im native japanese and tried them. i didn't know some of those words and the result is 40000.

its good? i dont know.

ive been studing english for a couple years and now my english vocabulary is about 8000 according to my book's examination.

i wonder if natives (i mean both of japanese and english speaker) know 40000 to 50000 words. i cant count how many i know japanese but im not sure i know 40000 japnese words. i cant believe that much.

how many do you think you know english words? its my question which is always in my mind.

and sorry for my POOR english

test 1: 7000
test 2: 9300
test 3: 5400

mooou~
Well, didn't expect much anyway.

湯たんぽ!!! ❤

benkyou Wrote:ive been studing english for a couple years and now my english vocabulary is about 8000 according to my book's examination. [...]

how many do you think you know english words? its my question which is always in my mind.

According to a paper that someone linked to earlier:

* A few extremely common words make up most of the English language. About 2000 word families cover about 85-90% of the words in general written texts.
*We need to know 8000-9000 word families to read a novel or newspaper with 98% vocabulary coverage.
*"Word family" means all related words. For e.g. use/useless/user/disuse

Benkyou, I think you're doing really well after 2 years! Please don't hesitate to post.

Thora Wrote:

benkyou Wrote:ive been studing english for a couple years and now my english vocabulary is about 8000 according to my book's examination. [...]

how many do you think you know english words? its my question which is always in my mind.

According to a paper that someone linked to earlier:

* A few extremely common words make up most of the English language. About 2000 word families cover about 85-90% of the words in general written texts.
*We need to know 8000-9000 word families to read a novel or newspaper with 98% vocabulary coverage.
*"Word family" means all related words. For e.g. use/useless/user/disuse

Benkyou, I think you're doing really well after 2 years! Please don't hesitate to post.

That is a fascinating and very very enlightening read. It has brought to light many reasons why input = output but what kind of input is needed, how much and why. Really interesting explanations on what text books (and things like KO, smart fm for that matter) do for you're learning (or don't) and production ability. Very illuminating indeed. Thanks for the link.

@Benkyou,
Don't refrain from posting again, not because of your English.
It is already much better than mine when I started to write in English in the Internet.

"Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000."

Source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary

"満年齢で6歳になる子どもの場合、理解語彙の総量は、およそ5000～6000語ほど。13歳では3万語前後。20歳ではおよそ4万5000～50000語ほどという調査結果が出ている"

Source: Japanese wikipedia http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99

My translation:
"When completing 6 years of age, children have a vocabulary size of around 5.000 to 6.000 words. At 13 years old it is 30.000+. At 20 years old, it is around 45.000 to 50.000 words, according to the result of the research."

I'd say these numbers are pretty consistent with what I read before. A person's Japanese vocabulary seems to be larger than English.

The results of those studies can vary a lot depending on how you count words. What's included in a "word family", what counts as independent words, etc.

Yes, that's true. Each word Family in English might be bigger, and words can carry more meanings. In Japanese each word seems to have a more specific meaning and the word families are smaller.

mentat Wrote:Each word Family in English might be bigger, and words can carry more meanings. In Japanese each word seems to have a more specific meaning and the word families are smaller.

I find broad comparisons between languages kind of interesting - the idea that some languages are better suited to certain purposes. But beyond that, and beyond providing a gauge for learners, it's hard to imagine assessing or comparing individual vocab levels or isolating vocab from other language requirements.

Since I mentioned the 2000 English word families earlier, I thought I'd refer Benkyou to to a list. My understanding is that it includes 2000 most common words and their word families (~8000 words) (by Paul Nation, New Zealand)

1st 1000 2nd 1000

There are several other word lists and other information on that site as well. Wordlists here There's also a program that colour codes pasted text by vocab frequency levels (and gives a breakdown). The idea is to better select reading material at the appropriate level.

I wonder if that program exists (or could be modified) for Japanese? I have a cleaned up copy of that Leeds Japanese word frequency list around somewhere (~15,000 words). For self studiers, it might be like having a teacher picking suitable material from native sources (at least in terms of vocab.)

Isn't just easier to read what you want and learn the words that apear?
You'll also be guided by frequency of the words, but you'll be working on a frequency list personalized by your needs.

Why not combine them? I think there's a core of general vocab and kanji to be learned before needing to think about area-specific stuff. But even after that, within a particle area or genre there's still a range of difficulty. A lot of reading at the right level really does build up reading fluency. And it's motivating ("Hey, look at me! I'm reading!") Detailed reading and analyzing what's going on can still be done separately.

I agree with Mentat's observation ages ago that grammar's pretty straightforward, but it takes a long time to build vocab and familiarity with usage and expressions. We need to see familiar words used in many different ways. That, to me, is more effective and fun that SRSing a word in the exact same sentence 8 times.

I thought such a program might be useful to identify writers who tend to use simpler vocab, or to check whether an online article or blog is intended for specialists or general readers, etc.

Then again, perhaps reading native material comfortably requires a certain threshold and after that vocab frequency is too mixed. If so, graded readers and stuff aimed at junior/high school might still be the best option. I don't know, but I'm curious.