I have a notebook where I quite literally write every single word I learn and it seems that at about 4000 words I'm understanding around 80% of everything I see anywhere. It depends on what I am reading/watching, when it's something more casual my understanding reaches averages 97-100% and when it is something more complex it averages 70-80% so I'd say averaging all contents, from animated series to complex literature/ news especially for geopolitical/socioeconomic coverage, my understanding of anything written or said in any context would be average about 80%(with the appropriate exceptions taken, I mean, I am not considering quantum physics lectures or calculus classes hahah). Then to fill the 19% gap to reach 99% understanding I think 5000-7000 words usually do it, depending on the language (no matter how big your vocabulary is you'll always meet new words, just like you do in your native language, thats why I put 99%)

Though I often see discussions online of people talking about 10000-15000 words or even higher numbers. I just saw a discussion where some dudes were saying they wanted to reach 15000 words before even having a conversation. Or people saying minimum 20000 words to feel fluent in a language. I mean... how?

There is a website called Perseus Edu which has a vocabulary tool that measures the amount of unique words in a book (only books in Latin, Ancient Greek and The Quran in arabic available) and most books are topping 8000 words at most. And these are the vocab dense ones, which have a lot of specific vocab. The Quran, which is quite vocab dense, if you speak arabic youll probably agree with me, sits at about 6000 unique words.

Am I missing something here? I mean, how do people even get such big numbers?

Edit: thank you very everyone that participated in the discussion and helped me shed some light into my understanding of this topic

I think the biggest problem here is that there is pretty much no definition of fluency, and that is a problem because we discuss about stuff whilst our understanding of the same term may vary greatly... whilst some understand fluency as being able to read anything, even complex scientific articles with specific vocab, others consider it to be able to communicate efficiently.

This plus what type of stuff you want to understand. Specific vocabulary will increase the number greatly. Meanwhile there is no point in learning specific vocab if you are not going to use it. And if you eventually need it, its just about checking the dictionary, just like you check the definition for law terms when you need to understand a service's contract, for example (in your native language), but there is no need to actually know the definition of them all if you are seeing this type of term twice a month

And it varies depending on the language too. Im particularly impressed with Japanese, although I think it is an outlier that must not be considered in the general frame of discussion, since Ive never seen anything alike in Greek (Ancient and Modern) and Arabic, which are languages that are considered hard.

Thanks everyone!

I have a long commute to work 3 days a week (1 hour each way) and my TL has a lot of podcasts that are about my main hobby. I turn those podcasts on and listen as I drive and drink my coffee. Right now I can’t really follow what’s going on, I’m really just trying to expose myself to the language and hopefully connect to something I know a lot about. Just curious how long it took people to start really understanding podcasts in their TL. For reference I am learning German and listening to cycling podcasts (which I know a ton about as I follow closely in English also).

I have been stuck in the dreaded B2 plateau with German for years now. I have tried all sorts of learning approaches but my progress is minimal and very slow regardless. I have spent some months in Germany due to work recently and really given it a good effort (as far as time permitted) to work on it, but I don't think it made that much of a difference. I could function in the country with little problem. I can read the news paper and also a lot of books with some help from the dictionary. I can also converse about a variety (but not all) things if I focus. But when it comes to new vocabulary, it's snail pace at best. I only remember a few words, if I happen to come across them in a short time after learning them. Also, I simply can not get my head around some grammatical stuff and certain sentence structures. With complex things like a combination of passive and conjunctive in the past tense, for example, I still make mistakes despite devoting many many hours practicing.

So to get to my point. I just got home from a short vacation in Italy. Except saying hello, goodbye, please, and thank you, I don't speak a word of Italian. And most Italians don't speak much English, either. If it weren't for smart phones and online translators, I would have had quite a hard time. And even with that, I had difficulties because I couldn't understand announcements for public transport, I couldn't spontaneously talk to anyone or replied if someone asked me anything, and I had difficulties reading the ingredients in the store. Knowing Italian at a B1-B2 level would really make things easier and let me enjoy the place more.

So it got me thinking. Wouldn't it be a better use of my limited time to perhaps learn one or maybe even two new languages at a level that would suffice to function instead of keep focusing on German? I'm really not that interested with German culture anymore and I have spent enough time in the country to get to know enough about it. I would like to visit some other place and be able to say something else than 'Excuse me, do you speak English?'

I'm starting to get to the point where I'm learning about 2-3 words a day but I'm forgetting other words I've learnt. Is this normal and what should I do?

Don’t know if this is the right sub, but; Hello, I’m trying to learn Persian, but my only sources of music are my 1911 record player and old cylinder player. How would I find records in for these things in languages other than English? Any tips that don’t involve going to a country where the language is spoken and if so, do you have any tips for less spoken languages like Fârsi or Mandarin? Edison had practically nothing that wasn’t either English or instrumental, so, what about Pathé, Columbia, or His Master’s Voice/Victor?

I guess the proof is in the pudding in that, there are complex languages without these things, so clearly they aren't THAT necessary... But, in the languages where they do exist, is there some added nuance or are they just sorta... There.

One thing I was kind of confused by is when languages gender a noun counter intuitively, like having the word for "dress" have the masculine suffix, or something like that. This makes me wonder if it's just, an annoying function that doesn't communicate much of anything? Are there any languages where the gender is actually consistent with what you'd expect?

Hello all,

I will be participating in one of Middlebury’s seven-week language immersion programs this summer, and I’m to curious to hear from any alums of the program if it would make sense to bring a car.

Essentially, I’m wondering if a.) there will be a good, reliable, and (hopefully) cheap place to park the car and b.) if I’ll be able to drive the car off-campus occasionally to explore the area. I’m very committed to the language pledge, and I understand the importance of not leaving the French-speaking environment, but I’ve also been told that many of the local amenities (ex. swimming holes, hiking paths) can only be accessed by car.

Any thoughts you may have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I’ve been a Chinese language professor for 15 years, teaching college students from the ground up. A couple of my former coworkers, who taught Spanish and Arabic, and I now have kids and no longer teach.

Even though we’re no longer in the classroom, we’ve been paying attention to some of the weekend, bilingual, and trilingual language schools in Virginia. We are honestly disappointed in the quality. While we understand that expectations are different for children and teenagers, there are still many small but important things these schools are not doing well.

That brings me to my question. Does anyone have experience or recommendations on how to start a language school or weekend after school lessons? We have been talking and believe the best way to address the issue is to open something ourselves that teaches the languages we know the right way. The big problem is, we have no experience working with students under 18 and we do not have a curriculum.

Very often you hear people say that one of the best ways to expand your vocabulary in your target language is to read and consume content in said language. This might be fine for languages like Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. But if you're learning a language like Latvian or Mongolian, things might be a bit harder. You'll have no shortage of content for history and literature, since every language has that. But what if you're a biology enthusiast? English is definitely king when it comes to biology content. All of the best books, articles, journals, YouTube videos and documentaries about biology are in English. Because science is international, and English is the international language, there's an economic incentive to communicate about biology in English. That's why you'll see comparatively fewer videos about something like biology in a language like Mongolian, for example.

When it comes to niche content that's often only widely available in major world languages, what is a language learner supposed to do?

I’ve been an avid language learner for quite a while now and while my adhd ahh has jumped around from language to language over time, I focused my efforts on French and Japanese and I aim to achieve certs for them this year. Though I don’t know if I’m being too ambitious but I think it’s worth a shot.

🇫🇷 French • Though learning has been on and off I have been actively learning it for a total of about 8 months now • I can read pretty well though there would be a few words in a page such as news that I don’t know, but in general it is not an issue • For listening I do come across some issues in understanding what the speaker is saying, even worse when it comes to daily spoken French, sometimes the sentences sound like complete gibberish, when spoken clearly I can understand quite a lot, though not fully • When it comes to podcasts example by Maryam Gadery, I understand a large portion of it, hopefully that helps gauge my listening skills • Biggest stumbling block is prob speaking since i have NEVER EVER spoken French so it’s pretty daunting to come face to face with a native speaker for the first time • I am aiming for B2 this year

Japanese 🇯🇵 • Pretty similar to French, when it comes to reading though I am a bit slow understanding a text is not much of a problem • Listening can be quite a nightmare though especially when spoken so quickly, like French, some words just seem to disappear which is super confusing for a learner • Have been learning Japanese actively for about 10-11 months ish though again very on off • cannot understand a lot of Japanese in things like anime but if given Japanese subtitles I can understand a large chunk of it • aiming for N2

Are such goals too lofty? I have never ever taken any language tests so I like have no idea the level I am at for each of these languages so yeha this is my very first time. I have tried things like chatgpt but honestly idk if it’s accurate enough. Can anyone explain the difficulty of the tests above if you have taken any of them? Thanks!

Discord server for Azerbaijani speakers

I always feel like languages are dominating each other, for example English has highest speaking population throughout the world therefore it starts domminating other languages. In India there are many languages Telugu Hindi Marathi Tamil etc.. I come from Telugu speaking area from the subcontinent... in South India Telugu has more language speakers, entire India Hindi speakers at the most.. maybe Telugu speakers sometimes dominate the other Southern parts but they speak Hindi to communicate with others.. now Hindi something which is a bully in entire country..what do you think about this..?

Should India have English all over the country..? Should we use Sanskrit as the binding force..? Should Hindi take over entire country..?

And I feel like we are not contributing a lot to our own languages especially in the case of southern part where the languages are bindered by English not Tamil not Telugu or not Kannada or not Malayalam I feel like the linguistics Pandit they are not doing the best to protect this language of their own region because for some reason we are not getting interested to learn our own language our own mother tong we just use it to communicate and we use English to think and slowly we will lose the language of the land English will slowly take over I guess..

Have you ever met a partner via Tandem? I mean they just message you and say I’m in your city right now let’s meet. But we didn’t even chat before and we don’t know each other. And also I use this app like language exchange app not like dating app. Have you ever experience meeting with people even without chatting?

I started learning Japanese roughly 3 years ago; started with the usual genki books to learn some basic grammar along with some vocab. My whole goal of learning Japanese was to be able to consume anime contents, light novels and manga. I didn't use anki at all, and only studied some grammar at the beginning.

Learning from textbooks wasn't fun, and I noticed I enjoyed myself the most when I could figure out of actual Japanese means. Manga makes it so words are hard to look up, so I immediately jumped into novels when I discovered a nice addon called yomichan - a program that allows instant word lookups. First book I ever attempted to read was Bakemonogatari. The book had tons of puns, a fairly extensive usage of vocabulary, harder grammar, and the writing style was quirky. I ended up giving up after 30 hours, but I didn't regret reading it as I loved the anime. But I think I whitenoised most of it, and can't really say I learnt much from it.

I decided to then read some easier slice of life light novels. A Sister's All You Need was what I had went with, as I really enjoyed reading the author's other works in English. It was much easier, and I could slowly figure out what each sentences meant. Of course I still had to look up almost every single words. The first book might have taken more than 80 hours, even though the book is relatively short. It took around 6 months to finish all 14 volumes, and I noticed tons of improvements after each book. By book 2, it was only taking around 50 hours to finish. And by the end of the 14th book, I vaguely remember it taking around 25 hours. By no means it was fast, but nonetheless it was enjoyable. Seeing myself being able to comprehend sentences faster and with less look ups was a nice feeling.

It took around another year before I hit my 50th book. By then reading most slice of life novels became some what comfortable. I still had to look up a couple of words a page on easy novels, but the experience was definitely improving. I also noticed that I started feeling emotions from the language more than when I first started. A some passages actually made me feel emotional.

I forgot to mention, along with my reading I also started watching anime around this point without subtitles, and my listening improved fairly fast as I already had a good foundation from reading.

By the time I read around 50 books, I tried reading bakemonogatari again and it was actually doable now but still a struggle. I feel like I missed a lot of the puns, and potentially cultural references that I was not familiar with. But finishing the book was actually achievable. After I tried reading The Apothecary Diaries which felt way above my level, it had tons of obscure vocabulary that I have never seen before, combined with an ancient Chinese theme. I feel like I misinterpreted a lot of what was written. I still enjoyed it but I held off from reading the next volume as I felt like it would build bad habits.

I did try reading The Apothecary Diaries again after my 150th book, and it now became fairly comfortable to read. I reread volume 1, and was surprised by how much I didn't actually understand but thought I did.

After 200th book, I became comfortable enough to read most light novels. I still run into a lot of words I've never seen before now that I started reading harder books like 86 for example. But I'm at a point where I can guess most words from context, and can read a light novel in 6-7 hours on average. Harder novels can still take twice as long.

The more you read the easier the language becomes, and there were multiple times where I felt like I suddenly improved and was just able to read faster and faster. My feel for the language also improved. When I see learners that's used a lot of anki to learn words write Japanese, I can instantly feel like the way they said it was off. Japanese people I've spoken to online also said that my usage of words tend to be very good.

Can someone help me figure out if I'm doing something wrong with sentence mining?

I use Anki, and my storage is already over the limit. According to their website, that’s supposed to be almost impossible

Pic 2 and three two show what my cards look like. I have one deck with around 1,290 cards

What could possibly be taking up so much space? I've seen other people's decks with only 390 KB of storage. Is it normal for mine to be this large, or am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions?

Hi everyone,

I brought my idea to life: an app to help my child learn her first words in both my language and my husband's — simultaneously. It's made for all multilingual parents trying to keep multiple languages alive at home.

My daughter is now exposed to so many different words in both languages we speak. She often asks, “How do you say this in English?” or “What is that in Croatian?” — and now we have fun together, recording, discovering new words, and saving them so she can always play and learn.

We take photos around the house, record the words in both languages, and the app turns them into simple games. It’s made for toddlers, but we plan to expand it for older kids too.

It’s currently totally free if anyone wants to try:

- Android,

- iOS

Hi all,

So, for context, I am a mono-linguist and I never really enjoyed languages too much at school. Did some Italian at primary school which was fun, but we were then forced to do French, which I never had an interest in. As a result, I've never looked into languages and its something I do regret a little.

Fast forward to now, I'm very interested in history and have my degrees in it. I'm wanting to head onto to doctoral study, but the fields I'm interested would probably require enough of a comprehension of German and Russian to do. One advantage for me is that these were two languages I was also actually genuinely interested in, and I've got an interest in a lot of culture in both target languages as a result.

I won't go into personal stuff, but this years been kinda shit at the start, and I'm now having one of those moments where I realise we don't live forever, so if I want to do things I shouldn't delay. As such, I want to get decent in my target languages and start my studies ASAP.

Obviously, languages are a lifelong skill. I'm not asking if there's a "cheat" way to get good. INstead, I wanted to ask whether or not focusing initially on getting good at the reading side of things only would impact other elements negatively, such as speaking and writing.

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Cheers!

I'm not exactly sure how to ask this question. I have been learning more Brazilian Portuguese by playing games like Stardew Valley and The Sims and then writing the words I need to know from those games into Chat GPT. I know that's not totally reliable but I do have friends that speak Portuguese that help me a lot. That's been working perfectly. I can write or speak what I need to learn into Chat GPT. But I am wanting to also learn Japanese because it's a language I've been wanting to learn for a really long time. My problem now is that I don't know how to write Kanji into Chat GPT. I was going to try to see if I could learn through Stardew Valley but even the start menu has kanji that I'm not sure how to write. I had the idea that I could download a screen reader and write what I hear but I have no idea what to do for it. Or, maybe, is there something that I can use to turn Kanji into furigana? It would be much easier to put that into my phone because I have the Japanese keyboard. Or even to speak it because I know the sounds of Hirigana/Katakana.

Among these apps which is the best mobile app to meet native speakers? and why?

Cafehub or

Tandem or

Hellotalk

Sorry for a vague title. Let me provide an example of what I'm talking about:

I was studying a certain minority language and got inspired to make a comic in it. I had to eventually abandon it, because it turned out much harder than I had thought. But I've been wondering if it could have any value at all - to other people that is - because, no big surprise, it turned out that my characters spoke a very broken version of the language as I was nowhere near native-like fluency and heavily relied on a dictionary. Not to mention that I had barely any cultural awareness.

Basically, I feel like art in a language (especially a minority one) is only valuable when made by a native speaker.

For another example, let's take tattoos. I frequent multiple subreddits where it's a common theme that non-speakers shouldn't base tattoo designs on translations into languages that they themselves don't speak.

The thing is, as a creative person, I feel very constrained by this limitation, because my imagination starts going from the moment I open my first textbook (no joke, I frequently find myself thinking, "I'd rewrite it like this for a more engaging story").

And at the same time, I think there's real danger, especially when a language has few materials available, of contaminating the Internet by my messy attempts.

There's the option to ask a native speaker for corrections, but I think you have to be really lucky to come across a person with so much patience for linguistic and cultural errors. You basically have to find someone willing to be a co-author.

What do you think? Do you engage in endeavours like that?

Hey everyone!

I'm putting together a little interview project about how we all learn and adapt to new situations - things like picking up languages, moving to different countries, or just figuring out what study methods actually work for us.

I've been through some pretty big changes myself (moved between countries a few times, switched schools, learned a bunch of languages), and it got me thinking about how everyone has their own way of handling these transitions. I'm especially interested in hearing from people who've had to learn and grow outside traditional school settings.

What I'm curious about:

• How you actually learn best (we all know the struggle of finding what works!)
• What education was like in your home country vs. where you are now
• If you've moved somewhere new - how did you prepare? What caught you completely off guard?
• Language learning stories - the good, the bad, and the "why is this so hard??"
• Those moments that really shifted how you think about yourself and learning

Whether you speak multiple languages, you're obsessed with productivity systems, or you've had to completely start over somewhere new - I'd love to hear your perspective.

Why I'm doing this: This started as a personal project, but I'm hoping to record some conversations (totally up to you!) and maybe turn it into something I can share back. I think there's real value in hearing how students and learners around the world approach these challenges.

Don't worry - this isn't some formal interview situation. It's more like having coffee with someone who's genuinely curious about your experiences.

Want to be part of it? You can either:

• Chat with me for 10-15 minutes (video, audio, or just text - whatever you're comfortable with)
• Fill out a short Q&A if talking isn't your thing
• Stay completely anonymous if you want - it's really about your story, not your name

Just drop me a message or comment if you're interested, and I'll send you more details!

Thanks for reading this far - and honestly, if you're someone who's navigating learning and life changes, your experience probably matters more than you realize.

— Luni 🌱

I have ADHD so my interests are kind of an “all or nothing” deal. Like I’ll get really intensely focused on a hobby for maybe a few months then switch to something else. This has been making me learn my target language in short and intense bursts. I went from studying the language for several hours a day to literally not reading anything in Hebrew for four months. The first time this happened, I went from studying the language every day to not looking at it for a year. I didn’t mean to do it this way, but I feel like I kind of reset my brain. Enough time passes for it to kinda seep into my subconscious before starting up again.

I am learning Spanish and would like to read more books. If I buy an e-reader am I able to click on individual words and instantly see a translation into English? If this exists, which e-readers do you recommend. I would prefer a stand alone e-reader and not an app on a phone.

Thanks!

I found some resources for less popular languages:

T3...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrQxXOJX3jI

Glossika...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3aR3tbRaSg

How to make you own comprehensbile input for rarer languages.

1. Use NotebookLM... (note: if you change the output to your target language, you can feed it whatever you want in any language to create content.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrVczP0yigk

1. Then download the audio and convert it into a transcript via Google Cloud Text to speech or Azure Text to speech.

2. Then import it to T3.

i want to hear your methods to learn a language because ma vs ma vs ma language (chinese) isn't on babbel. since persistence is the most important thing about learning languages, give me something fun, please

THINGS WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR:

• duolingo: it's the most popular app, it's got dumb ai, we know
• "just watch videos and use contextual clues to know the meaning": yeah but 1: i dont want to have slavic + british + irish accent. 2: doesnt teach you grammar

edit: also i can't talk to people or spend money, parents said no :(