I'm hoping to not write a book again but what I am wanting to say here is that
- In the beginning, especially if it's a very foreign, non-alphabetic language (speaking from the perspective of a person with an alphabetic mother tongue), you are not going to acquire much vocabulary. Your main focus, if you want it or not, is going to lay on the understanding of how this language, its charcters etc. work, basically gettting used to it. You are going to acquire words anyway, though, which goes back to the fact that many people who are into „natural learning“ or whatever you want to call it (maybe „intuitive learning“) - kind of like me - are (at least in my mind) against any other methods than their own. I, personally, am not, as long as it works for you.
I am very much aware that this method is not for everyone.
What I want to say, though, is that the denial of the fact that there are the (100-1000(+)) most common words and kind of saying it doesn't matter doesn't lead you anywhere, it simply is untrue.
There are the most common words.
The key difference is just that you will encounter theme here anyway among a sea of many other words, just more times than those other ones.
Those are the words you will learn/acquire first.
It's simply the truth of the matter.
I still would not recommend learning hand-picked lists of the 100 or 5000 most common words with Anki or whatever but do as you like.
What I wanted to say, to complete this first point, was that acquiring many words or gaining as much vocab as possible is not going to be the goal/the outcome, at least according to my experience, because, for example in Chinese this time, my brain had to adjust to this whole language and all that comes with it for the first 20 to maybe even 50, 60 or even 70 days, of course, depending on how much you read. Most of the vocab of my self-crafted course was, as we say in German, "fĂĽr die Hose" - literally "for the trousers/pants" which means that the effort (of trying to acquire as much vocabulary as possible) went to waste, but it was necessary.
It is the first step and you can't avoid it.
- The speed of acquiring words is going to exponentially get higher, the more you read.
Also, what I figured out for myself, is that pauses help the brain settle and process the knowledge.
So learning every single day like I used to do with Arabic is not going to be or rather feel as effective as when you only do it 3-4 days a week.
Though, the daily rhythm does help staying on track. - Also, connecting to the same point, especially if you feel overwhelmed, stressed or anything negative towards the task of learning, do less!
It may seem to take longer in the long run but doing less helps you stay on track, still motivated to go.
You won't burn your energy as much in every session and leave with a positive feeling of it feeling easy which leads you to come back (which is veeery important).
But that is another topic for another day. - The more word you have acquired, the more you will be able to pick up new ones.
Not only because your brain has adjusted to the language's patterns & writing but especially, because you will get/have a broader vocabulary, starting from the first 5-10 very basic words you will have learned the first day or days up to the first 100 after a couple more sessions and eventually getting more and more until you "end " with the vocabulary you have right now - whatever that might be. - Just as a quick side note: When I had my first session(s) - I actually think it was starting to get like this on the third day, not even the first cause there I still had this deep, kind of naive belife I was going to make it anyway (which turned out to be true) - of sitting down, reading & listening to Chinese words & phrases, I felt overwhelmed, feeling like this was going to be a really hard nut to crack.
I almost didn't believe I could do it though I was a 100% confident in the method.
Saying that now sounds a bit dumb & funny or rather weird but that is just the state I was in after the first few sessions and feeling like I had learnt absolutely nothing. That is normal. But after the first two weeks or so I was starting to feel like something was starting to finally click and the first words and phrases started to get more familiar.
As I'm probably going to write another piece entirely about the emotional rollercoaster or the journey of learning Chinese, I'm going to leave it at that for now. - The last thing I wanted to say is also very important:
First of all, your brain is learning multiple words at once.
It's not like learning vocabulary from a list where you can focus on those single words and their meaning and repeat them until have enough.
That said, you might feel like you have seen a word actually a 100 times and read its meaning but you still cannot confidently assume its meaning.
I do feel like this a lot on a daily basis.
Also, the way I see it is that it relies on two factors: the attention you give it (reading it, saying it outloud, looking it up, listening to it, writing it) and the repetition/amount you encounter it.
With these words I feel like I have seen sooo many times and I still have to guess what they mean though they look familiar, those are the ones that I had a lot of repetition with but they didn't get that much attention.
As attention also means taking time for a single word, I rarely do it but have started doing it more, recently to try to get rid of their "familiar but not known" status.
The other ones I know but haven't seen a lot, I engaged more with. Especially a visual or emotional connection or „Eselsbrücke“ as we say in German (donkey bridge) - mnemonic bridge - can help with that a lot.
In general you always have to balance the two but eventually through massive consumption the way doesn't matter, you will learn them anyway.
Just what I wanted to say with that is that a) it's okay to feel like you're dumb (you're not) when you just read the word/read it a 100 times already and still don't know its meaning, also remember it's not the only word, your brain has to do that with so many other words, so that's normal,
and b) that your brain will register more words (than you consciously know) subconsciously with a lower felt impact so you can read faster though you will not be able to retell all their meanings 20 sec. after (because you didn't engage with them enough) but you will eventually feel their subtle repetition, coming up in different circumstances help you in your later learning stage. - Another thing is that with more vocabulary your will be able to assume the meaning of a lot of words because you know one part of it that's similiar/the same which also accelerates your acquiring speed.
- Also, btw if anyone needs a visual example, I would estimate it a 100% (if you do something every day) the right side of a u-shaped parabola, scaling it wider horizontally, the less (often) you do (something), with the feeling of achievement at the y axis (or vocabulary) and time at the x axis. But the model or the scaling in general stays the same.
Try again.