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I know nothing of Chinese, but in western languages, like English, a number of words may be "unique" when counted by a simple algorithm, (even if - as the autho
by jaclaz 9y ago
I know nothing of Chinese, but in western languages, like English, a number of words may be "unique" when counted by a simple algorithm, (even if - as the author did - words were reduced to their "basic form" thus deduplicating a lot of slightly different forms) but often you can get the meaning of the word by the context and by similarities with other knwown words, so the 90% percentage while actually meaning that you don't know 1 word every 10, does not directly mean that you cannot understand 1 word every 10 or that your reading experience is so horrible.
Every reader attempting to learn a new language goes through that odd phase where he/she can manage to understand the overall meaning of a sentence even if there is one or two "holes" in it, and actually it is part of the learning process.
- imron 9y agoAlthough you might be able to pick up the meaning or get the gist of the occasional word at 1 in 10, the video I linked to in [1] above makes a convincing case that the rate at which unknown words stop being a hindrance to understanding and can be picked up from context is around 98%
- jaclaz 9y agoMost probably that 98% is an extremely accurate number, along the metrics of the professor, and I was not commenting on that video (that I didn't watch), I was only relating what in my experience happens, in my experience it isn't so horrible and I am still within that experience with more than one language where I scarcely reach 70 or (maybe) 80%.