3 ms·
5000 vocabulary cards. It won't be enough. You need (say) 5000 words, but you'd need a lot more idioms to be near native.
by wisty 15y ago
5000 vocabulary cards. It won't be enough.
You need (say) 5000 words, but you'd need a lot more idioms to be near native.
- acqq 15y agoExactly, in the language of the most of the readers here: just like knowing all C++ keywords and class names in the libraries doesn't make you fluent in C++ to the level of "can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices" (that is a C1 definition).
- soc 15y ago5000? I have close to 8000 in japanese and I consider myself still a beginner. Native is at least 20000-25000. As long as you are continuing to learn then 5000 is a nice start, but you are not going to read novels and speak about broad topics with that vocabulary.
- _delirium 15y agoAre we talking about vocabulary usage or recognition? Estimates vary, but the rough consensus for English seems to be that the educated native speaker recognizes around 15,000-25,000 words, but only uses around 5,000-8,000 in their own speech/writing.
- chastened 15y agoThe average vocabulary of the average person in their NATIVE TONGUE is just over 3500 words (it varies a lot from culture to culture). The average vocabulary of a University Graduate in the Arts is 10-12000 words. In the sciences it varies greatly, chemistry, biology and medicine being the most demanding at >15,000. Someone with a vocabulary of 20-25000 words would be highly educated or very well read, or an specialist in a field. If you have a Japanese vocabulary of 8000 words, you already have a bigger vocabulary than 74.13% of the population (if you understand what that percentage represents, you already have a larger vocabulary than the majority of people).
- w1ntermute 15y agoI don't know where you got that idea from, but I took an online test for English (which is my native language) vocabulary, and found that I knew about 30000 words. And I wouldn't consider myself to be that unusual.
- chastened 15y agoWas that an estimate, or did you actually click through 30,000 words? If the latter, your attention span is outside 2 standard deviations.