Is it possible to learn advanced vocabulary

lazy-guy   Fri Feb 05, 2010 9:58 am GMT
I'm really impressed with these Antimoon guys’ vocabularies. It seems like they are all most native speakers. (Reading and speaking with ease, getting mistaken for native speakers by natives etc) My question is: (it didn't fit in the topic) is it possible to learn advanced vocabulary like them just by reading and listening but without using a computer program like Supermemo? Or how much time would it require?
.   Fri Feb 05, 2010 2:28 pm GMT
<<getting mistaken for native speakers by natives etc>>

I wouldn't go so far as to say this, but you are correct that many of them are impressively good.
lazy-guy   Fri Feb 05, 2010 2:58 pm GMT
My intention was not to tell how impressive they are. Your answer seems irrelevant to the question. I'm asking is it possible to obtain an advanced vocabulary just by intensive, extensive reading.
GGuest   Fri Feb 05, 2010 3:11 pm GMT
<<I'm asking is it possible to obtain an advanced vocabulary just by intensive, extensive reading. >>

Yes, but software like Supermemo (or Anki, which is free) makes it 500% faster and more efficient. There's no limit to how much you can learn with such software.
whoareyoupleasedontwhatis   Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:58 pm GMT
you are impressed, eh, so mark my words:
it's plain simple you have to improve your karma, don't ask me why just do it because THEY ARE WATCHING YOU, yeah! - just like that all the time, you know, so remember there is no escape of Supermemo and stuff. I know you can be fooled by hesitation that you gotta get through the buying yourself a genuine edition, but this is your only chance so far, otherwise you are not gonna be blessed to stand a chance of acquiring advanced vacabulary, ever.
K.   Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:52 pm GMT
If you want advanced vocabulary you should start reading Toefl vocabulary lists and magazines that use those kinds of words-for example, "The Atlantic" or "National Geographic". Then you have to make friends with smart people because people who are always worried about their cool factor aren't going to be using those words (in public anyway).
Quintus   Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:22 am GMT
>>I'm asking is it possible to obtain an advanced vocabulary just by intensive, extensive reading.

That really is one of the best ways, "lazy-guy", in the absence of surrounding yourself with brilliant conversationalists, natural storytellers and intense savants, which you should also strive for. Stay away from the machines, except for some limited structured sessions. Involve yourself with some real books made of paper, glue and cloth and leather. Handle them, carry them around, absorb them, learn from the masters. Take notes of phrases and idioms for yourself in a separate booklet, if you like.

Read the great stylists of English, starting with The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon and (no joke) the King James Bible. (For a fascinating account of how they pieced that Bible together, read God's Secretaries by Adam Nicolson.)

You should have at least two dictionaries on your desk, and buy a copy of Modern English Usage by Fowler (the second edition is best, but do avoid the third edition, for it is too modern for the spirit of the enterprise and throws out the baby with the bathwater).

Read Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), Laurence Sterne (A Sentimental Journey, but Tristram Shandy will have to come later), Oliver Goldsmith (writing as the Citizen of the World) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, his essays and travel books).

If you had to choose only two plays by Shakespeare, then invite a friend who has English to join you in reading through The Tempest and Macbeth - read them aloud with gusto. Get a good annotated edition (with lots of footnotes and a glossary of Elizabethan slang).

Go to a library or a second-hand bookshop and pick up inexpensive reprints of the fairy tales which were translated so beautifully so as to transmit a treasure trove full of word wizardry, worldly wisdom and otherworldly wonder (this is not kids' stuff - you will want them all your life) : Aesop as Englished in 1692 by Sir Roger L'Estrange (who isn't a James Bond villain, but with a name like that he should be) ; classic Victorian renditions of Andersen and Grimm ; Perrault as translated by A. E. Johnson ; and the Arabian Nights as given to all Anglophony by the heroical Sir Richard Burton (read of his life too, in The Devil Drives). (Do not even look at modern translations of these - avoid the name Zipes, for example.)

The two Dubliners S. Le Fanu and Bram Stoker will chill your blood with tales with supernatural horror in exquisitely wrought prose.

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley is a mightily brooding philosophical study as well as a fantastic tale (she was a mere teenager when she wrote it on a dare). One by Dickens which I should mention is Great Expectations.

Lewis Carroll, it goes without saying, should be taken in repeated doses throughout the years - Alice In Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass* and Jabberwocky. Drink in anything you can which was composed by Dylan Thomas --a bright-burning soul-- whether verse or prose (his poems often draw us in with stories, and his stories are always spouting rhymes). Find the famous recording of this poet reading Under Milk Wood.

Have you read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ?- It is an important novel not only for its limpid prose, but also its prophetic eye cast upon modern society. (And it's a rather easy read.) Then, immediately afterwards for some much needed comic relief, you should recite, out loud, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. Follow that with 1984 by Orwell. Take solace in the miraculous nonsense of Edward Lear sometimes.

For science fiction, read The Coming Race (Vril) by Bulwer-Lytton [the beef extract Bovril was named for this once popular literary sensation < bovine + vril].

Two big-hearted American novels definitely to be experienced are Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey and A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole. Another good pairing is the clever war novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and the raw anti-war Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo (a writer who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era).

For plenty of laughing inspiration and finest form by sleight of pen, I can heartily recommend the writings of Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn, The Diaries of Adam and Eve), P. G. Wodehouse (Jeeves stories), historical farces by George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman novels) and the novels of Flann O'Brien (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Dalkey Archive, The Third Policeman).

*(Try to find The Annotated Alice, and similarly schemed editions, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn and The Annotated Frankenstein.) Finally, "lazy-guy", if you have any technical interest in a certain discipline such as chess, art history, botany or ornithology, seek to acquire a good book on that subject in English. Go to a second-hand bookshop and ask a bookman's clerk what's good.

Believe it or not, I have really restrained myself in compiling this list of recommendations for you ! (And I am typing all this while watching the film TROLL - so if that influence bleeds through, you will sense it.)
Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Feb 07, 2010 12:37 pm GMT
Advanced vocabulary naturally comes with experience...the experience of continual study of the English language through reading and verbal practice...the more you read English texts and the more you engage in interactive conversation with either native speakers of English or other learners of the language the more wide ranging will become your vocabulary. Learn a new word every day - that will keep you busy for ever more and a day as English probably has the largest vocabulary than any other language...it certainly contains more synonyms than any other and that's for certain, let no-one dispute that.
Vinalnder   Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:58 pm GMT
Advanced word #1: Jargon
or words for a narrow field of interest.
Just think of all the word you can use for soccer in your native tongue.
These words are not advanced, just the same as the words you mentioned are not advanced.

The idea of jargon is that for every area of interest there are a 1000 words uused to describe or explain it.
People think because there narrow interest in english lit makes them advanced, all there word choice proves is that they have are interested in a one subject.

Just the same when you learn any language, learn the words that correspond to your interest. I like soccer and physics so i might learn words like Entdecken (german for discovery), or Fussbal(german for soccer). If you just learn group of words based on your interest, you will sound very fluent.
However if you spend hours learning words on topics you have no interest in you will sound stupid. I.E. If i know nothing about cooking and I learn words for french cuisine i may appear to be advanced in speech yet be using the right words in the completely wrong context.
codger   Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:06 pm GMT
<<However if you spend hours learning words on topics you have no interest in you will sound stupid. I.E. If i know nothing about cooking and I learn words for french cuisine i may appear to be advanced in speech yet be using the right words in the completely wrong context. >>


Actually you're wrong. It is an absolute must that you do not shun areas that are of no interest to you when acquiring vocabulary. Because you need to know them. I have no interest in cooking, yet in my native language I know a lot of cooking related vocabulary, just by exposure. Nothing advanced, but I still can talk aobut it in general terms. You need to be able to do the same in a foreign language if you're to consider yourself fluent.
Vinlander   Fri Feb 12, 2010 1:43 am GMT
Sorry just trying to counter the ideas of quintis. Suggest that someone should read shakespear to be well read is a bit much. When was the last time you slipped in how art thou into casual conversation.
Of course you should always be striving for more words. Especially words you use in casual conversation. However I took his meaning of Advance words to me jargon or topic specific. There is no sense in learning vocab for things you are ignorant to in your native tongue. I know nothing about cooking in english so it's useless... well unproductive,, to learn the same indept words in another language.
Learn all the to words on topics you know once you know that, start learning while learning the vocab.

If you know nothing of the technical defintion of velocity your gonna sound foolish using it. Just the same if you use auspicious, harmonics, coefficient, antecedent, normative, checking(hockey), doth, thy, fiftyhundred, density, timbre, cognitive, cerebal cortex. If you just learn that density is the same as hardness, your not learning just bad word choice, but further ignorance. Its real hard to unlearn assumptions. My friend is native to arabic and often uses words out of context, simply because he dosen't know the meaning of the word in his own language.
BrE2   Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:08 am GMT
<it certainly contains more synonyms than any other and that's for certain, let no-one dispute that. >

I dispute it. If you think two words are synonyms, you are probably unaware of a) their particular connotations b) the particular registers or contexts in which they are used.
counterer   Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:12 am GMT
Indeed, Damian is dreadfully wrong. Give me an example of these indisputably abundant synonyms in English and I will counter it with examples from other languages.
BrE2   Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:15 am GMT
<Sorry just trying to counter the ideas of quintis. Suggest that someone should read shakespear to be well read is a bit much. >

Quintus has just listed books he likes, not books that would help the OP. How would the KJV count as advanced vocab?
Quintus   Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:32 am GMT
In the English language, a line of great speech or writing just has a rightness to it. That is true whether the English is ancient or modern, wholly Germanic or intensely Latinate, technical or poetical. It rings true in a speech by Winston Churchill or a novel by Flann O'Brien.

Every one of those books I recommended to the original questioner contains plenty of finely wrought advanced vocabulary in the most natural setting possible. That's why I mentioned them to him.

B. E. Two : Yes, that does include the King James. I don't know what "the OP" means, but if you mean other people, then I bear witness to the fact that reading the titles I gave above will indeed help learners---vastly---at any level, whether or not they are native speakers. And we are all learning, aren't we ?

Vinlander : Do you mean to tell us you've never heard someone say "How art thou ?" in a casual conversation ?- They say it all the time in Virginia (which, like Newfoundland, has been an English-speaking colony for four hundred years). Nowadays "How art thou ?" is a light-hearted greeting, a playful way of harking back to our past, the same as "How goes it ?" You've heard that one, I take it ?- I hear it everywhere I go. Try not to be put off by "Big Words", ay ?- In life's lucky moments when a word will appear in its proper context (like in the books I listed), isn't it better you recognise it and affirm your birthright by embracing the whole language ?- Otherwise you are just cheating yourself. You've got to own it.

Leasnam (on another page) : I think your heart's in the right place, and you have some interesting ideas, but if you want something akin to yet purer than English, learn Icelandic. It's pure as fire and ice, not having changed much in a thousand years. Watch out, though, if you go to Iceland you can expect they'll want to practise their English on you. Those Vikings are quite intrigued by what Cousin English has become. Our language itself, growing on less remote islands, has always borrowed from Latin, even back in Anglo-Saxon times.

Yeah, come to think of it I stand by every single book I listed (actually, I'm sitting by them at the moment, on the bookshelves).

Cheers all, and Happy Reading.