How much input do I need to not meet any new words any more?

Vytenis   Tue Mar 09, 2010 7:56 pm GMT
There is a new article on Antimoon "How much input do I need to learn the language fluently". I meanwhile would like to ask the question which is more important to me: how much input do I need to no longer encounter any new words or expresions. This is getting really irritating. I have studied English for 8 years at school and then for 5 years at the university and then taught it for 10+ years, there is rarely a day when I do not receivesome kind of input in the English language (spoken or written). And despite all this practice for so many years I encounter new words or expressions every day. And what's worse, not in some obscure specialist literature or some archaic texts, but in everyday magazines like Newsweek or Economist. For example, only just recently (after almost 25 years of contact with this accursed language) I have learned words like "coterie", "clincher", "detritus", "lucre", "melee", "puckish", "plucky" and the like. Is this vocabulary ever going to have any limits???
mike   Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:02 pm GMT
You probably know twice as many word as the average American by now.
mike   Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:03 pm GMT
wordS*
Vytenis   Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:11 pm GMT
Thanks for your compliment, Mike, but then answer me one question: if I know more words than most native English speakers, then why on earth magazines like Economist (which are presumabvly written for native speakers, because I cannot imagine average intermediate non-natives getting head or tail of what is written in its artricles) usee the words and expressions which neither me, nor most native speakers (let alone non-natives) would ever understand?
cubeeggs   Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:39 pm GMT
to sound elitist
Quintus   Tue Mar 09, 2010 11:19 pm GMT
But why are you not revelling in the process, Vytenis ?

If English, in all its glorious profusion, is merely an "accursed language" to you, then stop bothering yourself with it.

You can be just as successful in life learning Mandarin Chinese (with its 41,000 written characters).

Or just stick with your native tongue, Lithuanian, and its endless agglutinations, ten cases of declension, hundreds of participles and oblique proverbial arcana (after all, it is the oldest speech in Europe next to Basque).

If you do decide to cowboy up, to persist and fully embrace English-- then good luck learning the whole of it, Vytenis : nobody can !- New English words are being created every day like volcanic islands. Why, I coined one myself yesterday : cisputative, "characteristic of someone who thinks in a certain way in opposition to a different way of thinking, often with an element of territoriality involved".

Here's another one I'm inventing to-day, just for you ! : transputative, the antonym of cisputative.

A final word of advice : Lay off these magazines, will you ?- Read books. For the true attainment of a sustained limpid style and a confident level of English comprehension, read books by Swift, Stevenson, Huxley and Wodehouse.
Uriel   Wed Mar 10, 2010 2:03 am GMT
Happens to all of us, buddy. Even us native speakers. It's not like we know every word, expression, and piece of jargon in the entire language. Of course, encounters with new words or expressions might be fewer and farther apart for us, but they still happen. ESPECIALLY if you read a lot.

Far from exposing you to enough words that you'll never meet a new one after a certain amount of "input", reading only exposes you to more and more opportunities to discover something new, especially if you are reading about a subject with specialized jargon or a dialect that isn't your own.
thrombosis   Wed Mar 10, 2010 4:46 am GMT
<<For example, only just recently (after almost 25 years of contact with this accursed language) I have learned words like "coterie", "clincher", "detritus", "lucre", "melee", "puckish", "plucky" and the like. Is this vocabulary ever going to have any limits??? >>

<<You probably know twice as many word as the average American by now. >>

<<if I know more words than most native English speakers, then why on earth magazines like Economist (which are presumabvly written for native speakers, because I cannot imagine average intermediate non-natives getting head or tail of what is written in its artricles) usee the words and expressions which neither me, nor most native speakers (let alone non-natives) would ever understand? >>


Hmmm, while it's true that a native speaker might not know these words, most of them wouldn't be too hindered by them. This is because either they have a foggy idea of what the word means (and then can guess the rest from the context), or they can guess as much as they need from the context. A lot of people also just tend to skim over those words without really realising it themselves. For example, I don't know what the dictionary definition of "puckish" or "plucky" is, but I have a vague idea, and if I saw it in context that'd probably be enough to fill in the gaps...
Quintus   Wed Mar 10, 2010 4:57 am GMT
>>reading only exposes you to more and more opportunities to discover something new>>

And makes you better able to process, cope with, tolerate, embrace, and even exult in the new English words.
Uriel   Wed Mar 10, 2010 5:27 am GMT
I've been listening to the Economist at work for the last couple of weeks and I can't say I've heard any new words so far. Of course, I am already familiar with words like "coterie", "clincher", "detritus", "lucre", "melee", "puckish", and "plucky". Sometimes the presenters use what I think of as odd turns of phrase because they're British and I'm American. But so far, that's about it for unusual vocabulary.
K.   Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:10 am GMT
I sometimes see a word I don't know in The Atlantic-probably in the back of the magazine where words are discussed. I see vocabulary related to linguistics here and I certainly have to look up a word once every three months or so. A couple of the regulars come up with some pop-up monster words every once in a while-the kind that scare you into thinking, "Is this an English word? Has it ever been used outside of one week during rehearsals at the globe theater when Will wrote it to his his Catholic cousin asking for advice on whether it would do for a nonsense word until a scholar found the note, wrote it down wrong, put it on a language website and someone posted it right here, hoping to take Tom down with a word that never was?"
Vytenis   Wed Mar 10, 2010 8:06 am GMT
Maybe I really should stop reading elitist rags like Economist and start reading something more pleasurable (like XIX century English literature... LOL). I am sorry for "accursed language" if that offended anyone, I didn't mean it. Actually, I do love the English language, it's just sometimes gets really depressing. English does seem to have the biggest vocabulary in the world and most of it is used very rarely or in very specific situations only. Maybe I should drop the habbit looking up every unknown word I meet and start instead concentrating on the general context? But then I will never learn them.
As for Lithuanian grammar, it may be difficult, but the Lithuanian vocabulary (I mean the one which is in current use, not some obscure archaisms) is probably 10 times smaller! Even Russian with all its vast vocabulary was easier to master than English (although contrary to popular misconception Russian is NOT our native language and NOT similar to Lithuanian).
Vytenis   Wed Mar 10, 2010 8:16 am GMT
Answering the question why would anyone want to learn all the words of English, I have several reasons:

Firstly, I am an English teacher and would like at least know all the words which are in current use (of course I would not bother about some obscure words found in XIX century literary works or in Shakespeare's letters).

Secondly, during the Soviet Union times all of us here wehe force-fed Russian and seemed to learn it so well and to pick up this vast vocabulary with relative ease. Why learning English should be any different, especially considering the huge amount of input that is available at the presenmt time?
Quintus   Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:43 am GMT
>>Maybe I really should stop reading elitist rags like Economist and start reading something more pleasurable (like XIX century English literature... LOL).>>

Well, you know, there is laughter, and then there is laughter, Vytenis. Be on your guard against the reverse snobbery promulgated by the wilfully ignorant of the world. For some individuals it's very easy to sneer and pose smugly and mistake it for sophistication. They're sadly missing out on a lot of fun, however.

No joking in this : There is much reading from the XVIII and XIX centuries that is quite comical and mirth-provoking (often intentionally so).

Cleland wrote "Fanny Hill", which is --how shall I put it ?-- a rather cheeky novelette (hard to come by).

Read Swift, Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding and Thackeray for the riotous funnymaking. "Our Mutual Friend" and "The Pickwick Papers" by Dickens are the toast of lovers of good wit everywhere. A good English translation of "Don Quixote" definitely provides many an hour of madcap pleasure. Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear ?- Guffaws a-plenty await in store there.

But start with P. G. Wodehouse, crawl cancrizans to "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" by Mark Twain, which are hilarious, and so work your way back chronologically. If you're not smiling widely at the drollery of it all by mid Victoriana due west for the Hanovers, you should really see a doctor, as you may have a case of irony-poor blood near the heart of the matter adjacent to the marrow of your funny bone. It's a serious ailment, more common than you might believe. And the cure (noted above) is not to be sneezed at.

While Swift is most famous as a satirist, and mordantly funny, he could also produce quite the transcendental inspiration, as in this wondrous poem of his (which yet retains an earthy humour and a somewhat manic quality) :

~THE PROGRESS OF POETRY~

The Farmer's Goose, who in the Stubble,
Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble;
Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still,
Can scarce get o'er the Barn-Door Sill:
And hardly waddles forth, to cool
Her Belly in the neighb'ring Pool:
Nor loudly cackles at the Door;
For Cackling shews the Goose is poor.

But when she must be turn'd to graze,
And round the barren Common strays,
Hard Exercise, and harder Fare
Soon make my Dame grow lank and spare:
Her Body light, she tries her Wings,
And scorns the Ground, and upward springs,
While all the Parish, as she flies,
Hear Sounds harmonious from the Skies.

Such is the Poet, fresh in Pay,
(The third Night's Profits of his Play;)
His Morning-Draughts 'till Noon can swill,
Among his Brethren of the Quill:
With good Roast Beef his Belly full,
Grown lazy, foggy, fat, and dull:
Deep sunk in Plenty, and Delight,
What Poet e'er could take his Flight?
Or stuff'd with Phlegm up to the Throat,
What Poet e'er could sing a Note?
Nor Pegasus could bear the Load,
Along the high celestial Road;
The Steed, oppress'd, would break his Girth,
To raise the Lumber from the Earth.

But, view him in another Scene,
When all his Drink is Hippocrene,
His Money spent, his Patrons fail,
His Credit out for Cheese and Ale;
His Two-Year's Coat so smooth and bare,
Through ev'ry Thread it lets in Air;
With hungry Meals his Body pin'd,
His Guts and Belly full of Wind;
And, like a Jockey for a Race,
His Flesh brought down to Flying-Case:
Now his exalted Spirit loaths
Incumbrances of Food and Cloaths;
And up he rises like a Vapour,
Supported high on Wings of Paper;
He singing flies, and flying sings,
While from below all Grub-street rings.

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Vytenis   Wed Mar 10, 2010 4:16 pm GMT
Thanks, Quintus, for a fresh supply of unknown vocabulary items. I will add them to my collection ;)
I will definitely consider reading the authors you have mentioned. I love Dickens and his style by the way.