Fluency is not only a number of words - it's the ability to combine those words smoothly when speaking, using the right language rhythm and intonation.
Brow , the more I learn , the more it seems to have words I don't know . As mairo Vergara says , we don't have to put the goal of fluency , but just improve yourself everyday and be better than yesterday . I don't even care about knowing everything , but studying everyday and learn everyday a little bit .
I think the problem with fluency is primarily psychological. Small children don't ever hesitate to use the words they learn from their children. Unlike adults they are not afraid of using limited amount of words or phrases the 'wrong' way. So acquiring fluency in foreign language can be even more favorable with relatively poor vocabulary.
There’s also the fact that kids just suck in a language. It’s a phenomenon that everyone goes through, but no one really understands. All we know is that at some point our brains stop doing that, and we have to start going out of our way to learn the language. Yes, immersion, I’m very sure, would help a lot. But you can move to, say, Mexico and work there for three years at a company, and never learn Spanish. You might learn very beginner vocabulary for if you need something yet can’t get it because the native Mexican can’t understand you, but you wouldn’t need more than that. And a lot of people go and do that and it frustrates me a bit. They’re in a great position to learn a new language, and they don’t take it unfortunately
I feel you're getting more at ability to communicate. Of course we only need a small vocabulary to do so, we can assist with hand gestures, and an adult who has mastered the language knows not to speak to a child (or someone new to the language) with their full vocabulary, as quickly, or as abstractly and with as much complexity. And you can get up to this level with relatively little effort and investment. But you can't read books, can't understand two adult native speakers conversing, can't watch a movie... I'm not sure it really has so much to do with self-consciousness as people assume. Sure we don't want to sound like an idiot, but I don't believe that's a fear of grammatical errors so much as not having words for the topics we want to speak about, the ideas we know how to express in our own native language. We have to dumb down our own thoughts to our level in the new language. A kid knows how to say they're hungry or they want to go pet the dog. Not really deep lol. As they do start to have more deep thoughts they become broody teenagers, and then that's not the picture of self-confidence. Just can't really get around needing to listen and read a lot, struggle though it is to start. What a kid lazily learns over 15 years we hope to energetically learn in 1 to 3, with less incidental exposure and no personal dedicated tutors. It's a tall order! Not so tall an order if you only want to speak like a 7 year old.
atm I use Italian every day in real life situations, since I went to pastry school in Italy and am making an internship here… at the beginning when I came to Italy in February it was quite hard for me and I struggled a lot, but now I feel quite confident in most situations I’m confronted with. I’m also studying a bit of Italian every day. I’ll go home again on December. My Italian teacher wants to prepare me for the C1 exam in Italian next spring after studying with me a bit after I return from Italy. I have to start reading more in Italian though, I struggle with that to find the motivation for. ^^ So I had to be able to communicate my needs with a basic vocabulary when I arrived in Italy in February out of pure necessity.
10000 words of Oxford dictionary ( Oxford dictionary which has 35000 words 700 pages 2 column each column has about 20 words ) or Longman dictionary ( same size of Oxford dictionary) is enough to be fluent 3000 for daily communications with people in the street and 7000 to study in college and university and read books and listen to news on tv … fluent means to watch tv or listen to radio 1 day 24 hours and understand every sentence and everything happened on tv or radio.. and repeat what you watched or listened easily with your own sentences without any mistakes or bad accent
I never focus on the number of words, but rather try to have fun while listening to the language, speaking or reading in it. Vocabulary comes naturally by doing those things, you need at least an A1+ level or knowledge of similar languages to do that though... :)
Luca, thank you enormously for your practical information. As I understood, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to the number of words for fluency as the more active vocabulary you have the better you are a producer of that particular language. It's also related to a particular interest as you examplified with space related lexicon. I would even break down fluency into specific areas as you might not find necessary words to communicate to a mechanic or a doctor or a funeral organiser in your native language. So, i suppose, we should not be too much concentrated on the number of vocab, instead how well we can articulate our thoughts, ideas and opinions is more important.
A good example of someone proficient in multiple languages (10) is Timothy Snyder. He’s a historian of Eastern European history, especially with regards to the Holocaust. He can speak, read, write, and listen in five of those languages proficiently, but can only read proficiently in the other 5 (which ones exactly I do not know). Still extremely impressive regardless, but to put it simply, he may need to know how to read Belarusian but he doesn’t need to know how to speak it for his job. Perhaps he’s never tried interacting with locals in these locations and only focused on doing his research and then going home to put his research into his own writing. It all really depends on your goals is what I’m trying to get at.
Since our holiday in Rome two years ago ( and falling in love with the language ) I have been stuffing my brain with words and snippet phrases. Only now do I feel ready to start making conversation with confidence. Words are the bricks , you cannot build the house unless the bricks turn up. Pronunciation practice is the foundations of the house. I think the cement that binds the bricks is the grammar. That's how it works for me.
Sometimes an entire sentence is the context, and none of the individual words. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." (Noam Chomsky, contrasting syntax with semantics.)
Bro I've been learning English by myself for four years I still came across to so much words I don't know specially I watch some 'dramas tv shows' that involve crime action I feel so overwhelmed some times. But sitcom it's more easy.
@@TomRNZ Hahah Great point, but when it comes to our mother language it's much more easier to manage a conversation because we have these thousands of words and regional expressions.
@@evanilsonp.8183 Yeah, it was just a bit of a joke really 😂 . The point is that Fluency is quite difficult to define. I don't consider myself fluent in Spanish, but my friend from Colombia told me I am when I was talking to her the other day. I make plenty of pauses and errors when I speak Spanish and she makes plenty of pauses and errors when she speaks English, but she's definitely a fluent English speaker. There's probably as many definitions of "fluent" as there are comments on this video 😂 .
When I started my first job there were so many acronyms I didn't know it sounded like a foreign language. I've tried to write more in the languages I'm learning to tap into a more expressive part of the brain. It seems that the brain does something receptively when reading and listening to form an understanding,but it is hard to express.
Re what it means to know a word, I don't claim to know (heh), but one thing it surely can't mean is being able to define the word. If that were the standard, then native speakers would barely "know" perhaps 1% of the words they think they know. "Knowing" a word isn't binary; there is a spectrum of familiarity. At one end, there would be the ability to define a word - if you can define a word, there can be no question that you know it, probably as well as it's humanly possible to know it. At the other would be something like words you've heard before and sort of think you know what they mean when you hear them used, but if you're honest with yourself you'd admit you're not quite sure. Eg in English, a word like "tergiversate." If you read a lot, chances are you will have come across it at some point, but unless you bothered to look up the definition and committed it to memory, you probably right now couldn't honestly say you know what it means or confidently use it yourself. On the other hand, it's not a word that is completely unknown to you either. So between these two extremes (the ability to define it and having heard it/seen it before) are words that we "know" with varying degrees of confidence and competence.
When it comes to learning foreign words, I use a very special translation method which allows me to efficiently memorize words and phrases, and quickly use them in context. The reason why this method works is because it has an efficient, integrated spaced repetition system built right in. My team and I are currently helping hundreds of dedicated students learn this method as part of my Bidirectional Translation course. We are constantly improving and updating this course, as well as assisting the fantastic community of learners that are taking part in it. If you are interested in learning more about this method, click this link: www.lucalampariello.com/master-language-learner/
Re number of words you need to know, I think Goodhart's law definitely applies here: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In the context of this discussion, I take this to mean that although there probably is some threshold number of words necessary to be minimally fluent in a language, and that if we knew what that number was, we could probably use it effectively to estimate someone's fluency, but trying to determine that number and, as a learner, to deliberately reach it is a fool's errand. (When as a language-learner noob I first came across a "frequency dictionary of French," I thought oh cool, I'll just learn these 3000 words - won't take that long - and I'll be 90% of the way there, shaving months and perhaps years off the time needed to reach fluency. haha.)
When people ask this, it usually means they are using some flashcard system like Anki. This is useful for beginning language learners if combined with other methods. But learning more words in isolation will never lead to fluency. You should be reading, writing, listening, and speaking the language. Just memorizing word lists will not lead to fluency.
Hi Luca, awesome video. Could you make a full in-depth day of using bidirectional method with explicit examples about it. I'd seen a lot of your videos about it but stil i'm not able to fully understand it. Thanks :D
Hi there and thanks for the comment! I have built an entire course about the bidirectional translation: www.lucalampariello.com/master-language-learner/ I also talk about it in this video: th-cam.com/video/BN1vCmZTOOE/w-d-xo.html
I think most people are interested in a rough estimate. As in is it 1000 or 10000 or 50000. Not the exact number. You should be able to make such an estimate.
Though this is one of the better videos I've found on this topic, it's still flawed. You never actually answered the question. It's strange to me that almost every video on this subject does this--beat around the bush and never actually answer the question. I get it, fluency is loosely defined and number counting doesn't help with actually getting fluent. However, actual numbers are still helpful and these numbers do exist. I searched for this video to find that information to gauge how broad my vocabulary is, not to get a lecture on how this information is irrelevant. E.g. for Japanese, knowing ~3k kanji will get you pretty far and being aware of this can help you plan your learning more efficiently. For spanish, the number of words is pretty broad, I've heard 3k for basic fluency, 10k for intermediate, and over 20k-40k for a native, educated at a college level. For many languages it's possible to infer a roughly ranked list for the critical vocab as well. Too many channels undermine how important going outside your box of direct in context content is. Both in context and out of context are important. And a fixed number is an out of context statistic. For instance, if you just stay in one bubble you may miss exposure to pretty critical stuff. This doesn't hurt natives because they have soo much more exposure. However as a non native, you need to be more strategic. For example, someone interested in music and telenovelas may never get exposed to basic vocab related to cars. One day they need to speak about specific parts of a car and find themselves at a loss for words. When language youtubers say: "primarily focus on in context learning, because that's how natives learn", they're missing the point. Natives and people learning a second language are not the same. I don't have the privilege of being exposed to my target language 100% of the time (24x7) and to take half a decade to get to fluency. Because the preconditions are different, people learning second languages and so on should use a language plan that accounts for that. 1) Blitzing grammar and vocab lists is an okay strategy--kids learn vocabulary slower because they're also learning basic concepts and have time to waste learning this inefficiently. However as a second language learner, just whip out a vocab list and at least get exposed to them all up front--I already understand basic and advanced grammatical concepts and a wide list of vocabulary. E.g. don't learn the names of 3 animals because that's all you encounter in your in context learning... learn all the animals you can think of and focus on remembering the ones you need most. At least get the exposure. Don't learn conjugations in spanish as you encounter them... learn them all up front and start becoming familiar with the mechanics of conjugation, because your mechanics lag your understanding significantly, so you need to account for this strategically. 2) Learn using listening, speaking, writing, and watching. They're all important. 3) Put listening and reading ahead of speaking. I don't know why no one ever mentions this explicitly, but the vocab you need when you communicate doesn't need to be as large as the vocab you need when comprehending things. You can get away with a LOT here. For example, in spanish you can talk about things you will do using VOY + infinitive or the future tense. Just initially focus on using VOY + infinitive for speaking but expose yourself to both for understanding. Get exposed to the subjunctive for spanish up front so you understand roughly how it modifies the meaning of the sentence, without necessarily learning how to effectively use it yourself, because that's much more difficult. 4) Familiarity is better than mastery in some cases when starting out. I'd recommend rushing through as many concepts in a language as possible instead of mastering them serially. Then when you encounter them again in context you now have a rough familiarity. Use the in context exposure to then start practicing mastery. 5) Active study > Passive study. 5 minutes engaged in active listening/responding is far better than even 2 hours of passive listening.
Luca, awesome video, but how exactly do you review words? You said you don't use Anki but that you have your very own SRS method based on notebooks. It'd be interesting if you made a video about it :) Anki works but I genuinely don't like it and it's spoiling my learning experience a bit
Ho raggiunto 25k parole per quanto riguarda il mio italiano, per quello devo dire che sono contento. Anche non è così facile per me trovare la voglia impararne di più ovvero le parole in cui imparo quotidianamente vengono più lentamente.
@@ManoloMacchetta Grazie mille, ma direi che una madrelingua conoscerebe più che 25k parole. Magari non le userebbero quotidianamente attivamente ma sarebbero salvati dentro il cervello.
I think the average 5th grade student in most languages could be considered fluent - so - the approximate word vocabulary of a 5th grade student should suffice - in the target language.
I wish somebody would tell this to Japan. They even make books here that are just the vocabulary word in the target language, in Japanese and an example sentence. That isn’t going to stay in your head very long. And Japanese is far enough away from most languages that they nuances of words do not line up well, so straight translation will not allow you to produce understandable language.
I think in terms of language learning there is no sense to seperat words from their given context. To know _get_ in english or _poner_ in Spanish without knowing in which context how do have to use it, makes these words useless. For me only counts a word as known when I know what it means in a given context. Therefore I would think the word-context-tupel is more important. So, each of the hundreds of meanings of _get_ is one valid word-context combination. I am not sure what value it has to counting them all. I guess, not much.
2000 words... It is common in most languages that the 1000 most frequently used words make up 80% of spoken language. So 1000 extra than that will allow for words which are relevant to you, the situations you will be in and understand enough of a sentence to get the gist of what the vast majority of sentences spoken are about
Another great video. In the beginning, the focus have to be only in the high frequency words, like the children. And after a few years, the focus it'll be in the more descriptive and literary words.
Ahaha :-D I would not pay thugs and trolls any mind (and as a rule, I don't, because time is a luxury and our most precious asset together with health), but I admit this one troll is entertaining, I had a good laugh when I watched Richard's video =)
wish you led with telling me you weren’t going to answer. Yes, all the things you said are true, but sometimes it helps someone to have a tangible goal. When i studied for the GMAT, i targeted 200 hours. While quality of study and tactics matter way more, it can help keep a person motivated. so umm, thanks for the click bait
Some statements contradict or even exclude each other. You may have troubles while ordering food at McDonalds just because you have been focusing on astronomy or other topic of your interest before :) There MUST be a certain amount of words to start speaking fluently, regardless of the learner´s background. Many words - espcially verbs - are just too universal to be ignored
"Fluently" is a bit meaningless. You can speak a few hundred words fluently, but it wouldn't amount to much usefulness. You can grasp all the grammar and thousands of words, and still stumble through most sentences, which would be much more useful.
Fluency is not only a number of words - it's the ability to combine those words smoothly when speaking, using the right language rhythm and intonation.
Very well said!
@@LucaLampariello still I believe you have tons of words in your amazing brain sir :)
indeed, english is my second language without all the time and classes i spent with english i wouldnt be nearly as proficient as i am with english.
I don't need fluency. If you knew lots of words, you could enjoy contents for native speakers.
@@coconutpineapple2489 If you don't want to speak it's much easier.
Nothing beats input when it comes to acquiring new vocabulary. Reading and listening a lot is the way.
Well said =)
And then after sometime, you just start noticing patterns and learning new words become more easy.
Brow , the more I learn , the more it seems to have words I don't know . As mairo Vergara says , we don't have to put the goal of fluency , but just improve yourself everyday and be better than yesterday . I don't even care about knowing everything , but studying everyday and learn everyday a little bit .
I think the problem with fluency is primarily psychological. Small children don't ever hesitate to use the words they learn from their children. Unlike adults they are not afraid of using limited amount of words or phrases the 'wrong' way. So acquiring fluency in foreign language can be even more favorable with relatively poor vocabulary.
There’s also the fact that kids just suck in a language. It’s a phenomenon that everyone goes through, but no one really understands. All we know is that at some point our brains stop doing that, and we have to start going out of our way to learn the language. Yes, immersion, I’m very sure, would help a lot. But you can move to, say, Mexico and work there for three years at a company, and never learn Spanish. You might learn very beginner vocabulary for if you need something yet can’t get it because the native Mexican can’t understand you, but you wouldn’t need more than that. And a lot of people go and do that and it frustrates me a bit. They’re in a great position to learn a new language, and they don’t take it unfortunately
I feel you're getting more at ability to communicate. Of course we only need a small vocabulary to do so, we can assist with hand gestures, and an adult who has mastered the language knows not to speak to a child (or someone new to the language) with their full vocabulary, as quickly, or as abstractly and with as much complexity. And you can get up to this level with relatively little effort and investment. But you can't read books, can't understand two adult native speakers conversing, can't watch a movie...
I'm not sure it really has so much to do with self-consciousness as people assume. Sure we don't want to sound like an idiot, but I don't believe that's a fear of grammatical errors so much as not having words for the topics we want to speak about, the ideas we know how to express in our own native language. We have to dumb down our own thoughts to our level in the new language. A kid knows how to say they're hungry or they want to go pet the dog. Not really deep lol. As they do start to have more deep thoughts they become broody teenagers, and then that's not the picture of self-confidence.
Just can't really get around needing to listen and read a lot, struggle though it is to start. What a kid lazily learns over 15 years we hope to energetically learn in 1 to 3, with less incidental exposure and no personal dedicated tutors. It's a tall order! Not so tall an order if you only want to speak like a 7 year old.
atm I use Italian every day in real life situations, since I went to pastry school in Italy and am making an internship here… at the beginning when I came to Italy in February it was quite hard for me and I struggled a lot, but now I feel quite confident in most situations I’m confronted with. I’m also studying a bit of Italian every day. I’ll go home again on December. My Italian teacher wants to prepare me for the C1 exam in Italian next spring after studying with me a bit after I return from Italy. I have to start reading more in Italian though, I struggle with that to find the motivation for. ^^
So I had to be able to communicate my needs with a basic vocabulary when I arrived in Italy in February out of pure necessity.
10000 words of Oxford dictionary ( Oxford dictionary which has 35000 words 700 pages 2 column each column has about 20 words ) or Longman dictionary ( same size of Oxford dictionary) is enough to be fluent 3000 for daily communications with people in the street and 7000 to study in college and university and read books and listen to news on tv … fluent means to watch tv or listen to radio 1 day 24 hours and understand every sentence and everything happened on tv or radio.. and repeat what you watched or listened easily with your own sentences without any mistakes or bad accent
I never focus on the number of words, but rather try to have fun while listening to the language, speaking or reading in it. Vocabulary comes naturally by doing those things, you need at least an A1+ level or knowledge of similar languages to do that though... :)
Well said, as always ;-)
@@LucaLampariello that is nice, thank you!! :)
I have no words to thank you for mentoring us.
May you Rise and Shine always.
Luca, thank you enormously for your practical information. As I understood, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to the number of words for fluency as the more active vocabulary you have the better you are a producer of that particular language. It's also related to a particular interest as you examplified with space related lexicon. I would even break down fluency into specific areas as you might not find necessary words to communicate to a mechanic or a doctor or a funeral organiser in your native language. So, i suppose, we should not be too much concentrated on the number of vocab, instead how well we can articulate our thoughts, ideas and opinions is more important.
An average native knows 40-50 thousand "words". I think If you want to be completely fluent, you have to know at least a half.
@@putinisakiller8093 I was wondering how do we know the exact number of words we know?
A good example of someone proficient in multiple languages (10) is Timothy Snyder. He’s a historian of Eastern European history, especially with regards to the Holocaust. He can speak, read, write, and listen in five of those languages proficiently, but can only read proficiently in the other 5 (which ones exactly I do not know). Still extremely impressive regardless, but to put it simply, he may need to know how to read Belarusian but he doesn’t need to know how to speak it for his job. Perhaps he’s never tried interacting with locals in these locations and only focused on doing his research and then going home to put his research into his own writing. It all really depends on your goals is what I’m trying to get at.
Since our holiday in Rome two years ago ( and falling in love with the language ) I have been stuffing my brain with words and snippet phrases. Only now do I feel ready to start making conversation with confidence. Words are the bricks , you cannot build the house unless the bricks turn up. Pronunciation practice is the foundations of the house. I think the cement that binds the bricks is the grammar. That's how it works for me.
Exacto, no se trata de conocer muchas palabras sino saber cuando usarlas para comunicarse de la mejor manera... Happy weekend!
Sometimes an entire sentence is the context, and none of the individual words. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." (Noam Chomsky, contrasting syntax with semantics.)
I really love watching your videos, they inspire me a lot to keep on learning my target languages, good job!
Glad you like the content of the videos Aioros! =)
Steven Kauffmann reaction : Oh My God
Bro I've been learning English by myself for four years I still came across to so much words I don't know specially I watch some 'dramas tv shows' that involve crime action I feel so overwhelmed some times. But sitcom it's more easy.
For me, fluency is the ability to speak naturally without pauses in everyday conversation. It is not necessarily knowing thousands of words.
I make pauses quite frequently and sometimes sound unnatural even in my native tongue.
If that's the case, I'm not even fluent in my native language 🤣 .
@@TomRNZ Hahah Great point, but when it comes to our mother language it's much more easier to manage a conversation because we have these thousands of words and regional expressions.
@@evanilsonp.8183 Yeah, it was just a bit of a joke really 😂 . The point is that Fluency is quite difficult to define. I don't consider myself fluent in Spanish, but my friend from Colombia told me I am when I was talking to her the other day. I make plenty of pauses and errors when I speak Spanish and she makes plenty of pauses and errors when she speaks English, but she's definitely a fluent English speaker.
There's probably as many definitions of "fluent" as there are comments on this video 😂 .
When I started my first job there were so many acronyms I didn't know it sounded like a foreign language. I've tried to write more in the languages I'm learning to tap into a more expressive part of the brain. It seems that the brain does something receptively when reading and listening to form an understanding,but it is hard to express.
I love learning Polish because even simple words like “dog” have many different forms!
Going for the challenge i see!
@@beyondthebasicsinpolish Tak! oczywiście!
What kind of forms other than plural form? Sorry, I don't speak any Slavic language
@@belle_pomme There are 7 grammar cases.
@@M43782 ermmm.... I don't even know what grammar cases are😅 nevermind you don't have to explain
Re what it means to know a word, I don't claim to know (heh), but one thing it surely can't mean is being able to define the word. If that were the standard, then native speakers would barely "know" perhaps 1% of the words they think they know. "Knowing" a word isn't binary; there is a spectrum of familiarity. At one end, there would be the ability to define a word - if you can define a word, there can be no question that you know it, probably as well as it's humanly possible to know it. At the other would be something like words you've heard before and sort of think you know what they mean when you hear them used, but if you're honest with yourself you'd admit you're not quite sure. Eg in English, a word like "tergiversate." If you read a lot, chances are you will have come across it at some point, but unless you bothered to look up the definition and committed it to memory, you probably right now couldn't honestly say you know what it means or confidently use it yourself. On the other hand, it's not a word that is completely unknown to you either. So between these two extremes (the ability to define it and having heard it/seen it before) are words that we "know" with varying degrees of confidence and competence.
Actually, the correct number is 11,756.8. That's how many words you need to be fluent.
0.8? 😊
@@putinisakiller8093putin? 😊
Saludos Luca.
Muy buenos todos las recomendaciones que nos das, bendiciones y muchas gracias.
When it comes to learning foreign words, I use a very special translation method which allows me to efficiently memorize words and phrases, and quickly use them in context. The reason why this method works is because it has an efficient, integrated spaced repetition system built right in. My team and I are currently helping hundreds of dedicated students learn this method as part of my Bidirectional Translation course. We are constantly improving and updating this course, as well as assisting the fantastic community of learners that are taking part in it. If you are interested in learning more about this method, click this link: www.lucalampariello.com/master-language-learner/
I love this guy, he speaks English so well, people often for get he's from Italy! Amazing! ; )
Great video, Luca. Great and enjoyable as always.
Thanks for the kind words Andrej! =)
Re number of words you need to know, I think Goodhart's law definitely applies here: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In the context of this discussion, I take this to mean that although there probably is some threshold number of words necessary to be minimally fluent in a language, and that if we knew what that number was, we could probably use it effectively to estimate someone's fluency, but trying to determine that number and, as a learner, to deliberately reach it is a fool's errand. (When as a language-learner noob I first came across a "frequency dictionary of French," I thought oh cool, I'll just learn these 3000 words - won't take that long - and I'll be 90% of the way there, shaving months and perhaps years off the time needed to reach fluency. haha.)
As for me, I never count. I enjoy nurturing the language’s’ I am targeting.
Hi, I don't know if you ever answered this question: What do you think of spaced repetition systems? 😊 Greetings from Germany!
I made a video about it but I haven't published it yet =)
@@LucaLampariello Great, looking forward to it! 😊
Bravo Luca. Разложил все четко по полочкам.
When people ask this, it usually means they are using some flashcard system like Anki. This is useful for beginning language learners if combined with other methods. But learning more words in isolation will never lead to fluency. You should be reading, writing, listening, and speaking the language. Just memorizing word lists will not lead to fluency.
Very good video. Thank's a lot.
I'm not actively learning a language but I really love your content, Luca❤️
Hi Luca, awesome video. Could you make a full in-depth day of using bidirectional method with explicit examples about it. I'd seen a lot of your videos about it but stil i'm not able to fully understand it. Thanks :D
Hi there and thanks for the comment! I have built an entire course about the bidirectional translation:
www.lucalampariello.com/master-language-learner/
I also talk about it in this video:
th-cam.com/video/BN1vCmZTOOE/w-d-xo.html
you great luchino!
I think most people are interested in a rough estimate. As in is it 1000 or 10000 or 50000. Not the exact number. You should be able to make such an estimate.
Aim for at least 35000.
Though this is one of the better videos I've found on this topic, it's still flawed. You never actually answered the question.
It's strange to me that almost every video on this subject does this--beat around the bush and never actually answer the question. I get it, fluency is loosely defined and number counting doesn't help with actually getting fluent.
However, actual numbers are still helpful and these numbers do exist. I searched for this video to find that information to gauge how broad my vocabulary is, not to get a lecture on how this information is irrelevant.
E.g. for Japanese, knowing ~3k kanji will get you pretty far and being aware of this can help you plan your learning more efficiently.
For spanish, the number of words is pretty broad, I've heard 3k for basic fluency, 10k for intermediate, and over 20k-40k for a native, educated at a college level. For many languages it's possible to infer a roughly ranked list for the critical vocab as well. Too many channels undermine how important going outside your box of direct in context content is. Both in context and out of context are important. And a fixed number is an out of context statistic. For instance, if you just stay in one bubble you may miss exposure to pretty critical stuff. This doesn't hurt natives because they have soo much more exposure. However as a non native, you need to be more strategic. For example, someone interested in music and telenovelas may never get exposed to basic vocab related to cars. One day they need to speak about specific parts of a car and find themselves at a loss for words.
When language youtubers say: "primarily focus on in context learning, because that's how natives learn", they're missing the point. Natives and people learning a second language are not the same. I don't have the privilege of being exposed to my target language 100% of the time (24x7) and to take half a decade to get to fluency. Because the preconditions are different, people learning second languages and so on should use a language plan that accounts for that.
1) Blitzing grammar and vocab lists is an okay strategy--kids learn vocabulary slower because they're also learning basic concepts and have time to waste learning this inefficiently. However as a second language learner, just whip out a vocab list and at least get exposed to them all up front--I already understand basic and advanced grammatical concepts and a wide list of vocabulary. E.g. don't learn the names of 3 animals because that's all you encounter in your in context learning... learn all the animals you can think of and focus on remembering the ones you need most. At least get the exposure. Don't learn conjugations in spanish as you encounter them... learn them all up front and start becoming familiar with the mechanics of conjugation, because your mechanics lag your understanding significantly, so you need to account for this strategically.
2) Learn using listening, speaking, writing, and watching. They're all important.
3) Put listening and reading ahead of speaking. I don't know why no one ever mentions this explicitly, but the vocab you need when you communicate doesn't need to be as large as the vocab you need when comprehending things. You can get away with a LOT here. For example, in spanish you can talk about things you will do using VOY + infinitive or the future tense. Just initially focus on using VOY + infinitive for speaking but expose yourself to both for understanding. Get exposed to the subjunctive for spanish up front so you understand roughly how it modifies the meaning of the sentence, without necessarily learning how to effectively use it yourself, because that's much more difficult.
4) Familiarity is better than mastery in some cases when starting out. I'd recommend rushing through as many concepts in a language as possible instead of mastering them serially. Then when you encounter them again in context you now have a rough familiarity. Use the in context exposure to then start practicing mastery.
5) Active study > Passive study. 5 minutes engaged in active listening/responding is far better than even 2 hours of passive listening.
How many of the 14 are you fluent in?? Please answer my dear friend. I keep watching your channel. Keep the good work up.
Peace Mr. Luca
Luca, awesome video, but how exactly do you review words? You said you don't use Anki but that you have your very own SRS method based on notebooks. It'd be interesting if you made a video about it :) Anki works but I genuinely don't like it and it's spoiling my learning experience a bit
Already filmed a video but I still have to publish it. Probably in November 2021 =)
@@LucaLampariello thank you!
luca sei il n 1,,sempre,!!! grandissimo,,e grazie per condividere i tuoi preziosi consigli,,tanto amore,,
Ho raggiunto 25k parole per quanto riguarda il mio italiano, per quello devo dire che sono contento. Anche non è così facile per me trovare la voglia impararne di più ovvero le parole in cui imparo quotidianamente vengono più lentamente.
25k parole sono davvero una bella cifra. Non sono sicuro di saperne io 25K... e sono italiano! Complimenti!
@@ManoloMacchetta Thanks buddy
@@craigscaife7588 you are the one studying italian and knowing 25K word! I should thank you for rising Italian speakers worldwide! respect!
@@ManoloMacchetta Grazie mille, ma direi che una madrelingua conoscerebe più che 25k parole. Magari non le userebbero quotidianamente attivamente ma sarebbero salvati dentro il cervello.
je mange les livres. 😋📖
Thank you😃
I think the average 5th grade student in most languages could be considered fluent - so - the approximate word vocabulary of a 5th grade student should suffice - in the target language.
wow😎🌅
This is a lovely stuff really
I wish somebody would tell this to Japan. They even make books here that are just the vocabulary word in the target language, in Japanese and an example sentence. That isn’t going to stay in your head very long. And Japanese is far enough away from most languages that they nuances of words do not line up well, so straight translation will not allow you to produce understandable language.
Team notification, like here ;)
more than 10000 academically
Thanks for advice
I think in terms of language learning there is no sense to seperat words from their given context. To know _get_ in english or _poner_ in Spanish without knowing in which context how do have to use it, makes these words useless. For me only counts a word as known when I know what it means in a given context. Therefore I would think the word-context-tupel is more important. So, each of the hundreds of meanings of _get_ is one valid word-context combination.
I am not sure what value it has to counting them all. I guess, not much.
Great video!
2000 words...
It is common in most languages that the 1000 most frequently used words make up 80% of spoken language. So 1000 extra than that will allow for words which are relevant to you, the situations you will be in and understand enough of a sentence to get the gist of what the vast majority of sentences spoken are about
Great video Luca - ever thought about giving Dutch a try?
He speaks Dutch.
Thanks for the question! I started learning Dutch in 1999 =)
@@LucaLampariello oh nice I must have missed those videos! Great Work!😀
Even with all the necessary "it depends" disclaimers, it would have been more helpful to hear some actual ballpark numbers/ranges.
Another great video. In the beginning, the focus have to be only in the high frequency words, like the children. And after a few years, the focus it'll be in the more descriptive and literary words.
Does Self-talk really improves our fluency?
Please share your experience Luca.
நன்றி.
It does!!! Try the "shadowing technique". Good luck to you!! ! 🍓💪🤩
Yeah it does!
42. That's my final answer. ^^
I think I can guess who gave this excellent video a dislike. Are you really Italian Luca? Have you been fooling us? Lol
Stay strong 😘
Ahaha :-D I would not pay thugs and trolls any mind (and as a rule, I don't, because time is a luxury and our most precious asset together with health), but I admit this one troll is entertaining, I had a good laugh when I watched Richard's video =)
@@LucaLampariello His answer on his own channel is even more entertaining. He has recorded the whole thing!
The human mind is fascinating isn't it?!
@@PetraStaal As Albert Einstein once said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity" =)
Great video as always but now you got to tell us about that "true story" 😅
wish you led with telling me you weren’t going to answer. Yes, all the things you said are true, but sometimes it helps someone to have a tangible goal. When i studied for the GMAT, i targeted 200 hours. While quality of study and tactics matter way more, it can help keep a person motivated. so umm, thanks for the click bait
Good video
With 3000 words you are speaking the language
Depends on the words and what you mean by "speaking a language" ;-)
@@LucaLampariello of course it has to be common words, and reading and listening alot
es veldadd!!!
can you learn japanese in 10 days?
No
Only if you are a superhuman genius
If you learn 300 new words a day then yes
Learning a language in just 10 days is unachievable, you need years to learn a language
Some statements contradict or even exclude each other. You may have troubles while ordering food at McDonalds just because you have been focusing on astronomy or other topic of your interest before :) There MUST be a certain amount of words to start speaking fluently, regardless of the learner´s background. Many words - espcially verbs - are just too universal to be ignored
👍
"Fluently" is a bit meaningless. You can speak a few hundred words fluently, but it wouldn't amount to much usefulness. You can grasp all the grammar and thousands of words, and still stumble through most sentences, which would be much more useful.
Thank you 😊
Bird