Having used LingQ for so many different languages, did you get a sense for how known words/words read scales between the different languages?
I’m at around 34k words known/700k words read in Swedish and I feel fairly comfortable with any new book I import these days (I try to mix-up non-fiction books in different subject areas to get exposure to different sorts of words). On the other hand, I’m at 28k known words/200k words read in Korean and it’s still a slog. Depending on the topic, I might have an easy time or be at 70% blue words! The lack of similar vocab with English or Swedish definitely makes it more difficult. The particles and grammar also overinflate the known word count.
Also, I definitely can relate to how big of an impact ease of finding content makes things. Finding epubs in Swedish has been really easy and I’ve been able to calibrate the content I read well for my level. Much trickier with Korean.
Looking forward to the Icelandic mini-stories whenever they get done! I’ve been resisting the urge to add in Spanish or German and just focus on Korean (and maintain Swedish), but Icelandic is high on my list of languages to try when it’s available on LingQ.
I have some limited sense of how certain languages will give users different known/read word ratios, but it depends more on the user´s prior knowledge of the language and whether they know similar languages, than the language itself. You can just look at how much higher my known/read word ratio turned out to be for Dutch than French, even though I had almost no experience with it, but plenty for French. That´s just from knowing similar languages. Then you can look how much higher still that ratio is for Norwegian, which I had not really studied before either.
Now how different these ratios will be, just because of how the languages are, when there is no difference in how “alien” they are to the student. That´s harder for me to say. I think you will generally learn simpler languages like English faster (increasing known/read), but on the other hand, grammatically complicated languages like German or (especially) Icelandic will have multiple forms of the same word to a larger degree and people would then probably pick up a lot of the alternate forms when they have learned one of them, also increasing (known/read).
In these complicated languages, you´ll also generally have more known words in LingQ when you are fluent than in simple ones. Look at the top 10 for known words of all time in German vs. French or Spanish for example, although this effect is grossly exaggerated because of how much German uses compound words. The unusually large vocabulary in English (partly because it is something of a Germanic/Latin kreola-language) will of course skew this upwards for English, despite the simple grammar.
But I´m getting too long winded. I don´t even have any real education in linguistics and these are just my observations. Also, got to get back to Norwegian, so I can reach all my goals, so I can free my mind and do other things.
As the advantage for you that some words in these languages were very close to each other. Thanks for sharing your story, it really motivates me to work harder. Now I am learning German with http://rosettastone.com/ and a few weeks ago I have started to listen to podcasts on The Best German Podcasts for Language Learning . I feel that when I am listening to such live speech my ears are using to these unusual sounds and it becomes easier to understand what they are talking about. I see that it is really productive
I would like to share with you a trick if you use google maps you can find local libraries in your target areas. Some libraries have given me a virtual library card in another country. I have been able to gain access to more books and newspaper articles. While I have not taken the time to import into Lingq I might work on that this summer.
Once I reach 15,00 words I in Spanish and better conversations I will start working on a third language. My weekly language meetings have increased and my comfort level is going up. I might send 3-4 weeks in Mexico for some good immersion. Last summer I spent 2 months and the immersion does make a huge difference. I also stay away from expat areas.
Some new comments on this thread recently, despite this being quite an old thread. I have certainly not stopped reading a lot and gaining known words, even looking to get to 200K known words before the end of my second year, but I have listened a lot more in my second year than in my first. I think I had about 40 hours in French and 20 in Dutch in my first year, but now I have almost 170 hours in French and over 50 hours in Dutch (while still having until the end of November to complete my second year).