背词典 - memorizing the dictionary

Well, I remember hearing about a Chinese guy who memorized the whole Oxford ALD... and thinking why in earth would anybody want to do that... Now I know more about the educational system in China I'm not that surprised.

I think wildyaks makes an excellent point. As adults, we want to be able to communicate AS adults. When we engage others in friendship or business relationships in any language, we must increase our vocabulary in order to deepen the meaning of that relationship. I have a great deal of trouble bringing my passive vocabulary to the fore because I rarely have the opportunity to speak Mandarin. I understand a great deal more than I can speak: intermediate level listening, and elementary level speaking. Constantly listening to Mandarin dialogue (and I mean ALL THE TIME) maintains and sharpens that listening level. And, for now, that's all I can do and I am fine with that : )

Kyle, Me too! Where do I sign up?

"In order to understand 90% of any language you only need to know around 3000 words." Kyle, not to be picky but I'd really like to know where such a blanket statement comes from. Doesn't make much sense to me... It's like the oft-used cliché that 2000 Chinese characters allow you to read 80% of a newspaper. Well yes, that might be true of the front page of *a* newspaper, if you happen to know the right 2000 characters and the corresponding words they make up on *that* particular day...

There's not much point learning 80,000 words because much of it will be vocabulary that no one else understands anyway. If I said you had afflatus, you'd probably think I was being rude. Sometimes I notice Chinese study bugs learning English write words that nobody who actually speaks English ever uses. Actual examples: "afforest" (造林) and "disembosom". Do they learn these out of a dictionary, or is someone out there actually teaching such vocabulary?

I don't know about the number 3000 but you definitely don't need that big a vocabulary before you can handle most daily interactions in any language. Even a restricted vocabulary can be combined in countless ways and besides that you can get a long way by learning the formulaic language that is used all the time, especially when it comes to phatic communication. Just think about what much of what you say actually do...

The Oxford ADL has over 80,000 references. I've read that native speakers of any given language know between 12,000 - 20,000 words. However... In order to understand 90% of any language you only need to know around 3000 words. Regardless, I'd love to have an 80,000-word vocabulary.

@ goulniky Good question. I was quite surprised when I learned this as well. It's said that the average native speaker uses (approximately, and, of course, with exceptions) the same 2500 words everyday. This link (http://englishenglish.com/english_facts_14.htm) actually quotes fewer (1500 - 2000).

Actually I wouldn't mind knowing more vocab. The more, the better. Therefore thanks aeflow, for pointing at "afflatus" and "afforest" which I indeed did not know before. "Disembosom" is unfortunatelly not in my dictionary. Of course you need to know about word usage, also. And it is probably better to focus on relevant vocab instead of highly-expert or outdated first. In that regard the collection in the books I saw actually seemed quite reasonable. The point is how you are getting there. Going from A to Zu in order does not seem very promising to me. At ao1 I propably forgot all the A1 words already...

And it is *boring*. Learning like that must be a lot like self-flagellation.

We should also take into cosideration active vs. passive vocabulary. (Active = what we use; passive = what we know but don't use). Most learners (and native-speakers) have a high passive vocabulary. "self-flagellation", for example, is in my passive vocab. I know what the meaning is, but I never use that word. So, it's not in my active vocabulary. This can also attest to why many learners are often better listeners than they are speakers. We have all these words floating around in our head, but sometimes we just can't find them when we want them.

with 2000-3000 words you probably can manage the most common conversations and get a lot of what you want to say across, especially to sympathetic listeners. But if your really want to communicate - talk about complex issues and what not - you need way more. if you don't want to be left out of 50% of what is going on around you, then 3000 words won't do. That's why I subscribed to Chinese pod. I can live quite comfortably in China with what language I have now. But while I am not exactly striving for fluency, I would like to be able to talk like an adult and not like a child with limited vocabulary.

I read that some survey found that the average high-school student in US knows about 60 000 words. If you take a dictionary and check the first word on a few random pages it's obvious that even I know more than 12 000 English words (I'm from Sweden) I think the 3000 words are based on daily conversations which is a bit different than say reading a newspaper or book.