EPISODE 5
Find this episode on Spotify at: Episode 5: Is 500 a Lucky Number?
Find this episode on YouTube at: Episode 5: Is 500 a Lucky Number?
Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on a journey through my language learning process, in real time, and learn my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the ALLT Podcast, which stands for A Language Learning Tale. Today I’m talking about…
Is 500 a Lucky Number? Or, Can You Really Speak A Language With Only 500 Words?
We’ve all seen them - the claims that if you learn just these 500, or 1,000, most common words, you’ll be able to get by in the language.
You like baby talk, do you? Okay, toddler talk, I’ll give it that.
Let’s see if this can possibly be true.
A quick Wikipedia search will give you a list of estimated word numbers in a whole host of languages. Here are just three of the totals. By the way, the sources are all very different so they’re not comparable, and there are multiple sources for each language, but that doesn’t matter for this exercise. The scale of the numbers speaks for itself.
So, English 711, 378, which are gloss entries, which seems to mean the basic definitions, and 1,402,895 definitions.
Italian has 500,000 basic words, but an estimated more than 2 million, as it puts it ‘sayable and writable’ word forms. I wonder if there are unwritable words in Italian. Is that a thing?
French has 408,078, with an associated 636,500 definitions and 1,880,500 inflections, which are distinctions such as changes in gender agreement, singular and plural words, and verb endings.
You can see the problem immediately, can’t you? The language you’re thinking of learning probably has tens of thousands of words, if not hundreds of thousands. Yes, many of those words might be antiquated, not used very much and not even known by native speakers, but even a basic knowledge of a language is likely to require you to know way more than 500 words. That number isn’t going to get you very far.
So, why are these claims made? Well, firstly to draw you in. They do get your attention, don’t they? Who wouldn’t want to be able to speak a language with such a low entry threshold? In truth, those claiming these kinds of things, along with those claiming that you can ‘learn this language in just one hour’, probably own some kind of business where you pay money to learn a language, so they’re giving you a teaser, in order to get you to come back for more. That’s just how these things work.
But, if all you want are a few phrases that will get you by on a two-week holiday to the country, then that might be enough. However, if you try using your 500 words with a native speaker and they decide to reply to you in their native language, you’re probably going to have a problem. You’d be better off using … I was going to say a phrasebook, but do those even exist anymore? Anyway, you might be better off using Google Translate and making it obvious that you’re not a native speaker, as if they didn’t know already.
But, if 500 words isn’t enough, what’s the true number? That’s a difficult thing to determine, because it’ll likely be very different, depending on the language you’re learning, but let’s give it a go.
According to an article on the BBC website, quoting professor Stuart Webb of the University of Western Ontario, a native English speaker knows 15-20,000 word families. So, that’s not the actual number of words, because a word family could include a lot of versions of the basic word. Think of a verb, for example, how many versions of the basic verb are there, when you consider tenses? Or the related adjectives, adverbs and nouns that can all be grouped together? Or, in foreign languages, as I’ve already mentioned, things like agreements?
Professor Webb also says to learn a language quickly you should try to pick the most frequently used 800 to 1,000 word families. Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like the 500 word claims, but it isn’t the same. These are word families and already way more than those 500 words.
Another problem with the 500 words claim is the mere fact of having to learn those words. There you go, there are your 500 words, they’re important, just learn them and you’ll be fine. Let’s worry about using them later. I have no idea how these things are presented, but I have seen the videos on YouTube where they literally just go through lists of vocabulary, as if you’ll somehow magically know those words after listening to them. Have you tried learning a list of vocabulary without any context? That was how we learnt pretty much every word in my language studies when I was younger and it was almost impossible to learn all of them. I could stare at the lists for hours on end and still not be able to remember all the words I was supposed to know. It was frustrating and also embarrassing, when I couldn’t reproduce the words in class.
Of course, back then, there was no talk of spaced repetition, or apps that can help you do that. I’ve tried the spaced repetition with lists of words, though, and it doesn’t work for me, either. The words I know I breeze past. The words I don’t know I stare at them, move on, and the next time they come around I still don’t know them. They just don’t go in. Now, if I have sentences in context, that tends to work better, but that’s a lot more difficult to manage by yourself. Imagine finding sentences for 500 words, 1,000 words, 10,000 words.
This is why, I think, Duolingo has worked well for me. It has spaced repetition worked into the system, both the old and the new versions. The words are given in context, because you’re largely given sentences.( Although, we’ve all seen those really weird sentences, that are supposed to make it fun, but sometimes just leave you wondering what the heck.) So, that helps with retention. You know how the word is used, you might even remember that ridiculous sentence and, if you don’t, you’ll see it again another day, because that little hooter Duo is taking note.
But, how many words do you actually need to properly understand another language?
Going back to the BBC article, Professor Webb says you need to know around 3,000 word families to understand what’s going on in films, so that you can understand the dialogue, which I guess you could equate to understanding people in the street, although drama isn’t the same as real speak - that’s a complete topic in itself. Then, you’ll need 8,000 plus word families to read such things as novels and newspapers. Remember, you can at least triple these numbers for the real total of words, and that’ll be a very conservative estimate. Why so big a difference between films and books? Well, purely and simply, because speaking has no narrative in between. A conversation is much easier, although it might not seem so to a language learner, tongue-tied in a shop with a queue behind them. That was me as a kid. I remember it well.
So, when these people make their lofty claims, are they really talking about 500 words, or are they talking about 500 families of words? It’s probably the latter. That’s how they can get away with it keeping a straight face. And, if you’ve learnt languages before, you might find word families much easier to get a grip on quickly. But, even so, 500 word families likely still isn’t enough. If you really want to understand what’s going on in a language, you might want to aim for closer to that 8,000 word families mark as a start, rather than a mere 500 individual words.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, hwyl and bye for now.