Hi, I was just wondering how many words you guys have had as “known words” here on LingQ in a specific language, when you felt that you could read books (for example a modern thriller or something, not too hard, that is) relatively easy? When the vocabulary is not too overwhelming?
You can try to read a modern thriller and if you feel comfortable, you have enough vocabulary!! (am I missing something here?)
Interesting question. The answer depends on the language and on what we want to read.
Remember the known words count is sort of like the mechanical rabbit the the dogs run after in the dog races. It is the carrot for the donkey. It is there to keep you reading, listening and learning.
I “know” 50,000 odd words in Russian and still prefer to read on LingQ. I can make out most texts in articles on subjects that I often read or listen to at Echo Moskvi, or from the writing of people that I have read a lot of like Tolstoi. But when I read on LingQ is see my yellow old friends, and I make new friends. 50,000 in Russian probably equates to 12,000 or so in English because of the inflections in Russian. Just a guess.
I feel that I will never learn all the words that I need to read everything. i can focus on certain types of familiar content. I enjoy reading and gathering words here, because I do not have lots of opportunity to use my Russian. if I lived in Russia I would be able to do more with my language.
So I continue chasing the mechanical rabbit and enjoy it!
Yes, although I hope It’s a little more rewarding than in the dogs case;).
I also find it better to read here, because it doesn’t take as much time to look up the words, and you can save them in an efficient way, if you compare to reading a book and looking up the words, and writing them down or something.
I found this on Wikipedia:
Vocabulary Size Written Text Coverage
0 words 0%
1000 72.0
2000 79.7
3000 84.0
4000 86.8
5000 88.7
6000 89.9
15,851 97.8
The problem with these numbers is that words are not counted the same here on LingQ, but still there must be a word count on LingQ which could be comparable.
Those who have studied here at LingQ and now can read quite easily literature, without
having to look up too many words, what’s your known words count, and in which languages?
Oh, that should’ve been two columns…
Vocabulary Size / Written Text Coverage
0 words / 0%
1000 / 72.0
2000 / 79.7
3000 / 84.0
4000 / 86.8
5000 / 88.7
6000 / 89.9
15,851 / 97.8
If you want to get into that subject I suggest you go to the following website.
I joined LingQ in August. At that time, I set myself the target of learning 20,000 words (the way it’s counted by LingQ) in French. I thought it would take me a year to reach this goal; I surprised myself by reaching it in only two months. Now I am at 25,000 known words. I can undersand a lot of materials now but I still enounter new vocabulary all the time. My guess is even when I get to 30,000 words I still won’t be able to do without a dictionary completely. Perhaps only when I get to 40,000 words would I be able to resort to a dictionary only sparingly.
Canto and Ruga,
Hong Kong and Sweden have about the same size of population. Both are educated and wired in societies. What do you think is a reasonable goal for LingQ penetration? Is it unreasonable to expect that 100 people in each market could enjoy LingQing? How would we reach these people?
It’s difficult to answer your question, Steve. When I visit the language forums in HK, I find the standard of discussion to be pretty low. Meaningful discussions are few and far between. In other words, the number of people who understand the input-based principle behind LingQ must be very very small. Also, people seem to be obsessed with passing exams. For example, the Japanese learners, even those who are studying on their own, are obsessed with passing JPTL. The no grammar approach espoused by LingQ just won’t go down well with most learners. I thought of mentioning LingQ in those forums but gave up on the idea because I am sure there would be a lot of people jumping in saying you can’t learn a language without going to school, without a teacher, without studying grammar, etc. (I am equally sure that a lot of those comments would come people who don’t know what they are talking about.)
Somehow I feel that if you package LingQ as an application and market it as the revolutionary language approach by the great language master Steve Kaufmann and back it up with a reasonable marketing budget, doing a few interviews with the TV stations and a few press conferences, you have a good chance of selling a fair number copies of the app. OTOH, if you tell people LingQ is a website that you visit, and that you only need to pay US$10 a month to learn as many languages as you like, as often as you like; it becomes a much more difficult task.
Steve: 100 persons shouldn’t be impossible, I was actually surprised, but then again, maybe I’ve always thought of LingQ as bigger than it actually is. I searched the biggest forum in Sweden for LingQ and didn’t get a single response, so it doesn’t seem that known.
To make LingQ more know in Sweden (with little budget) you could make flyers that people could print and put in language Cafés, in universities, and places like that. I would gladly put up a few for this noble cause!
I read that you were going to make all of Internet available to look at through LingQ, if I’m not wrong, and I think that’s something that should be a priority, because the ease of not having to look in a dictionary and write it down, and maybe importing the page to LingQ with just a click should be a real hit.
I should also say I’m the turtle. Not the wrinkle;)
We are working on making LingQ functions available on all sites but I cannot say when we will have it.
We would love to have you (or others) help us distribute flyers. What should the flyers say? We would certainly cover the costs. I know you are a turtle but I just shortened the name a bit.
I think that mentioning LingQ on forums can also help. If we can attract attention to LingQ on the net, that can also help.
We would certainly like to increase our exposure. If we can a few hundred members in countries like Sweden, and perhaps 500 or so in larger European countries, and 1000 or so in places like the US, Japan, China, Brazil etc we will soon reach our goals. All help is welcome. Don’t forget that you can earn points for bringing in paying members.
All easier said than done. Rosetta Stone spends tens of millions of dollars on promotion.