It is tempting to believe that we can just acquire a small number of very useful words and sort of get a jump start in a language. I have never found that to be the case.
Of course we need to learn key words like “I”, “you”, “he” and “she” and the like, or “where”, “when” “why”, etc. and the phrases that they are used with. However, knowing, or thinking we know, these words is not enough, in my experience, because it simply takes a long time to remember them when we need to use them.
Furthermore, these words usually trigger a context of language where we find ourselves quickly lost if we don’t have enough background in that language. We need to be exposed to these words in a variety of contexts in order to get used to them as we get used to the new language.
It is not difficult to find a list of the most frequently used words in a language. You can look them up or use Google Translate. This is no doubt useful. These can become lists that you refer to over and over. However, before you can really use them, you need lots of exposure to them in a variety of contexts. Since these high frequency words appear so often, you will come across them often enough in whatever content you are listening to or reading.
There is no magic number of words that we need to know in order to speak a language. We need to know a lot of words, high frequency words, and even some lower frequency words, in order to understand even a fairly basic conversation.
The natives speaker knows a lot of words, more than we do, and will inevitably use some of them when speaking with us. In the past I have delayed speaking with a tutor via Skype, until I have at least 10,000 known words at LingQ. I am usually not really comfortable conversing in a language until I am over 25,000 or even 30,000 depending on the language, and often I need more.
Since we introduced the mini-stories at LingQ, I find that I am able to engage with a tutor much earlier. With even 3000 known words on the LingQ count, I am able to have meaningful exchanges with a tutor. I am not normally in a hurry to start speaking, however, unless I have set myself a special goal. This was the case with my 90 day challenges in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, where I wanted to produce an exit video in these languages. I focused on the mini-stories, and started speaking with a tutor twice a week, once I had 3000 words, in order to ramp up my speaking ability.
When I don’t have a short term goal to produce a video in the language I’m learning, for example as is the case right now in Arabic and Persian, I’m quite content to continue with my input activities in order to have my passive vocabulary grow and my familiarity with the language improve.
Learning A Foreign Language From Interesting Content
Therefore, I don’t make a special effort to learn the high frequency words. They will take care of themselves. I prefer to immerse myself in language content. I start with easier content with a lot of repetition, and eventually more interesting, compelling content. Over time, I will gradually absorb enough words, and enough familiarity with the language to be able to engage with native speakers.
LingQ enables me to do this. I can look up words and phrases that I don’t understand. I can save these words and phrases for occasional review. The most useful words, the highest frequency words, keep on appearing in the content I am reading and listening to. Almost like magic, in an order that I cannot control, they become part of me. First I understand them and then I start to remember them when I need to use them.
There are also less frequently used words in my reading and listening, words that I need in order to understand what I am reading or listening to. I save them as well in LingQ but I make no special effort to learn them or even worse to memorize them. They are in my database at LingQ, and in my brain somewhere, but will probably not be activated for quite some time. Eventually some of them show up often enough that I feel I have learned them.
I create lots of LingQs, in other words I save lots of words and phrases to my database at LingQ. I do this not only for words I do not know, but also for common little words that work differently in the new language, like “meu” or “minha” in Portuguese versus “mi” in Spanish. Some of these common words I may tag for different categories to help me review them.
Speaking Activates Vocabulary Learned From Interesting Content
My experience tells me that there is no shortcut. I just need to continue enjoying immersing myself in the language and learning about new things via the language. In time I will seek out the opportunity to speak. The more I speak, the more I will activate the passive vocabulary that I have naturally acquired in this manner.
I know that in order to have meaningful conversations, I will need to understand lots of words, not just the most common hundred or so. If I don’t have a large enough vocabulary, I will be lost in my attempts to engage people in conversations. If I have a large passive vocabulary, I will find that certain words that I have never used before pop up in my brain and come out of my mouth when I need them.
Unfortunately many other words that I need, and know passively, still resist my effort. But, in time, more and more of them move into my active vocabulary. Meanwhile, knowing these words, even passively, enables me to participate in meaningful discussions. I just have to keep going.
That is what I am now doing in Arabic and Persian. I am enjoying my import activity, learning a lot about the Middle East and when I feel like it. I’ll start speaking again. I know from experience that even though I have not spoken in these languages for quite a while, my ability to converse will have greatly improved, just through my input activities, because my comprehension will have improved and my vocabulary will have grown significantly. These are the key goals I set myself. From experience I know that the ability to use the language will come along with enough use when I’m ready.
4 comments on “How Many Words Do We Need to Speak a Foreign Language?”
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Can this be done with a language that is not in the list of languages?
Indonesian?
Thanks
Hello Steve,
With interest I read your excellent article about the words number in learning language to be able speak with natives.
I agree with your ideas and lecture.
With pleasure I’ll read your next articles.
I look forard to hearing from you Soon.
Best Regard,
DrTomasz Skaba
Poland.
P.S.
@: skibitom@gmail.com
@TomaszSkaba
Thanks and I enjoying interacting with Polish and learning about Poland.
Thanks Steve for sharing this interesting concept on learning methodology. Learning words and their meanings is necessary to grasp any foreign language because we need to express our feelings through words only. Few words make a line and few lines can help us to describe our thoughts. You have given some fruitful resources to learn and access stock of words and people will surely learn many things from these resources.