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Speculation: if you want to be a Scrabble master, you need to know N words, where N is much bigger than the vocabulary of a native speaker. So you're not at a b
by yodsanklai 7y ago
Speculation: if you want to be a Scrabble master, you need to know N words, where N is much bigger than the vocabulary of a native speaker. So you're not at a big disadvantage compared to a native speaker.
- majos 7y agoYeah, but the native speaker already has k words. This article [1] puts the number of distinct French root words (i.e., ignoring conjugation and other modifications) at around 65,000. This long-running online test [2] pegs the average English native speaker vocabulary size as maybe 25,000. So k might be at least N/3. That's not nothing! Disclaimer: I know nothing about linguistics. [1] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/international-scrabble-the-size-of-the-dictionary-depends-on-how-words-get-inflected.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/international-scrab... [2] http://testyourvocab.com/ http://testyourvocab.com/
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoBut I'm assuming for French Scrabble that you're allowed to use any conjugated form of a verb, for example, or the masculine/feminine/plural forms of nouns and adjectives. Memorizing all these forms individually seems like a nightmare (as a French learner I know...) where a native speaker would have a much better sense for the rules that dictate ending changes, even for the large amount of irregular verbs. Also, memorizing all the different accented letters seems like it would be super difficult for an English speaker, but again not sure how French Scrabble treats accents.