How much words someone needs no know?

"Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000."

Source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary

"満年齢で6歳になる子どもの場合、理解語彙の総量は、およそ5000～6000語ほど。13歳では3万語前後。20歳ではおよそ4万5000～50000語ほどという調査結果が出ている"

Source: Japanese wikipedia http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99

My translation:
"When completing  6 years of age, children have a vocabulary size of around 5.000 to 6.000 words. At 13 years old it is 30.000+. At 20 years old, it is around 45.000 to 50.000 words, according to the result of the research."

I'd say these numbers are pretty consistent with what I read before.
For some reason, Japanese vocabulary is larger than English's. Maybe because it is easier to learn new words in Japanese, after you know the language well enough?

Japanese vocabulary size

Well, I made this test:
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/mtg/goitokusei/goi-test.html

And got these results:


あなたの語彙数は27000語です。
The size of your vocabulary is 27000 words.

中学生レベル： ２万～４万語。
Mid schooler level: 20000~40000 words.

Yes, yes. I like to believe in everything that says good of me.
If you know another japanese vocabulary test, please send me!

French project progress (2)

I listened to a bit more French this week. Basically I started to watch Ange et Demon twice.
I now know how "danger" sounds more exactly. =D

Btw, the title of the movie is quite intriguing. In the English dub, it is Angels and Demons.
Why in French it is not Anges et Demons, like it would be in Portuguese or Spanish:
"Anjos e Demônios" and "Ángeles y Demonios", respectively?
It is funny. I kinda understand it, the pluralized version sounds icky. I just don't know it exactly.

French project progress

Answer to the last comment: My French is going slow! Same for Mandarim.

I recently noticed that my last post was misleading.
The trick sentence is "Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin". This could give the impression that I actually learned French, but that is not the case. I'm just taking it slow. Once a week I listen to 1 hour or 2 of French. Maybe a bit more. 


For instance, yesterday I watched the move "Decalage Horaire" with Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche. Btw, I strongly recommend it. It was a very nice movie. 


I watched it half with subtitles, half without. I could understand a few complete sentences already hearing for the first time, but its not something substantial. 


I'm more around the "catch a few words" phase. I still simply can't process half of what I hear. I still can't identify some sounds as words. French sounds are still not natural for me.


For instance, the word "danger" meaning danger =D. Right now I can't remember if it is more like "donger" or "danger" or "denger".


Ah, I started making sense of some things, like when verbs end with "i" its the past form. But I'll worry more about this later, I'm still not ready for it.

Japanese great success

I could talk! Yesssssss!

This week I was helping in the organization of an event, and there were a few japanese presenting their papers. I could talk a bit with them about their work and tell a bit about the city I live. Easily! Hurray!

Mandarin project begins!!

Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin.

I think I'll have more success now because I'll manage to do the study from Chinese to Japanese, that's it, I won't abandon Japanese, like I was more or less doing with French.

So for 1 week I watched Taiwanese TV and I'm already getting used to a few sounds. Unlike Japanese, Chinese sounds are really different from Portuguese and I'm finding them quite challenging to get used to.

Well, I grabbed this sentence pack (http://smart.fm/lists/132095) from last.fm and used the anki plugin to withdraw them. I now have a deck with 540 cards with 2 models.

Reading: Chinese sentence -> Japanese translation

Listening: Chinese audio sentence -> Chinese with Japanese translation

Handbook of Bilingualism

This is a book recommendation for those wanting to learn about second language acquisition.
It is not about learning languages it is about how people learn languages.

Check it by yourself and be surprised on how much it tunes in with AJATT and Kaufman's views.

It is really fun how it debunks old research, specially about grammar based learning and the critical period hypothesis.

The first chapter is about learning vocabulary!
One thing that I found really interesting is that it says that each word generally has about 25 meanings and more than that, these meanings evolve with time.

There are 2 chapters that talk about brain function and have pretty pictures of brain imaging comparing Early Second Language learners and late second language learners with poor or great skills. It seems the brain gets less and less active with the improvement in skill in the language.
The book didn't got to this conclusion, but isn't it maybe the vocabulary solidifying?

Btw, the link is here:
http://tinyurl.com/o5tjvb