4 ms·

The strings are neither random nor independent. There are many English cognates, groups of related words, patterns of word formation, etc. It's still an insane

The strings are neither random nor independent. There are many English cognates, groups of related words, patterns of word formation, etc. It's still an insane feat, since it typically takes actual language learners years to get anywhere close to a native speaker's inventory of 10,000+ words.

YawningAngel 2y ago
Depends which language learners. There are people who can learn 50 new words a day for months, but those people are rare and there feats are probably not replicable for most of us. https://isaak.net/mandarin/ https://isaak.net/mandarin/ is an example edit: Isaak is great, but it was 22 words per day not 50
- latentsea 2y ago
  My pace is typically 35 words a day when learning languages and most people think that's insane. It's still only around 1000 a month, which is why I chose that number. That's on the order of 12k a year if you don't miss a single day, which you usually do. The claim here is memorizing a full dictionary in 9 weeks. That has to be at least 40,000 words in 63 days. 634 words per day. And then or forgetting it. It's beyond rare. Its alien.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Have you learnt many languages? I wish I had the energy to wanna do it. In school 35 words a day would be really pushing it for me. It had a really hard time learning English words. I had to study like an hour for 20 words to pass the test. But I learned grammar really fast.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Fluent in Japanese, can watch kdrama and mostly follow along and have basic conversations in Korean, forgot virtually all the Chinese I did but I managed to pass HSK2 after 2 months of study and then HSK3 the following month. I was only in China for 3 months on a work trip, so I thought I'd have some fun.
      - upmind 2y ago
        What do you use to learn different languages? Firstly, where you get your vocabulary from but also pronunciation and grammar?
        latentsea 2y ago
        Anki, Netflix, Preply and social clubs. I start by front loading all the grammar study up to upper-intermediate level as fast as possible. Usually a premade Anki deck of a few thousand sentences will be available for this. Vocab I pick up from native media. I just read or watch whatever I'm interested in, lookup words as I go and put them into Anki. I do full immersion and it works well as access to entertainment in my target languages is a key goal. Pronunciation I pick up through a crap tonne of exposure to native media. Conversation is through a combination of private tutoring and finding people who speak my target languages to hang out with.
  - mb7733 2y ago
    That's fairly different though, he doesn't need to learn the definitions, just memorize the strings. Which is still unbelievable.
michaelt 2y ago
Many players do indeed memorise groups of related words and patterns of word formation. But Nigel Richards? He's on another level: https://youtu.be/35rqRFXPWJo?t=143 https://youtu.be/35rqRFXPWJo?t=143 knowing even exceptions to patterns and differences between dictionaries, for 9-letter words, in a game where players only have 7 letter-tiles.
- brookst 2y ago
  “Patterns” is the key there. Knowing that *OOD has 6ish options is more useful than memorizing each word.
- BarryMilo 2y ago
  I guess he really is a world champion!
latentsea 2y ago
Native speakers have an inventory on the order of 30,000 ~ 40,000 words, and it takes them 30 years for their vocab to reach its peak. I had an Anki deck I built up over a 2 year period containing 17.5k vocab for Japanese and I would still frequently encounter words I didn't know. If you don't actually know the meanings of the words, they may as well be random. What do you have to remember them by if you have no meaning to attach to them? It's not even an insane feat. It's inhuman.
- Towaway69 2y ago
  Inhuman might be going too far since it would imply Nigel Richards isn’t human. <End pedantic rant> Also if one takes character patterns (which words are) and attach other characteristics, such as number of occurrences of individual characters or use ascii numbering to convert to numbers, then these character patterns (aka words) might be simpler to memorise. Meaning is only necessary if you intend to speak the language.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Well he sure ain't a regular human. If you're applying mnemonics to remember things then the act of doing so also takes time and energy. The issue here is the volume of information in the stated time span.
    - Towaway69 2y ago
      It’s certainly an amazing feat and it demonstrates what humans can actually do if they set their minds to it. Just a pity that there are so many regular humans.
      - latentsea 2y ago
        I don't think it really demonstrates what humans can do if they can put their mind to it. I think it demonstrates what a 1 in 8 billion type edge case looks like.

YawningAngel 2y ago

Depends which language learners. There are people who can learn 50 new words a day for months, but those people are rare and there feats are probably not replicable for most of us. https://isaak.net/mandarin/ https://isaak.net/mandarin/ is an example edit: Isaak is great, but it was 22 words per day not 50

latentsea 2y ago
My pace is typically 35 words a day when learning languages and most people think that's insane. It's still only around 1000 a month, which is why I chose that number. That's on the order of 12k a year if you don't miss a single day, which you usually do. The claim here is memorizing a full dictionary in 9 weeks. That has to be at least 40,000 words in 63 days. 634 words per day. And then or forgetting it. It's beyond rare. Its alien.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Have you learnt many languages? I wish I had the energy to wanna do it. In school 35 words a day would be really pushing it for me. It had a really hard time learning English words. I had to study like an hour for 20 words to pass the test. But I learned grammar really fast.
  - latentsea 2y ago
    Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Fluent in Japanese, can watch kdrama and mostly follow along and have basic conversations in Korean, forgot virtually all the Chinese I did but I managed to pass HSK2 after 2 months of study and then HSK3 the following month. I was only in China for 3 months on a work trip, so I thought I'd have some fun.
    - upmind 2y ago
      What do you use to learn different languages? Firstly, where you get your vocabulary from but also pronunciation and grammar?
      - latentsea 2y ago
        Anki, Netflix, Preply and social clubs. I start by front loading all the grammar study up to upper-intermediate level as fast as possible. Usually a premade Anki deck of a few thousand sentences will be available for this. Vocab I pick up from native media. I just read or watch whatever I'm interested in, lookup words as I go and put them into Anki. I do full immersion and it works well as access to entertainment in my target languages is a key goal. Pronunciation I pick up through a crap tonne of exposure to native media. Conversation is through a combination of private tutoring and finding people who speak my target languages to hang out with.
- mb7733 2y ago
  That's fairly different though, he doesn't need to learn the definitions, just memorize the strings. Which is still unbelievable.

michaelt 2y ago

Many players do indeed memorise groups of related words and patterns of word formation. But Nigel Richards? He's on another level: https://youtu.be/35rqRFXPWJo?t=143 https://youtu.be/35rqRFXPWJo?t=143 knowing even exceptions to patterns and differences between dictionaries, for 9-letter words, in a game where players only have 7 letter-tiles.

brookst 2y ago
“Patterns” is the key there. Knowing that *OOD has 6ish options is more useful than memorizing each word.
BarryMilo 2y ago
I guess he really is a world champion!

latentsea 2y ago

Native speakers have an inventory on the order of 30,000 ~ 40,000 words, and it takes them 30 years for their vocab to reach its peak. I had an Anki deck I built up over a 2 year period containing 17.5k vocab for Japanese and I would still frequently encounter words I didn't know. If you don't actually know the meanings of the words, they may as well be random. What do you have to remember them by if you have no meaning to attach to them? It's not even an insane feat. It's inhuman.

Towaway69 2y ago
Inhuman might be going too far since it would imply Nigel Richards isn’t human. <End pedantic rant> Also if one takes character patterns (which words are) and attach other characteristics, such as number of occurrences of individual characters or use ascii numbering to convert to numbers, then these character patterns (aka words) might be simpler to memorise. Meaning is only necessary if you intend to speak the language.
- latentsea 2y ago
  Well he sure ain't a regular human. If you're applying mnemonics to remember things then the act of doing so also takes time and energy. The issue here is the volume of information in the stated time span.
  - Towaway69 2y ago
    It’s certainly an amazing feat and it demonstrates what humans can actually do if they set their minds to it. Just a pity that there are so many regular humans.
    - latentsea 2y ago
      I don't think it really demonstrates what humans can do if they can put their mind to it. I think it demonstrates what a 1 in 8 billion type edge case looks like.