I mean listening to the same dialogue for an hour every day as opposed to listening to many different dialogues per day.
First, the word count on Lingq is not an actual word count because of all the different forms which are counted separately. Nevertheless, many may feel encouraged by the increasing count of know words.
Second, I wouldnât worry too much about word count. I know Steve has said here many times that the more words you know, the better you know the language (or some permutation thereof), but itâs not that simple. As maths said earlier, actively knowing and using 10 words is a lot more useful than having a passive knowledge of 30. Then again, I personally want to be able to communicate, others may just want to read novels instead, itâs all relative.
Iâve been learning Japanese for a little under 3 years and Iâm pretty comfortable speaking with natives, even in conversations between other natives. I figure I probably know around 3000 words, although itâs hard to say for sure. That would imply that Iâve only learned an average of 3-4 words a day! But I can use them actively.
âFirst, the word count on Lingq is not an actual word count because of all the different forms which are counted separatelyâ
What is a âwordâ to you? âCouldâ is a permutation of âcanâ. Should they be counted as one or 2 words?
âAs maths said earlier, actively knowing and using 10 words is a lot more useful than having a passive knowledge of 30.â
10 active words were at some point 10 passive words. As well, when you are listening to conversations among native speakers, how would you follow it without lots of passive vocab?
play, playing, plays, played are counted as distinct words, but they are 1 word with 3 derived forms. If you know the verb play, you know 1 word, not 4.
"10 active words were at some point 10 passive words. As well, when you are listening to conversations among native speakers, how would you follow it without lots of passive vocab? " â because not that many pop up.
My take on this.
The word count at LingQ is an actual word count, but it counts all forms of words as different words. This is because different forms of the same word, or word family, have different functions, and generate a different set of Example phrases in our system.
The first step in learning a language in my view, is to understand what is said and what you read. The passive vocabulary is very important, and a good indicator of your understanding and knowledge of the language. To convert these passive words into active words, you have to hear and see them a lot, and then get active, writing and speaking. But if you donât first have the passive vocabulary it is a lot more difficult. I strongly recommend working on your passive vocabulary as the key to building your language foundation.
To have only a limited active and passive vocabulary limits what you can do with the language. With a large passive vocabulary and more limited active vocabulary (which is normal) you can achieve a lot more.
We also count the passive vocabulary because it is easier to do automatically in our system.
"different forms of the same word, or word family, have different functions, and generate a different set of Example phrases in our system. "
Exactly. In language a change of form always signals a change in meaning and/or function. âcouldâ and âcanâ are just the most obvious examples.
"because not that many pop up. "
So did you 500 most common Japanese words and learn active mastery without any major interval?
Sorry, could you rephrase the last question?
What I meant was that in my case, if I know 3000 actual words (and I canât say that for sure, it might be a bit more), most conversations consist of words I know actively, words I could use myself. Of course, that happened graduallyâŚ
But still, you canât escape the fact that many people know many words passively but canât express themselves actively. There is no doubt that the more words you know passively, the more you understand, but since I personally aim to communicate and speak the language, I concentrate a lot more on using words actively than I do on acquiring them passively. So doing, I assume I do learn words passively too, though.
"Sorry, could you rephrase the last question? "
Just pointing out that passive necessarily precedes active. It is nonsense to make general comparisons about their usefulness.
Will 2 people with the same passive vocabulary necessarily have the same oral abilities? No, because one of them is bound to have a better active vocabulary. There is a difference.
@alexandrec "Will 2 people with the same passive vocabulary necessarily have the same oral abilities? No, because one of them is bound to have a better active vocabulary. There is a difference. "
Is this any different in your native language? We all have our own set of words that we like to use, and this set does not include all the word that we can recognize.
If we could only recognize the words that we actively use, we would be severely limited in reading, watching movies, listening to radio, lectures, discussions or even every day conversation.
Perhaps we are only looking at things from a different angle. Do you mark words you know passively as known in Lingq? I only mark them as known if I know I could actually come up with the words in a conversation.
I only mark known the words I have no trouble recognizing passively.
How do you know which you could come up with the words in conversation? I have always found that very unpredictable.In real conversations, I end up using words I donât remember studying while other words I âknow that I knowâ will not reach my tongue.
I rarely mark words as known. Instead I LingQ any word that I am not sure of. The rest are added to my known words count when I click âLingQâdâ. Thinking that I would be able to use a word does not mean that I can recall it when I want it, nor that it is really part of my active vocabulary.
We learn most of our words incidentally. This is especially true in our first language. Our large active vocabulary in our first language has come about from exposure to these words in reading and listening. These were words that we needed in order to understand something. They do not all become active. Some do eventually, depending on need.
Both the active and passive vocabulary of a native speaker are usually much larger than that of the non-native speaker. If we are to converse with people, such as native speakers, who have a much larger active vocabulary than we do, we need to have a large passive vocabulary.
For me, my immediate goal is to read books, websites and subtitles in German quickly and with decent comprehension. I am a visual learner and this is how I learnt my first language, as I could read well at age 2 believe it or not. Thus to me I am only interested in passive vocabulary right now. Eventually I wish to spend some time in Germany and when I do I will then focus on speaking.
Therefore word count is very important to me.
On a slight tangent, Iâm increasingly feeling that the idea of knowing the first few thousand words of a language, is not enough to start operating in it. I find even fairly short texts and articles meant for native speakers are pretty much incomprehensible despite âknowingâ around 4000 words. Not to mention trying to understand a full speed conversation, or trying to express myself in anyway that isnât littered with mistakes and cave-man style simplicity.
This isnât at all a complaint, just accepting that it takes vast amounts of vocab before I can give myself a chance at understanding.
Lewis, that has also been my experience. However, if I am interested in the subject, I am quite content to work my way through difficult texts, with the aid of audio, and LingQ.
Ah, of course, I do just load them into LinkQ and plough through them, regardless of the difficulty level. Itâs encouraging for me if youâve had similar experiences.
@maths about knowing 4000 words being insufficient â I agree and disagree.
Iâve never studied Portuguese, but I bet I know more than 4000 words. I wouldnât be surprised in I knew twice that.
I donât know Norwegian that well, but I did a test: I took a small dictionary, counted words on a few pages, extrapolated over the whole book and determined what percentage of words I understand passively. Turns out I do know about 4000 words. Since I know French and Spanish, imagine how many Portuguese words Iâd know! Yet, I canât speak it at all.
However, I can speak Japanese. Do I know 4000 words? I doubt it. But the words I do know are the most common ones, not rare cognates, and I know how to use them.
Looking at my passive vocabulary in Japanese and Portuguese, youâd think I know Portuguese better, but itâs the reverse. I probably could read more complex texts in Portuguese, but I canât speak it at all.
In other words, passive vocabulary says absolutely nothing about your speaking ability.
Agreed but at the same time there are people who have memorised a few hundred stock phrases but canât understand a word said back to them. So they canât engage in conversation.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with having a large passive vocabulary and a small active one. I remember as a child i could watch the news and understand most of it, yet when i spoke it was with the equivalent of Winnie the Pooh!
My mum could still understand exactly what i wanted though⌠especially when i screamed! 
@alexandrec: I agree completely. Iâm able to read Dutch, Danish Norwegian and Swedish texts, even though I never studied any of those languages except Swedish - and that has not been a very deep study either.
As to roman languages like Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, I can manage getting the meaning of texts as well, as I have some (rather bad) knowledge of Latin and French.
Reading a Japanese text is at least as challenging as a Spanish one, however, thatâs the language I consider the second best among my foreign languages (English is still better). Especially difficult are âdifficultâ words, i.e. scientific terms and so on. In almost all European languages those words have their roots in Latin, so you can easily guess what âgrammarâ/âgrammaireâ/âGrammatikâ/âgrammatikâ/âgrammaticaâ means, even if you never deliberately studied that word as ânewâ vocabulary. However, in Japanese, âdifficultâ words remain difficult. The amount of words you can guess is by far smaller, especially if youâre not having full command of kanji (which makes understanding or rather guessing easier in some cases).
So I think, there are languages in which you can reach a high level of passive understanding very easily and in almost no time, whereas there are other languages which you really need to study and in which your passive and active vocabulary donât differ too much.
According to that one should probably focus on the âweakerâ point of each language, i.e. for me for example reading skills in Japanese or correct active usage of articles (genders) in French or Swedish.