4 ms·

I read years ago that: 1. TV vocabulary is 2,000 words 2. High school vocabulary is 10,000 words 3. College vocabulary is 30,000 words 4. English language h

I read years ago that: 1. TV vocabulary is 2,000 words 2. High school vocabulary is 10,000 words 3. College vocabulary is 30,000 words 4. English language has 1,000,000 words This is good news - you can be proficient in a foreign language by learning only 2,000 words!

Guestmodinfo 3mo ago
Please someone tell me where to get those 1 million words in decreasing order of difficulty or ascending order of usage along with their meanings and insinuations
- WalterBright 3mo ago
  Sounds like a job for LLMs.
  - mahdi7d1 3mo ago
    Only if you mean llms finding already compiled lists on the internet. Since they would be too inefficient for actually compiling a list themselves.
- stevesimmons 3mo ago
  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists
  - bilegeek 3mo ago
    Also worth going through the references of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law
theli0nheart 3mo ago
Being proficient in a language is really less about memorizing words than it is pronunciation and grammar. Memorization itself is pretty easy.
- refactor_master 3mo ago
  No, memorize many noun most important. Grammar less Important. Can do food, can do travel, can do tax. Because, noun most important.
  - WalterBright 3mo ago
    Working with ESL people makes it clear that grammar isn't so important. One of my friends would say, instead of "go shopping", would say "make some shoppings". Instead of "it's time to go", he'd say "time for go". All words that started with 's' were pronounced 'ehs', as in "gas ehstation". The other people at work soon picked those lines up, and we used them regularly amongst ourselves. I still use them decades later!
    - ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
      But your friend was applying consistent rules of grammar from his mother tongue. Having learned some vocabulary, he would mentally form the phrases in his head, and then literally translate out the words and tenses. Grammar was so important to him that he was adhering to the grammatical rules he knew. It would be interesting to know how he would perform with writing or typing instead of contemporaneous conversation. "go" in particular is an irregular verb, and also one of the most versatile words in the English language. Having studied how to conjugate "go" in other languages, I do not envy anyone trying to conjugate or just use it in an English sentence!
      - WalterBright 3mo ago
        The point was I understood him perfectly despite the execrable grammar.
        Thraway198 3mo ago
        That's cause you knew what he wanted to do, and there was no other possible meaning from "make some shopping." If he just said "make shopping some" it would have been less clear.
jonahx 3mo ago
> This is good news - you can be proficient in a foreign language by learning only 2,000 words! Depends what you mean by "proficient". I currently know ~6k Spanish words and would hesitate to self-apply that word. Others might, but damn languages are hard.
- WalterBright 3mo ago
  > Depends what you mean by "proficient". I thought I was pretty clear - you could understand at the level of television. Television scripts are dumbed down.
  - jonahx 3mo ago
    Depends on a number of factors, but the majority of people with a 2k word vocabulary would not understand much of a Spanish television show or news cast at native speed. If you were reading the script, it might be different.
crazygringo 3mo ago
Those numbers aren't right. I don't know what "TV vocabulary" is even supposed to mean... but even if you're talking about just sitcoms it's way more than 2,000 words. You cannot be proficient in a foreign language with just 2,000 words. That's generally considered around the "basic" level of language learning classes, before intermediate and advanced. A fluent adult generally knows 15,000-30,000 words. The English language really only has 50,000-60,000 words, depending on how you count them. I have no idea where you got the "million" figure but it's nonsensical. Like it's not even a matter of how many archaic or technical terms you include, it's off by a full order of magnitude no matter what.

Guestmodinfo 3mo ago

Please someone tell me where to get those 1 million words in decreasing order of difficulty or ascending order of usage along with their meanings and insinuations

WalterBright 3mo ago
Sounds like a job for LLMs.
- mahdi7d1 3mo ago
  Only if you mean llms finding already compiled lists on the internet. Since they would be too inefficient for actually compiling a list themselves.
stevesimmons 3mo ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists
- bilegeek 3mo ago
  Also worth going through the references of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

theli0nheart 3mo ago

Being proficient in a language is really less about memorizing words than it is pronunciation and grammar. Memorization itself is pretty easy.

refactor_master 3mo ago
No, memorize many noun most important. Grammar less Important. Can do food, can do travel, can do tax. Because, noun most important.
- WalterBright 3mo ago
  Working with ESL people makes it clear that grammar isn't so important. One of my friends would say, instead of "go shopping", would say "make some shoppings". Instead of "it's time to go", he'd say "time for go". All words that started with 's' were pronounced 'ehs', as in "gas ehstation". The other people at work soon picked those lines up, and we used them regularly amongst ourselves. I still use them decades later!
  - ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
    But your friend was applying consistent rules of grammar from his mother tongue. Having learned some vocabulary, he would mentally form the phrases in his head, and then literally translate out the words and tenses. Grammar was so important to him that he was adhering to the grammatical rules he knew. It would be interesting to know how he would perform with writing or typing instead of contemporaneous conversation. "go" in particular is an irregular verb, and also one of the most versatile words in the English language. Having studied how to conjugate "go" in other languages, I do not envy anyone trying to conjugate or just use it in an English sentence!
    - WalterBright 3mo ago
      The point was I understood him perfectly despite the execrable grammar.
      - Thraway198 3mo ago
        That's cause you knew what he wanted to do, and there was no other possible meaning from "make some shopping." If he just said "make shopping some" it would have been less clear.

jonahx 3mo ago

> This is good news - you can be proficient in a foreign language by learning only 2,000 words! Depends what you mean by "proficient". I currently know ~6k Spanish words and would hesitate to self-apply that word. Others might, but damn languages are hard.

WalterBright 3mo ago
> Depends what you mean by "proficient". I thought I was pretty clear - you could understand at the level of television. Television scripts are dumbed down.
- jonahx 3mo ago
  Depends on a number of factors, but the majority of people with a 2k word vocabulary would not understand much of a Spanish television show or news cast at native speed. If you were reading the script, it might be different.

crazygringo 3mo ago

Those numbers aren't right. I don't know what "TV vocabulary" is even supposed to mean... but even if you're talking about just sitcoms it's way more than 2,000 words. You cannot be proficient in a foreign language with just 2,000 words. That's generally considered around the "basic" level of language learning classes, before intermediate and advanced. A fluent adult generally knows 15,000-30,000 words. The English language really only has 50,000-60,000 words, depending on how you count them. I have no idea where you got the "million" figure but it's nonsensical. Like it's not even a matter of how many archaic or technical terms you include, it's off by a full order of magnitude no matter what.