How many words are needed to really speak a language?

In Russian? Forget just conjugating verbs. There are 6 cases in Russian. That is what makes Russian VERY hard to learn.

Cases arent the real difficulty in Russian. If it were, Hungarian and Finnish are the worst with 20-25 cases. The real difficulty in Russian are stress, exceptions, conjugations, ASPECTS (completed-uncompleted verbs) and genders...

Right, Rukk, and in order to get an objetive answer to Seljuk we can say that the numbers of words separately is not relevant but most relevant will be the number of BASIC SENTENCES to memorize or to learn, it will be one goal to try get if we can have a skill on one language. I remember when I was younger and dont know anything of english I take a course of 900 English for learn the english, and teacher said if you can learn 900 thousand basic sentences of any language, then you can said you speak fluently that language.

I've found that it is useful to memorize patterns in Japanese (this would go along with the idea of memorizing sentences that louisfernandez mentioned). When I studied European languages I didn't notice this so much. Recently I was speaking Japanese and I noticed that I was using pattern after pattern, responding like clockwork to the ordinary phrases Japanese people use. I don't feel that way at all when I speak French or Spanish, for example.

That was Lithuanian, actually :) But that was not important. My main point was that you will do much better by just reading texts rather than memorizing grammar rule sor single-word lists. It will be much more interesting and easier. You will not only learn words but will also learn how to use them, learn many multi-word expressions, idioms, collocations and other features of real language usage which you will NEVER learn by just memorizing word lists. You will also learn grammar much quicker and better this way, because you will learn from real examples you meet. Actually, those people who start learning by memorizing abstract meanings of words and grammar rules rather than by reading and understanding texts never learn language properly. They will always speak language with a great difficulty and translate sentences word-for-word from their native language.

I agree with you about learning languages through examples instead of the "telephone book" list way. I do both, though. Once I learn the patterns I can plug in individual words from the list.

LOL. I quit this thread