how many words to 'know' a language

Skippy   Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:39 am GMT
Ok, obviously, if you know thousands of words in any language, that won't be enough to be 'fluent.' Nevertheless, most people learn grammar along the way, so the number of words may be a 'good enough' indicator. So I'm wondering, how many words do you have to know before you can consider yourself fluent in a language and why?

Just put the language you're talking about, the number of words, and how you came to your conclusion. Thanks!
Topol-M   Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:49 am GMT
Fluency and vocabulary are only loosely related. There are native speakers who have never read a book in their life and have extremely limited vocabularies, and yet they are still fluent. I'm a foreigner and I probably know twice as many words as some of them, however, although I can read and write English very well, my speaking skills are crap and so I wouldn't consider myself fluent.
user   Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:46 am GMT
One
The Logician   Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:53 am GMT
Rapid mental calculations reveal the number of words to be 12341.5948391859304923563453... (I could not calculate any more digits due to time constraints, however the number is irrational and hence has an infinite decimal expansion). I can formulate a program to calculate this number to a million decimals if you want me to.
K. T.   Wed Jun 10, 2009 10:58 pm GMT
Brennus is back. Wow.

"Essential communication in a language can be achieved with a knowledge of as little as 800 words. That's about all that Ogden's Basic English (developed in the 1930's) has."

Interesting.


"However, in order to carry on a minimally intelligent conversation in a language a person needs to know at least 10,000 words."

Hmm. I wonder if this includes passive understanding of cognates.
I don't know.

"A highly intelligent conversation will require a knowledge of at least 40,000 words."

I only know a few highly intelligent people and they probably dumb things down for me. I'd like to know the source for this number.

Sure, it's good to learn languages when you are five or six, but if you learn enough of them, it really isn't that hard to continue picking up new ones if you have the enthusiasm to do so.
polymath   Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:53 am GMT
"A highly intelligent conversation will require a knowledge of at least 40,000 words."


Yeah right. Maybe if you are a polymath and want to have intelligent conversations on history, maths, physics, sociology, medicine, chemistry, biology, computer science, economics and literature all at the same time. But most people only have 'highly intelligent conversations' in their own specialisation, so they only need a small amount of specialised vocabulary.
Xie   Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:45 pm GMT
Oral and written language may have to be distinguished very clearly.

For oral language, yes, I agree that you don't even have to know a lot of words to become fluent. Almost everybody who can speak speaks at least one native language, and yet millions of people are illiterate.

But to function in a normal, literate society, a foreign learner often has to equip themselves with a very good literate vocab. to survive. It's natural to see many foreign learners are also well educated, even though this may actually affect their learning progress - the disappointing discrepancy between education level and language ability.
Usuário   Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:22 pm GMT
30,000 words
Eddy   Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:23 am GMT
Brennus wrote,

<< Essential communication in a language can be achieved with a knowledge of as little as 800 words. That's about all that Ogden's Basic English (developed in the 1930's) has.

However, in order to carry on a minimally intelligent conversation in a language a person needs to know at least 10,000 words. A highly intelligent conversation will require a knowledge of at least 40,000 words.

It takes a long time to learn 40,000 words. So, the younger one starts learning them in life, the better. >>

I have seen a number of references to 3000 words. With 3000 words one can easily proactively participate in everyday conversations. One foreign language dictionary publisher that use to advertise that their dictionaries cover 2000 words have recently upgraded their dictionaries to cover 3000 words. Also 3000 to 5000 words has been descibed as the level where one can easily work independently.

I strongly suggest that you set 3000 words as your main goal in undertaking a language learning project. These three thousand words are of course the most commonly used 3000 words. This is perhaps the best single item of advice you're ever likely to get on language learning.
Eddy   Fri Jul 10, 2009 3:29 am GMT
Further to the above, you can certainly appear to be fluent to many native speakers with 3000 words, particularly if it is a one off conversation and if you know each of these three thousand words as well as you know the French word for "white".
qwert   Fri Jul 10, 2009 7:52 am GMT
"A highly intelligent conversation will require a knowledge of at least 40,000 words"

If you ever submitted texts to a language analyse software you'd know that even very long novels use largely less than 10,000 different words. Typical values are in the range of 4,000 to 6,000.
Eddy   Tue Jul 14, 2009 4:16 am GMT
Also worth noting here is a quote from the famous linguist, Boye Lafayette De Mente:

"I know many people whose total vocabulary in a foreign language is less than 100 (one hundred) words. Nevertheless, they manage to communicate to an extraordinary degree and benefit tremendusly from their limited knowledge."
K. T.   Sat Jul 18, 2009 2:21 pm GMT
Knowing that BLD has published on a variety of topics, I have to wonder-would you know the context/source for that quote?

Charles Berlitz did a book of eighty-some important words in a number of languages. Perhaps 85 was the number. It depends on your language needs.

It's possible to communicate in Chinese on a very basic level by writing characters on the palm of your hand. Of course, you have to know which ones. The same thing could be done in English by writing words like "big", "little" "food" on a piece of paper.

I think 1500 words is a good first goal, then 3000, etc. Vocabulearn is a good way to do this as they have 1500 words in their first level, 1500 in the next level. Some complete sets have 7500 words. You can certainly make yourself understood with that number.
Andy H.   Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:22 pm GMT
When I lived in Germany for 3 years, I acquired a vocabulary of about 1000 German words, and was able to function very well in German society. Not sure if you'd consider that fluent, but it worked for me!
K. T.   Fri Jul 24, 2009 7:54 pm GMT
Just curious, what were you able to do with 1000 words? Did you count the words you knew? What about cognates with English?

With the right 1000 words, I think I could shop, take the train, read some children's books, fill out basic forms, greet people I know, give and understand directions and basic needs. Is this about right for you?