "memorized" anything, much less the entire contents of a dictionary!
Now, I'm not claiming that JPLT 1 makes one fluent, as it primarily tests writing and listening. Jaarvik and others say it puts you at a teenager's level. But hey, I'd take it. The teenage kids I know can pick up new vocabulary very quickly -- if they read. So I say: don't get discouraged. And enjoy the learning; it's fun.
As for the person who learned 50,000 words from a dictionary: c'mon! I've never heard of anyone learning anywhere near that number of words from a dictionary. Aijin, do you really believe your tutee memorized all those words -- did you quiz him or her on them? How much time did he or she spend on the task? I teach for a living, and I've learned to be skeptical of my students' claims that they've "memorized" anything, much less the entire contents of a dictionary!
Now, I'm not claiming that JPLT 1 makes one fluent, as it primarily tests writing and listening. Jaarvik and others say it puts you at a teenager's level. But hey, I'd take it.
The teenage kids I know can pick up new vocabulary very quickly -- if they read. So I say: don't get discouraged. And enjoy the learning; it's fun.
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2010-06-15, 12:45 am
JLPT level 1 isn't something one should worry about. Even though I was all for it, but to be honest if you do become fluent in all 4 skills. You wouldn't need that on your resume to go to japan, you just gotta show your skills. I mean if you can read/understand new prefectly, read novels of a high-level that are intended for natives, watch movies that are meant for natives,etc. That shows a good level. If you write/speak just as good as a native within your age group, then your fluent. It's not about knowing 1 million words or anything. It's all about immersing yourself,reading,writing,speaking. Do stuff natives do, and you'll eventually become fully fluent no matter what other people say. I've found that some people will just never be satisfied with someones level of fluency that they claim. But It doesn't matter actually, if native-speakers themselves say your good(not out of kindness, but really out of amazement for learning their language to a high level. That's all the proof you need).
So for my ranting on and I'm sure there some mistakes in there as well. Grammar!
So for my ranting on and I'm sure there some mistakes in there as well. Grammar!
Edited: 2010-06-15, 12:47 am
2010-06-15, 2:44 am
I've been meaning to ask: could sy provide me some examples of the "hardest reading materials" in english? I've seen Shakespeare above, that can be one, are there others out there? What would a native consider as "hard to read / understand" in english? I don't necessarily mean special stuff / profesional stuff, but things meant for the general public, thus no prior knowledge of the topic covered in the material would be needed to understand it.... So, any tips?
Aijin's tutee's capabilities, regarding still finding new words in english materials, after learning 50,000 words made me very curious
Aijin's tutee's capabilities, regarding still finding new words in english materials, after learning 50,000 words made me very curious
Edited: 2010-06-15, 2:46 am
2010-06-15, 5:25 am
I met a professor last year at a conference in Kyoto. He has a whole lot of advanced articles written by and for native speakers of English, and he edits them to leave out everything but the most common English words. Uncommon words are replaced with stars *****. At the conference, he showed different examples of this.
For example, when he showed an article with only the 1000 most common words, it was almost all ******, you couldn't understand a thing. At 7,000 you could sort of get an idea of what was going on, but it was still a bit difficult. At 9,000 you could pretty much read and understand everything that was written. (The way he did it, 'teach' and 'taught' would be considered the same word)
So, no, you don't need to know more than 50,000 words. I really doubt that the number is significantly different for Japanese. If you understand 50,000 words, you should be able to read absolutely any source written by/for a native speaker.
For example, when he showed an article with only the 1000 most common words, it was almost all ******, you couldn't understand a thing. At 7,000 you could sort of get an idea of what was going on, but it was still a bit difficult. At 9,000 you could pretty much read and understand everything that was written. (The way he did it, 'teach' and 'taught' would be considered the same word)
So, no, you don't need to know more than 50,000 words. I really doubt that the number is significantly different for Japanese. If you understand 50,000 words, you should be able to read absolutely any source written by/for a native speaker.
2010-06-15, 6:46 am
Raschaverak Wrote:I've been meaning to ask: could sy provide me some examples of the "hardest reading materials" in english? I've seen Shakespeare above, that can be one, are there others out there? )As far as I know Shakespeare is only difficult to read because it's old and written in verse. Apparently the most difficult to book to read is Ulysses by James Joyce, don't know why, I've never read it
2010-06-15, 6:49 am
robinowen Wrote:It's because Joyce is a leprechaun who doesn't know when to end a sentence.Raschaverak Wrote:I've been meaning to ask: could sy provide me some examples of the "hardest reading materials" in english? I've seen Shakespeare above, that can be one, are there others out there? )As far as I know Shakespeare is only difficult to read because it's old and written in verse. Apparently the most difficult to book to read is Ulysses by James Joyce, don't know why, I've never read it
Edit: You know, I like that word filter, so I'm just going to correct the grammar.
Edited: 2010-06-15, 6:50 am
2010-06-15, 1:31 pm
Finnegan's Wake is harder than Ulysses, but I think Finnegan's Wake barely counts.
2010-06-15, 2:55 pm
Ooh, this is a fun parlor game. Here are some of my candidates for most difficult fiction in English.
1. "Finnegans Wake" is the toughest book I've ever tried (and failed) to read in English, but I agree with smartazjboy that it doesn't really count. It's not really written in standard English, after all! There's no apostrophe in "Finnegans", by the way -- a hint of the weirdness in the book itself. Just one example: the book begins in the middle of a sentence, and ends with the beginning of the first sentence -- a sentence that includes a theme of cycling around. I read about 20 pages, understanding maybe 2 or 3 sentences per page, and gave up. I might do better with one of the "guides" to reading it; maybe someday.
2. "Ulysses" is a terrific book, and it's certainly a challenge; I had to read it side-by-side with an interpretive guide. I loved it, but I doubt I'd steer a non-native speaker toward it. It supposedly has about 30,000 unique words, as many as in all of Shakespeare's works. But for me the challenge wasn't so much vocabulary as style, usage, and context. For example, Joyce's opening seven syllables ("Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...") echoes the meter of classical verse, not to mention the last seven syllables of the book (Molly Bloom's sexy "yes I will yes I said Yes"). You can read and understand without "getting" those internal and external references, but the book is much more rewarding if you do "get" them. I'm not well-read enough to "get" all that on my own, so I'm glad I read it with a guide.
3. For me, Shakespeare is not as difficult to read as the two Joyce books. But I think Shakespeare might be tougher for non-native speakers because of the older language and the poetry.
4. Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" is a wonderful book that is also rather tough to read, but maybe not as tough as Shakespeare or James Joyce. It's prose, not poetry; it uses modern style, not 17th-century style; it contains complete sentences and a discernible plot; and while it's set in World War II, and is certainly chock full of literary references, it's not as dense as the Joyce stuff. It's also hilarious. Still, I'd put it on my list of top-10 most difficult novels in English. Some of Pynchon's other books might make the list, too.
Nonfiction is another kettle of fish, of course! I imagine a medical journal would be unintelligible to me. Certainly Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time" was a tough read for me!
I'd actually be curious to see a list of toughest and easiest Japanese novels.
1. "Finnegans Wake" is the toughest book I've ever tried (and failed) to read in English, but I agree with smartazjboy that it doesn't really count. It's not really written in standard English, after all! There's no apostrophe in "Finnegans", by the way -- a hint of the weirdness in the book itself. Just one example: the book begins in the middle of a sentence, and ends with the beginning of the first sentence -- a sentence that includes a theme of cycling around. I read about 20 pages, understanding maybe 2 or 3 sentences per page, and gave up. I might do better with one of the "guides" to reading it; maybe someday.
2. "Ulysses" is a terrific book, and it's certainly a challenge; I had to read it side-by-side with an interpretive guide. I loved it, but I doubt I'd steer a non-native speaker toward it. It supposedly has about 30,000 unique words, as many as in all of Shakespeare's works. But for me the challenge wasn't so much vocabulary as style, usage, and context. For example, Joyce's opening seven syllables ("Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...") echoes the meter of classical verse, not to mention the last seven syllables of the book (Molly Bloom's sexy "yes I will yes I said Yes"). You can read and understand without "getting" those internal and external references, but the book is much more rewarding if you do "get" them. I'm not well-read enough to "get" all that on my own, so I'm glad I read it with a guide.
3. For me, Shakespeare is not as difficult to read as the two Joyce books. But I think Shakespeare might be tougher for non-native speakers because of the older language and the poetry.
4. Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" is a wonderful book that is also rather tough to read, but maybe not as tough as Shakespeare or James Joyce. It's prose, not poetry; it uses modern style, not 17th-century style; it contains complete sentences and a discernible plot; and while it's set in World War II, and is certainly chock full of literary references, it's not as dense as the Joyce stuff. It's also hilarious.
Still, I'd put it on my list of top-10 most difficult novels in English. Some of Pynchon's other books might make the list, too.Nonfiction is another kettle of fish, of course! I imagine a medical journal would be unintelligible to me. Certainly Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time" was a tough read for me!
I'd actually be curious to see a list of toughest and easiest Japanese novels.
2010-06-15, 3:06 pm
Shakespeare isn't difficult at all in terms of vocabulary. My only difficulty with Ulysses was as the other person said, sentences that go on for two pages. That and multiple pages straight that were nothing but lists of historical people and places was tedious. But not difficult to read, just difficult to keep yourself motivated to actually read it.
Regarding the amount of words in things like Shakespeare, HP, etc: I have no doubt the actual amount of unique words in any given author's work is minimum. The problem is, knowing 13,000 individual words if HP uses that many, would only give you the ability to read HP, not fluency in the language itself. An author's word choices are limited to what is being described, and so the words are consequently a mere reflection of the story itself. Since stories vary greatly from time period, location, specific cultures (micro-cultures included), individual characters, etc. the amount of words spread out through literature is far, far higher than a mere 10,000 or 20,000. Fluency isn't the ability to pick up specific genres and read them because that's all you're familiar with in terms of vocabulary. etc. Fluency is the ability to pick up an article regarding economics, robotics, spirtualism, religion, philosophy, environment, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, history etc. The sheer amount of topics covered in our world requires an amount of vocabulary that is quite extraordinary, and that few people ever realize. Many of these words you'll only encounter maybe once in a year as I said.
Is it possible to understand the gist of things knowing a smaller amount of words? Of course. Through context one can even guess the meaning of verbs or nouns they do not comprehend, something which would be possible if the sentence existed in isolation. But I don't consider understanding the "gist" as fluency, personally. And for me, when I only knew 10,000-20,000 words in English there was no way I could just pick up anything I wanted and automatically read it. It was the intellectual equivalent of seeing through your t-shirt: you can see the general impression of everything well enough even with only pinpricks as vision, but you're only experiencing the silhouette of reality rather than reality itself in other words.
Language is a lifelong process, even for our native languages. Think about the insane amount of vocabulary learned through the education system and our socialization, as we dabble and are surrounded by so many different fields. Biology, psychology, anthropology, history, mathematics, literature, politics, art, music. The list goes on and on. Vocabulary related to all the things in life is something that takes a lot of time to learn, even for natives.
More specifically, when I am talking about vocabulary I mean the ability for recognition, not the amount actively used by the person.
I think many people would be surprised to find that if they crack open a E-J or J-E dictionary with around 50,000 entries, that they'll recognize practically every single English word in there. Native speakers have an ability that is very difficult to acquire for those learning the language as a foreign language I believe: being so deeply embedded into the language that even if you only see a word only once a year you still remember it quite perfectly when you see it.
I am not saying that 50,000+ words are necessary to function in Japanese, just that 10,000-20,000 are not enough to pick up any form of media and understand it perfectly.
Regarding the amount of words in things like Shakespeare, HP, etc: I have no doubt the actual amount of unique words in any given author's work is minimum. The problem is, knowing 13,000 individual words if HP uses that many, would only give you the ability to read HP, not fluency in the language itself. An author's word choices are limited to what is being described, and so the words are consequently a mere reflection of the story itself. Since stories vary greatly from time period, location, specific cultures (micro-cultures included), individual characters, etc. the amount of words spread out through literature is far, far higher than a mere 10,000 or 20,000. Fluency isn't the ability to pick up specific genres and read them because that's all you're familiar with in terms of vocabulary. etc. Fluency is the ability to pick up an article regarding economics, robotics, spirtualism, religion, philosophy, environment, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, history etc. The sheer amount of topics covered in our world requires an amount of vocabulary that is quite extraordinary, and that few people ever realize. Many of these words you'll only encounter maybe once in a year as I said.
Is it possible to understand the gist of things knowing a smaller amount of words? Of course. Through context one can even guess the meaning of verbs or nouns they do not comprehend, something which would be possible if the sentence existed in isolation. But I don't consider understanding the "gist" as fluency, personally. And for me, when I only knew 10,000-20,000 words in English there was no way I could just pick up anything I wanted and automatically read it. It was the intellectual equivalent of seeing through your t-shirt: you can see the general impression of everything well enough even with only pinpricks as vision, but you're only experiencing the silhouette of reality rather than reality itself in other words.
Language is a lifelong process, even for our native languages. Think about the insane amount of vocabulary learned through the education system and our socialization, as we dabble and are surrounded by so many different fields. Biology, psychology, anthropology, history, mathematics, literature, politics, art, music. The list goes on and on. Vocabulary related to all the things in life is something that takes a lot of time to learn, even for natives.
More specifically, when I am talking about vocabulary I mean the ability for recognition, not the amount actively used by the person.
I think many people would be surprised to find that if they crack open a E-J or J-E dictionary with around 50,000 entries, that they'll recognize practically every single English word in there. Native speakers have an ability that is very difficult to acquire for those learning the language as a foreign language I believe: being so deeply embedded into the language that even if you only see a word only once a year you still remember it quite perfectly when you see it.
I am not saying that 50,000+ words are necessary to function in Japanese, just that 10,000-20,000 are not enough to pick up any form of media and understand it perfectly.
2012-01-02, 7:02 am
According to the test at http://testyourvocab.com/ , my English vocabulary is around 17 000 words. They count 'teach' and 'taught' as different words, but not 'quick' and 'quickly'; see the website for details. I think this is good news, because although the estimate is conservative, it means that I don't know *that* many words, yet I'm able to do pretty much anything in English that I can do in Norwegian. I don't know what the size of my Norwegian vocabulary is, but I guess it's around 30 000, based on the findings of this test and other vocabulary estimates for native speakers. For any language, including Japanese, I think 10 000 words is enough for basic fluency.
Exactly which words you need is not necessarily easy to figure out. It depends on what you want to do with them. Textbook vocabularies are a good start, although I don't know exactly how many words IJ teaches you. Genki has something like 1700, and I think there is very little overlap between the two books.
After one year of Genki and five months of IJ, knew many words, but I decided to learn all the words in both books, so I made a goldlist ( http://huliganov.tv/goldlist-eu/ ) with the words I didn't know. If I didn't know the reading of a word, I'd list that as a separate entry. My complete list consisted of 2577 entries.
I read a review of IJ that complained about the amount of new words and kanji per chapter, and I can imagine that it would be a problem for someone taking classes at the university, but for me as an independent student, I appreciate a textbook teaching lots of vocabulary. I think IJ is pretty good (although I'm not sure I agree with its definition of 'grammar'; I'd classify most of its "grammar" as 'expressions').
Exactly which words you need is not necessarily easy to figure out. It depends on what you want to do with them. Textbook vocabularies are a good start, although I don't know exactly how many words IJ teaches you. Genki has something like 1700, and I think there is very little overlap between the two books.
After one year of Genki and five months of IJ, knew many words, but I decided to learn all the words in both books, so I made a goldlist ( http://huliganov.tv/goldlist-eu/ ) with the words I didn't know. If I didn't know the reading of a word, I'd list that as a separate entry. My complete list consisted of 2577 entries.
I read a review of IJ that complained about the amount of new words and kanji per chapter, and I can imagine that it would be a problem for someone taking classes at the university, but for me as an independent student, I appreciate a textbook teaching lots of vocabulary. I think IJ is pretty good (although I'm not sure I agree with its definition of 'grammar'; I'd classify most of its "grammar" as 'expressions').
2012-01-02, 7:38 am
Well, it's not that many words if they spread the book out over 3 semesters like my college did. Also, learning 50 words a day is nothing if you are using a program like Anki.
