I’ve read 2 million words in 24 months in Greek, keep in mind I have a full time job and I’m a freelance interpreter as well, long term relationship and commitments.
That doesn’t include all the books that I’ve read so I’m probably well above 3 million…
Learned simultaneously and reached C1 in Greek in 2 years and Spanish in 1 and a half (I have certificates to prove it as it’s needed for my 2nd job).
Started to speak both languages after 4 months into learning.
My passive skills for both languages are C2.
Time spent on each language daily: on average 2-3 hours listening to radio/podcasts/music and reading news articles, books…
I have about 70 hours of conversation on both on italki, that doesn’t include the time I spent talking with the natives while travelling.
I read aloud for 20 or 30 minutes when I can/feel motivated, maybe twice a week.
Now I mostly just listen passively to maintain, I don’t read as much, maybe 20 minutes max/day.
Now the Greeks believe I’m Greek when I speak with them, and are blown away when I tell them that I’m French… I think you can call that end game.
2 million words, that is amazing. It is going to take me a while, most books I have only add 2k-20k new words. At which point did you realized (at about how many words) you can fluently read/consume most material in french ?.
Did you use tutor at any point or was it fully self taught through reading novels/input ?
I tried a couple of tutors early on but I found it too nerve-wracking. All I could remember was my high school Spanish!
I do ask ChatGPT a lot of questions – really handy for French expressions, idioms and tricky grammar – if that counts.
I’ve been able to read wiki articles for at least six months. In the past couple months my reading speed on novels suddenly doubled. Otherwise it’s been slow but steady progress.
Novels are one of the best challenges for language learning.
Well done @jt23! 2 Million words of intensive reading is a huge accomplishment. Thank you for sharing.
I prefer slogging through adult books with more unknown words to graded readers, as well. If the content doesn’t hold our attention, we won’t learn!
You are a beast!
Did you mostly read alone, or did you do much simultaneaous reading & listening?
I love my local Spanish meetup, too! It isn’t necessarily the best practice, but for me it is super motivating.
Agree with all of your takeaways. For me, I have enjoyed the learning process overall, but it has been much more fun to use the language after the 2M word mark. I hope it is for you, too.
I read the first Harry Potter right after “The Little Prince.” It was a tough jump. I think it took me close to six months to finish.
After that I read Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast,” “The Sun Also Rises” and “Farewell to Arms.” Hemingway’s prose is clear and direct, which comes through well in translation. I found him easier than Harry Potter.
The only French-French I’ve read is five of Simenon’s Maigret novels. Not too hard. Interesting psychological portraits. Recommended.
The rest was science-fiction, Raymond Chandler and a book of Joan Didion’s essays. I’m now reading Stephen King’s Joyland.
I only discovered that I was good at it when I’ve reached B2 (Greek) in about a year and when the natives or my tutor were impressed with my skills. And when I started to learn other languages faster and with more ease (I picked up Italian and Serbo-Croatian to B1 as well, on and off)
I always had low self esteem so I didn’t think I had a thing for it, but language learning changed everything.
I also have a passion for it so it helps a lot I guess…
I’m French yes. English, I just picked it up years ago by exposing myself to the music, films, travel, and then living 10 years in an English speaking contry just launched me to C2, so it was different.
Keep in mind that even words you already know go towards the words read thing. Its not lingqs created its just words read. 2 million is awesome but it goes pretty quick once you find input that you can semi breeze through. So you wouldnt have to worry about your books only adding a bit of new words like you said. That’s a whole different stat tracked.
Thks, yes you are right, I misread it, my focus has been word known all this time, Now i see word read matters too, thks to OP I now have a target of 2 mill to aim for to see some result in my language ability, at least in reading. Word read is also more easy to predict how long it will take me, if I am consistent.
So to get more book reading done faster ( when reading short books we waste time importing and searching for new books ) i sorted my books by word count in my Calibre library. I then went through all the high word count books especially long series to find something long and readable for my level.
Eventually I end up with Percy Jackson (6 books - 558k words) and Hunger Games (3 books - 318k words). Mainly decided on these 2 next due to lack of passé simple so far… I will tackle passé simple after these 2 books.
I also found a few super long series 1st one below is recommended by OP
Tout Maigret by Simenon’s (1-10) - (2.7m words)
Animorphs L’intégrale (1.4m)
Hercule Poirot L’intégrale by Agatha Christie (2.2m)
Miss Marple L’intégrale by Agatha Christie (640k)
ARSÈNE LUPIN - Les Aventures Complètes (1.3m)
Les désastreuses aventures des orphelins Baudelaire L’intégrale (520k)
Previously I had completed my first novel “La Trilogie des Jumeaux L’intégrale” (105k words) . I recommended this book for those who don’t like passé simple in french.
I mostly read novels and usually by different writers. It’s not like reading wiki. Every book is different in terms of vocabulary, expressions, and grammar.
I’m not semi-breezing through. I find that the first 30-40 pages are always somewhat difficult until I get used to the book’s individuality, then it goes faster.
Seriously, sentence for sentence, novels are the best all-around language workout you’ll find.
For my purposes Words Read is the only useful statistic I find in LingQ.
Another important thing is you gotta make sure its fun. If you’re reading something just for the sake of reading something with a lot of words you might get bogged down in the journey. So definitely make sure you’re looking for content that you secretly crave!
Yeah i like known words too but words read is definitely an interesting one and stacks up the quickest. Hours of audio listened too is pretty important as well
Yup fun is important. I also don’t think I will be able to read all those books in my list, it will take me years, if any one of them get boring I will just stop and move to the next book. I do like sticking to one author for a long time and I do like reading crime/mystery/sci-fi/fantasy so I think most books should be fine, hopefully.
For content I “secretly crave”, I do want to eventually play games in my target language but I can’t use lingQ with games. The games genre I like is the same genre like the book genre mentioned above, so I think reading would ease me into playing games at a later stage. Eventually I want to be able to play online game and use mic to communicate with other french gamers.
I know there are tools (like wisp) to learn language while playing game but constant looking up word while playing and etc is not fun, I’ve tried it.
That’s the approach that I took when I studied Russian hard. I know that level of intensity isn’t for everyone, but I’ve found that more hours of reading per day lead to more efficient time spent for those hours. Well that’s true until I’ve hit like 4 hrs for the day because after that my brain starts to take a lot of convincing to keep going.
Did you spend any time doing reading + listening? I didn’t do that much with Russian, but for French I’ve found that it’s really helpful to improve listening skills quickly. I wish I knew that earlier.