@Animosophy
I don't see how that contradicts what I said. Dictionaries are written to reflect language as it is, and has been, used. Just look at the new definition for "literally" (see #2, which was just added recently. Refer to Reddit for the ensuing uproar). Given the nature of dictionaries, they are updated to reflect the very evolution that Fry describes (whether they keep pace is a different issue, although I think they do quite a fine job).

However, I stand by my view that native speakers often misuse words, phrases, and idioms (and this view stands in opposition to dictionaries). The misuse of words, such as using "literally" when "figuratively" is meant, leads to confusion and weakens the meaning of words. Let me give another example. As a result of the overuse of the word "epic", everything from a comfortable sofa to a haircut has become epic. The meaning has been cheapened, and now I generally avoid using the word when I want to describe anything grandiose.

Furthermore, although I'd like to avoid diving too deep into the standardization of language debate, let me just emphasize that it is not an all or nothing affair. Linguistic chaos and institutionalized guidelines are not the only options. Even in English, with its lack of formal regulation, there is abundant self-regulation. Imagine an entire New York Times or Guardian article written in leetspeak or an entire forum thread written in the style of ta12121. In more or less every major language, there are self-enforced standards for public discourse. These standards are meant to ease communication, not just to be snobbish. Educated people who speak these languages are all familiar with these self-enforced standards, and it's wise for learners of those languages to try to become familiar with them too.

I won't remain on the topic any longer, but if you're interested in the importance of language regulation, you should consult this article: "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell, 1946. Regardless if you agree with Orwell's suggestions, he makes a strong case for why the regulation of language is necessary for healthy public discourse.

@JimmySeal
That depends on the dictionary. ALC usually provides hundreds, if not thousands, for high frequency words. In the case of rare words, 3-5 sentences is significant, considering you may only see the word a few times a year while reading. Regardless, rather than stumble into 3-5 sentences gradually, it's much more efficient to be immediately exposed to 3-5 different example sentences of a word.

A 1/20000 word you will see 50 times a year if you read 1 million words.

I was wondering whether you really learned words in your native language just from reading. It seems like there is some magic number for how big your vocab has to be and after you pass that point you can?

Six thousand according to these polyglots. It kind of makes Anki'ing up to that point make sense.

vileru Wrote:@Animosophy
I don't see how that contradicts what I said.

Well, to say that people often misuse words implies that the gradual change of language originates from something more profound than how people use it. Your perspective differs from mine.

If enough people use the word "literally" or "epic" in a way you consider incorrect, then that would be your problem, not theirs. How something is said isn't as important as what is said*, because language is all about understanding the people who use it, even if it means having to use language in ways we're not used to. Likewise, when I consult dictionaries, it's for the sake of better understanding messages. I'm talking about everyday interactions. It follows that I approach Japanese with this in mind -- figure out what is being said before I take note of form.

The more flexibile people are with language, the more they can communicate effectively with other people. The principles of politeness in Japanese is an excellent example of this.

You can't misuse language, only misunderstand people. It doesn't mean that people aren't mislead with language, but that's a different issue. Language is inherently a mutual thing, so no one is right or wrong.

Quote:The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

*The latter situations here are different issues entirely, because then it's hardly designed for meaningful communication and more like self-entertainment, and in some contexts self-preservation.

I'd agree with regulating language in educational material, news and politics. These are supposed to be objective, after all. Anywhere else, it's just as Stephen Fry said 8)

corry Wrote:A 1/20000 word you will see 50 times a year if you read 1 million words.

Relative to the exposure that children get, 1 million words a year still doesn't come close to a good amount.

Quote:All the kids, whether their parents were talkative or not, heard language. But by age three, the differences in how many words each child heard was significant: some children had heard over 11 million words per year; others only 3 million.

Hearing the words was only the tip of the iceberg. Hart and Risely found that between 86% and 98% of words in each child’s vocabulary were words also recorded in their parent’s vocabulary. And using those words in daily life gave kids “verbal fluency skills”—in other words, they don’t just observe people talking, they practice. By the time they’re three, kids in the least talkative American families accumulate less than 4 million words of expressive language practice, while the most talkative round up over 12 million words. It’s no wonder they have an edge.

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/30000_words/

This implies the most talkative children output up to 12 million words in a year, by naming things, describing things and asking things, with a 3-digit vocabulary. Hard to believe (would have to average 80 words a minute for 6 hours straight!) but after having a rummage through that side youtube and parenting forums, if children can keep it up all day, it's not that much of a stretch lol.. but then again this is for the most talkative children.

A 1/20,000 word would average 400-600 encounters with 8-12 million words total exposure, but it'll be extremely top-heavy.

One thing I've noticed in these 3-year-olds is that they use their vocabulary and knowledge of phrases/collocations to drive their output, rather than their ideas. Perhaps another common "polynotic" trait is to try and express ideas derived from L2 that are too complex, instead of using the words they know in Japanese and letting their vocabulary drive output -- I guess it's a matter of changing the way you think (i.e. taking something you can definitely name, then descibing and asking things relevant to those things in ways you know how to).

Although this isn't completely related to the original video, I thought I'd mention it because it has affected the way I intend to approach native material once I finish core2k/6k.

Lauder's presentation was largely influenced by Paul Nation's research

(namely the four stages, vocabulary & collocations)

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Vocabular...521804981/
(view table of contents, search google / darkjapanese.tumblr,wordpress)

Arupan Wrote:It's more of a philosophical question really, so I imagine there won't be any real answer.[...]

Now, I really feel disappointed with your reply.

The question about reason we study foreign languages is not philosophical at all - the only reason to study a foreign language is a very practical one. We study a foreign language because we want to be able to communicate in that language. Communicate passively (with the writer of a book, creator of a movie, etc.) or actively (with people on the street, with people on forums like that one, etc.).

It's interesting to see how some people seem to forget why they study a foreign language and turn themselves into number obsessed Anki-addicts.

Inny Jan Wrote:

Arupan Wrote:It's more of a philosophical question really, so I imagine there won't be any real answer.[...]

Now, I really feel disappointed with your reply.

The question about reason we study foreign languages is not philosophical at all - the only reason to study a foreign language is a very practical one. We study a foreign language because we want to be able to communicate in that language. Communicate passively (with the writer of a book, creator of a movie, etc.) or actively (with people on the street, with people on forums like that one, etc.).

It's interesting to see how some people seem to forget why they study a foreign language and turn themselves into number obsessed Anki-addicts.

+1

Could not the reason why one wants to communicate in this specific foreign language not have both philosophical roots and a philosophical drive? Philosophy doesn't necessarily equate to dusty tomes and sophistry; there are very practical aspects of philosophical inquiry.

Without going too far as to make a positive assumption, but could it perhaps be that Arupan and yourself (Inny Jan) have a different approach of what a "philosophical question" implies?

uisukii Wrote:Could not the reason why one wants to communicate in this specific foreign language not have both philosophical roots and a philosophical drive? Philosophy doesn't necessarily equate to dusty tomes and sophistry; there are very practical aspects of philosophical inquiry.

Without going too far as to make a positive assumption, but could it perhaps be that Arupan and yourself (Inny Jan) have a different approach of what a "philosophical question" implies?

You can do whatever you want. You can stop going to work and sit in a dark room masturbating for the rest of your life. No one here can say objectively that any person's activities are wrong.

What we can say is whether or not they are effective for language acquisition. Anki is deceptively reassuring, creating the feeling of progress, that one can just keep repping one's way to language ability. But there is hard, uncomfortable, awkward work that must be done... reading things one can't understand at first. Making social connections somehow with people that speak your L2. That is the real stuff of language acquisition.

One could argue the real work of a language project doesn't even begin until after those 6k words...

I'm not really sure what any of that had to do with my post, though. There wasn't any statement made in respect to Anki at all. Where did the sudden antagonism come from?

Well there has been a discussion about over-anki'ing... and your post seemed to pluralistically defend any activity at all within that pursuit (such as the 'quality over quantity' anki study advocated by another user above). my response is pragmatic... in that yes you can do whatever you want...we're not judging actions, but rather their effectiveness... and anki has a limited span of effectiveness.

Exploring that limit (even though it was implied and not overtly stated) was for me the most interesting kernel of information in the video.

My post wasnt intended to come off as antagonistic by the way... nothing personal.

Hmm, I hope it doesn't sound dickish, but I really only touched on what I wrote, and nothing else.

I was going to add:

"Addendum: no comments in relation to Anki", but I kind of assumed that since there wasn't anything about Anki in the post, that bringing it up would only, ironically, serve to draw unnecessary attention towards it.

I've no qualms as to what or how people use Anki. If they are cutting themselves short by having a myopic approach to their studies, then I'd assume that it is something they would be aware of before anyone else, even if they are unwilling to openly admit it to others.

I'll be more clear to state what I'm not referring to next time *laughs*

Does anyone want to help get the "connectors" listed on Lauder's page translated into Japanese? It really does seem like a great list of very common phrases that would really add a degree of naturalness to conversation:
https://sites.google.com/site/fluentczec...tarterpack

For example, you can be quite functional and literate in a language, but until you learn how to say "sorry for changing the subject, but..." you'll just have to string some statements together that will sound as awkward as calling "fast food" "quick food":
http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=change+the+subject

I also like the idea of developing various islands, as discussed in the book referenced in the presentation. Not sure if there's a good way to make that a group study, though.

By the way, I would like to reiterate the recommendation of the book:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18179640/How-t...n-Language

I skimmed the first chapter ("Show your Stuff") and it was an obvious but very true suggestion. In retrospect it seems like common sense, but you forget a lot of simple guidelines whilst in the middle of stammering to get some statements out in a foreign language. With no joke intended the simple reminder to not sound like you're being interrogated has really changed my day-to-day small talk. I feel like I get a lot more practice in with a simple change of mindset.

I'll probably give the rest of the book a more earnest skim -- I usually avoid books that have such promising titles, but it does seem that this particular pamphlet comes with a lot of praise.

Not the first to bring this up, kodorakun. Doing a shallow Google search on "Japanese connector phrases" brought up, right near the top, another コーヒー thread from a little while back. This would probably make a worthwhile thread by itself in the Group Study subforum, as I'm sure there are a few members willing to add a few chips of their own to the pot.

Are these the sort of phrases you are after?
http://grammar.nihongoresources.com/doku...et_phrases

Currently digging through my copies of ADBJG and ADIJG at the moment, as I'm pretty sure I remember reading a fair few useful "I'm sorry, but..." type phrases throughout.

Hi Uisukii,

I was thinking more the connectors posted on the link I gave above. Here's a sample. Just looking at them and thinking about how I speak in English I think they would be very practical to get a firm grasp of to help the flow of conversation. Of course, in Japanese there might be some of these phrases that don't translate so well, but for a general "point":

that is a good question
that is such a difficult question
once upon a time, long ago

understandably
frankly speaking
between you and me
anyway
well then
well, as a matter of fact
how can I put it?
I must say that
firstly
secondly
I would like you to know that
I am afraid that
now and then it seems to me that
after all
as far as I am concerned
more and more
actually
all joking aside
now seriously

don't be upset, but
it was a slip of the tongue
I said it by mistake
I am sorry that

to tell the truth

Animosophy Wrote:

corry Wrote:A 1/20000 word you will see 50 times a year if you read 1 million words.

Relative to the exposure that children get, 1 million words a year still doesn't come close to a good amount.

Quote:All the kids, whether their parents were talkative or not, heard language. But by age three, the differences in how many words each child heard was significant: some children had heard over 11 million words per year; others only 3 million.

Hearing the words was only the tip of the iceberg. Hart and Risely found that between 86% and 98% of words in each child’s vocabulary were words also recorded in their parent’s vocabulary. And using those words in daily life gave kids “verbal fluency skills”—in other words, they don’t just observe people talking, they practice. By the time they’re three, kids in the least talkative American families accumulate less than 4 million words of expressive language practice, while the most talkative round up over 12 million words. It’s no wonder they have an edge.

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/30000_words/

This implies the most talkative children output up to 12 million words in a year, by naming things, describing things and asking things, with a 3-digit vocabulary. Hard to believe (would have to average 80 words a minute for 6 hours straight!) but after having a rummage through that side youtube and parenting forums, if children can keep it up all day, it's not that much of a stretch lol.. but then again this is for the most talkative children.

A 1/20,000 word would average 400-600 encounters with 8-12 million words total exposure, but it'll be extremely top-heavy.

Learning interactively by talking with someone is totally different. Thats how you get your base vocab and then you are supposed to use that to learn more by reading on your own. Supposedly.

50 times a year is once a week. Maybe the short term memory they are talking about to remember the last time you read the same word and sort of consolidate your understanding of it.

Edit: Oops, my calculating is totally wrong. I said a 1/20000 word, but I actually meant the 20000th most frequent word. I wonder what that frequency would be.

corry Wrote:50 times a year is once a week. Maybe the short term memory they are talking about to remember the last time you read the same word and sort of consolidate your understanding of it.

Edit: Oops, my calculating is totally wrong. I said a 1/20000 word, but I actually meant the 20000th most frequent word. I wonder what that frequency would be.

Short term memory is very short - it's your memory of what has happened for the last few seconds. By constantly looping a thought in your mind you can keep it in short term memory for up several minutes, but as soon as you stop actively thinking about it, it's not in short term memory anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory

What you remember in a span of hours or days is all 'long-term memory'. People misuse the term 'short term memory' all the time in colloquial speech to mean 'I can't remember today where I put things away yesterday', but I'm pretty sure the speaker was using it in the correct scientific sense.

I believe the idea was that the better you can hold all the information in a sentence in your mind at once the better you can correctly guess the meaning from context of an unknown word in that sentence. Certainly if you've already forgotten what the unknown word was by the end of the sentence, this makes it hard to guess from context. That's something that happens to me all the time, I reach the end of a sentence and can only remember that there as an unknown word in it, not what it was. Makes for a lot of re-reading when I'm hitting unknowns.

As for the actual frequency of the 20,000th most common word, I don't know but since the most frequent 2000 words take (as I recall off the cuff) upward of 90% of the words that appear, it's already a -lot- less frequent than 1 in 20,000. You could analyze it, but in reality words in the 20,000th range don't appear in anything like even distribution. Usually you're either reading the kind of work that uses that word several times - maybe even a lot, or else the kind of work that doesn't use it at all.

I haven't had time to read this thread. But God DAMN, that was a great talk. Well worth the hour and much more. But does anybody know which video he talks more about the book on activating vocabulary.

I also forgot to write it's name down, so even just the title of the book would be good.

NinKenDo Wrote:I haven't had time to read this thread. But God DAMN, that was a great talk. Well worth the hour and much more. But does anybody know which video he talks more about the book on activating vocabulary.

I also forgot to write it's name down, so even just the title of the book would be good.

How to improve your foreign language immediately

ktcgx Wrote:

NinKenDo Wrote:I haven't had time to read this thread. But God DAMN, that was a great talk. Well worth the hour and much more. But does anybody know which video he talks more about the book on activating vocabulary.

I also forgot to write it's name down, so even just the title of the book would be good.

How to improve your foreign language immediately

Yep, here it is:

Unfortunately somewhat difficult to procure whilst in Japan

I found data from the COCA. The 20000th lemma (head word) has a frequency just less than 1 in a million. Except for manatee (?) they are all really normal words that you know exactly what they mean.

I cant really believe that you learned the meaning of these words just from haveing seen them a dozen times.

19901 descriptor n 489 0.75
19908 bot n 468 0.79
19915 uproot v 393 0.94
19922 precipice n 402 0.91
19929 still v 428 0.86
19936 synopsis n 413 0.89
19943 poncho n 408 0.90
19950 season v 407 0.90
19957 panicky j 403 0.91
19964 glassware n 405 0.90
19971 fluttering j 422 0.86
19978 muddle v 390 0.93
19985 docile j 394 0.92
19992 peroxide n 418 0.87
19999 store-bought j 411 0.89
20006 echoing j 410 0.89
20013 regalia n 405 0.90
20020 bipartisanship n 459 0.79
20027 fanaticism n 398 0.91
20034 uninvited j 394 0.92
20041 lunch v 399 0.91
20048 post-mortem n 390 0.93
20055 bro n 425 0.85
20062 prejudice v 390 0.93
20069 escaping j 386 0.94
20076 manatee n 443 0.82
20083 sit n 394 0.92
20090 ugh u 410 0.88
20097 erroneously r 397 0.91

corry Wrote:I found data from the COCA. The 20000th lemma (head word) has a frequency just less than 1 in a million. Except for manatee (?) they are all really normal words that you know exactly what they mean.

I cant really believe that you learned the meaning of these words just from haveing seen them a dozen times.

A manatee is a prettier name for the sea cow, which is a particular sea-dwelling mammal. If you spend a lot of time in large aquariums or watching nature shows you'd know them, if you don't you wouldn't. Well, unless you live near where they live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee

Is that n/v/j column the part of speech? It seems suspicous that 'season' and 'sit' have the same frequency as 'precipice' and 'manatee', but it makes more sense if it's only the verb 'season' and the noun 'sit'.

That 'bro' and 'ugh' are in this range only goes to show that a corpus of written material isn't much help with spoken frequencies.

Even so, there's not a word in there that I haven't read or heard hundreds of times. (Well maybe dozens for manatee.) Then again, I've read a lot of English over the years. A lot more than 4 pages a day or whatever was mentioned.

If I recall correctly, if you're looking at the same chance as the sample size, the odds are just slightly over 50%, so reading 1 million words a year gives you a 50/50 shot of seeing each of these 1 in a million words in a year.

I feel like you'd need to read enough to encounter these words more than once every year or two to become well spoken.

kodorakun Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:

NinKenDo Wrote:I haven't had time to read this thread. But God DAMN, that was a great talk. Well worth the hour and much more. But does anybody know which video he talks more about the book on activating vocabulary.

I also forgot to write it's name down, so even just the title of the book would be good.

How to improve your foreign language immediately

Yep, here it is:

Unfortunately somewhat difficult to procure whilst in Japan

It's not, I just bought it off amazon.co.jp... simple

Amazon.co.jp says it will take 2 or 4 weeks to deliver. That usually means they have a record but don't have the book. Sometimes I've ordered books that they, in the end, can't find or deliver and offer a refund. Anyways, if it comes quickly let me know and I'll buy it too!