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I've said it before, but the problem with having only a hundred words is that they are the hardest one hundred words in any languages. To a foreign learner, ea

I've said it before, but the problem with having only a hundred words is that they are the hardest one hundred words in any languages. To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy. To someone learning English as a foreign language, "banish" is easy to understand: it has just one meaning, so once you memorize it, you can recognize it whenever it's used. "Turn out", on the other hand, has half a dozen meanings and you have to rely on context. In the extreme case, imagine explaining the word "the" to someone whose native language doesn't have an article.

Florin_Andrei 7y ago
Reading the article, I realized there must be some optimal sizes for vocabulary. I say sizes, plural, because there must be some layers there in terms of usage frequency. Toki Pona clearly goes to an extreme of simplicity in vocabulary space. But what is "optimal"? You would expect languages, in their natural evolution, tend towards it all the time.
- csa 7y ago
  Optimal for whom? Any system is fairly trivial for native speakers — they just learn it. For non-native learners, the optimum level is probably the closest to what their native language is. Simple examples, it’s easier for a native speaker of Japanese to learn Mandarin since their is substantial overlap in vocabulary via the significant Chinese influence in the Japanese language. That said, all other things being equal, the number is probably on the low side. As a simple example, Indonesian seems to be a relatively easy language for folks coming from any language to learn, even if their native language is linguistically distant. I believe this is due to the relatively small amount of functional vocabulary.
csa 7y ago
Totally agree, and I have data to support this buried in some drive somewhere. Interestingly, I had a famous SLA researcher/professor tell me that this was a non-issue. I assume it was because she dealt mostly with Dutch learners of English, but I found it to be fantastically short-sighted.
monadic2 7y ago
Sure but your “easy” words are useless in most sentences. Think of all the words not in this sentence!
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> imagine explaining the word "the" to someone whose native language doesn't have an article Much like "turn out", there are many different ways in which "the" might be used. But as contrasted with "a" ("explain it to someone who doesn't have articles"), it's not that bad -- "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context. More generally, "the" and "a" are markers for what is known in linguistics as "definiteness", with "the" being an unspecialized definiteness marker and "a" being a more specialized indefiniteness marker. But there are many other determiners that require or mark definiteness -- possessives like my and their are definite; demonstratives like this and that are definite; some is a fully general indefiniteness marker... (Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.) > To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy. Yep. I've pointed out before that most people have the instinct that when a foreigner doesn't know the language well, you should talk to them the same way you'd talk to a small child. But that's completely backwards. The typical small child only knows common words and can handle any native grammar at all. A foreigner will have trouble with common words, effortlessly comprehend rare words (after looking them up), and have extreme trouble with grammar beyond the basics. I had a Chinese tutor once who was embarrassed when a rare word came up in some reading, and assured me that this was a "really fancy word" and it didn't matter if I didn't know it. The assurance was not needed -- at the time, my vocabulary was negligible; to me there was no difference between a really fancy word and its dirt-common equivalent. It's taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can be annoyed to encounter a fancy substitute for a word I feel I should have known.
- canjobear 7y ago
  > "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context. > (Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.) This rule is OK but it fails for the following case: A man you've never seen before runs into your office and says "The President is outside!" Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. But "a President is outside!" is clearly wrong. More generally, any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles. The rules of natural languages are extraordinarily complex, although we have the illusion that we can understand them explicitly. That's why rule-based NLP systems have always seemed attractive, and have always failed.
canjobear 7y ago
It's probably true that in real natural languages, the 100 most frequent words are also the most ambiguous. Languages have evolved this way because (native) speakers can easily disambiguate, so there's no need to be precise all the time. But Toki Pona is a constructed language, so it might not have this property.
bladedtoys 7y ago
The most common hundred words is challenging. But maybe not the most common hundred concepts. "Turn out" is ambiguous but the notions of "expulsion" or "away" or "count" and "people" may not be. It would be extremely useful to have a list of the most common core concepts shared by all cultures. Some maybe tricky like colors, but there must be a great many in common because it is possible to communicate after all.

Florin_Andrei 7y ago

Reading the article, I realized there must be some optimal sizes for vocabulary. I say sizes, plural, because there must be some layers there in terms of usage frequency. Toki Pona clearly goes to an extreme of simplicity in vocabulary space. But what is "optimal"? You would expect languages, in their natural evolution, tend towards it all the time.

csa 7y ago
Optimal for whom? Any system is fairly trivial for native speakers — they just learn it. For non-native learners, the optimum level is probably the closest to what their native language is. Simple examples, it’s easier for a native speaker of Japanese to learn Mandarin since their is substantial overlap in vocabulary via the significant Chinese influence in the Japanese language. That said, all other things being equal, the number is probably on the low side. As a simple example, Indonesian seems to be a relatively easy language for folks coming from any language to learn, even if their native language is linguistically distant. I believe this is due to the relatively small amount of functional vocabulary.

csa 7y ago

Totally agree, and I have data to support this buried in some drive somewhere. Interestingly, I had a famous SLA researcher/professor tell me that this was a non-issue. I assume it was because she dealt mostly with Dutch learners of English, but I found it to be fantastically short-sighted.

monadic2 7y ago

Sure but your “easy” words are useless in most sentences. Think of all the words not in this sentence!

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> imagine explaining the word "the" to someone whose native language doesn't have an article Much like "turn out", there are many different ways in which "the" might be used. But as contrasted with "a" ("explain it to someone who doesn't have articles"), it's not that bad -- "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context. More generally, "the" and "a" are markers for what is known in linguistics as "definiteness", with "the" being an unspecialized definiteness marker and "a" being a more specialized indefiniteness marker. But there are many other determiners that require or mark definiteness -- possessives like my and their are definite; demonstratives like this and that are definite; some is a fully general indefiniteness marker... (Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.) > To a foreign learner, easy words are hard, and hard words are easy. Yep. I've pointed out before that most people have the instinct that when a foreigner doesn't know the language well, you should talk to them the same way you'd talk to a small child. But that's completely backwards. The typical small child only knows common words and can handle any native grammar at all. A foreigner will have trouble with common words, effortlessly comprehend rare words (after looking them up), and have extreme trouble with grammar beyond the basics. I had a Chinese tutor once who was embarrassed when a rare word came up in some reading, and assured me that this was a "really fancy word" and it didn't matter if I didn't know it. The assurance was not needed -- at the time, my vocabulary was negligible; to me there was no difference between a really fancy word and its dirt-common equivalent. It's taken a lot of work to get to the point where I can be annoyed to encounter a fancy substitute for a word I feel I should have known.

canjobear 7y ago
> "the" is used to mark noun phrases that are already present in the conversational context, and "a" is used to introduce new noun phrases into the conversational context. > (Compare "there's some guy outside scaring customers away" with "there are some guys outside scaring customers away", then consider that a would only be permissible in the first one.) This rule is OK but it fails for the following case: A man you've never seen before runs into your office and says "The President is outside!" Now, the President wasn't part of your conversational context, in fact there was no conversational context, nor any context with the speaker. But "a President is outside!" is clearly wrong. More generally, any attempt to give simple rules for this part of English grammar will fail, and will not generalize to other languages with articles. The rules of natural languages are extraordinarily complex, although we have the illusion that we can understand them explicitly. That's why rule-based NLP systems have always seemed attractive, and have always failed.

canjobear 7y ago

It's probably true that in real natural languages, the 100 most frequent words are also the most ambiguous. Languages have evolved this way because (native) speakers can easily disambiguate, so there's no need to be precise all the time. But Toki Pona is a constructed language, so it might not have this property.

bladedtoys 7y ago

The most common hundred words is challenging. But maybe not the most common hundred concepts. "Turn out" is ambiguous but the notions of "expulsion" or "away" or "count" and "people" may not be. It would be extremely useful to have a list of the most common core concepts shared by all cultures. Some maybe tricky like colors, but there must be a great many in common because it is possible to communicate after all.