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How many words you learn per year (avg) | ||
Tags: Poll | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4710 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 229 29 April 2015 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to get a general idea of how many words (lexical items, dictionary entries) learners tend to learn per year, across however many languages they are learning, by whatever means you learn them (immersion, flashcards, wordlists, reading, listening, whatever). So if you put down 3001-5000 and you're only studying French, then you'd know 15000-25000 words (assuming you have studied it for 5 years). If you put 8001+ then you know at least 40000 words.
I do not mean how many words you think you could learn if you really put your mind to it, I mean how many do you think you have actually learned on average over the past five years. So if one time you crammed and learned 3000 words in 3 months, this doesn't mean you learn 12000 words per year. I realize that there will likely be a lot of discussion about what a "word" means. Oh well, discuss that if you want. And of course there will be discussion over what "learned" means as well. Each respondant will have to make up their own mind about these things. I also realize that for most of us there will be an element of estimation (e.g. have I learned 2500 words in French or 3500?) You'll just have to make your best guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4150 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 229 29 April 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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In 2013 I've learnt between 5-9k words in Japanese (receptively). In 2014 I've learnt 10-
13k words in Mandarin (receptively). This year, I've learnt so far ~2k characters in Mandarin (productively, by which I mean writing by hand), 600 words in Na'vi (productively), and a few dozen signs in JSL (productively). So I chose "5001-8000." Having started studying languages "seriously" only in December 2012, I guess it's not five years quite yet, but I wouldn't exactly call it short-term either. If you think it's too early to say, just discard my vote. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5037 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 3 of 229 29 April 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know I have learnt at least 1 word per year. This seems to be one of those; "How long is a piece of string?" questions.
I don't track them, but I can tell you now however many I'm learning, the French, Italians, and Chinese seem to be coming up with new ones quicker than I can learn. Or perhaps since they've had hundreds of years they are storing them up! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4322 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 4 of 229 29 April 2015 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Over 5 years? No idea. This included a period of immersion and a period of doing almost nothing.
May Anki stats say: 10276 mature cards, oldest deck: 925 days Young cards are 6090, but I think they contain a lot of cards I put on hold after the first repetition, so let's not count them. Also, I don't believe the deck age, I think I messed up something when I copied one deck someday. The oldest deck should have been started November 2011, so roughly 3.5 years ago. Doing the math: 10276 divided by 3.5 years times 365 days = 2936 cards per year. This contains some duplicates, I guess I should filter out about 2000 cards from the 10276. But on the other hand, I did quite a bit of extensive reading/listening, and who knows how much I learnt there. Swedish alone could probably counted for several thousand words the last year, which is nowhere to be seen in the statistics. The same for Danish the year before. I voted for 3000-5000 words, seems realistic. 6 languages by the way, Norwegian not among them (I have absolutely no idea how much I could've learnt for this language). Edited by daegga on 29 April 2015 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5109 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 5 of 229 29 April 2015 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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How do I count cognates? It takes me one actual encounter to learn that
internet is called "internet" in Spanish. Is that one Spanish word learned or zero? If I didn't learn any language in 2013 and 2014, do I still count from 2010 to 2015, or from 2008? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6398 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 229 29 April 2015 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Internet is not a cognate because it doesn't come from Proto-IE ;) And it's an exception, as it's been borrowed from English into a vast majority of languages and in general you can be reasonably sure that it's the same. (although I'd not count it as learned if I can't say "on the Internet" and/or don't know the foreign pronunciation of it)
But yeah, imo the bigger controversy is not what one word is, but what to do with similar words and when the word is considered as learned. (I'm not generally as strict as in the example with the Internet - and by the criteria above I don't really know this word in Spanish/Italian/Portuguese, as I looked up the expression and my guess was wrong all three times. in Spanish I also got the pronunciation wrong) I voted for 5-8k, where the active vocab is closer to the lower limit. I'd not be able to learn 5k in one language per year. I might have done about 3k Finnish words in a year though, around 2007 or 2008. I did Iversen-style word lists during boring classes (in addition to other learning). Eventually I lost the motivation to attend those classes and got bored with word lists and formal learning in general. Edited by Serpent on 29 April 2015 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5109 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 7 of 229 29 April 2015 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
I got woken up 5am and that was the best example I could come up with... How about "America" :D 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6398 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 229 30 April 2015 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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The point is that much of the time you can't know for sure that the word is the same until you've come across it at least once, maybe even many times.
America is Amerikka in Finnish ;) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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