Do Numbers Matter?

K. T.   Thu May 28, 2009 2:15 am GMT
Sometimes I estimate the number of words I know in a language as a gauge for myself, but after about 500 words, I don't see a need to do this. Other people seem continually interested with the number of words they know. Are you one of them? If so, why? If not, why?
Brian   Thu May 28, 2009 4:04 am GMT
I would imagine it depends on the language. Knowing how many words would be most important in a language like Japanese or Chinese, moderately important in a language like Slovenian, and utterly meaningless in a language like French. For examplw, I have no idea how many words I know in French. 2000? 20,000? I have no clue.
ssss   Thu May 28, 2009 7:11 pm GMT
I would imagine it depends on the language. Knowing how many words would be most important in a language like Japanese or Chinese, moderately important in a language like Slovenian, and utterly meaningless in a language like French. For examplw, I have no idea how many words I know in French. 2000? 20,000? I have no clue.

What do you mean? Why shoudn't it be important the number of French words you know???
Skippy   Thu May 28, 2009 8:51 pm GMT
I imagine a simple number of vocabulary words wouldn't help much with agglutinating languages.
Brian   Thu May 28, 2009 10:52 pm GMT
Well, every English speaker knows a ton of French words before they even start learning French. I'm sure you can guess what "information" means for example. It would be practically impossible to know how many French words you know due to the shear number of derivatives that English has from the Norman language.