Turkish is an interesting language. I'm very curious about iTalki. Thanks for your reply! You're right, Arabic is a very special case. It seems with Spanish, English speakers are already doing great with 3000 words.
Turkish is an interesting language. I'm very curious about iTalki. Thanks for your reply! You're right, Arabic is a very special case. It seems with Spanish, English speakers are already doing great with 3000 words.
The number of words is a bit misleading. If you're an English-speakers and you know 3,000 words "actively" (you're able to translate them to and from English) you actually know way more words because of the "passive" knowledge due to common Latin or French roots, especially for educated learners. For instance, you may not include a complex word such as "xenophobia" in your 3,000 word count and you may never use it in a discussion, but for sure if you read a newspaper or hear on TV the word "xenofobia" you'll recognize it and understand it. For more distant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, or Mandarin you can't leverage etymology to "passively" increase your vocabulary.
This is very true. The relative distance between two languages is what determines how “leveraged” the learning is. For linguists though, I think the greater the relative the distance, the more interesting the language is.
Turkish is an interesting language. I'm very curious about iTalki. Thanks for your reply! You're right, Arabic is a very special case. It seems with Spanish, English speakers are already doing great with 3000 words.
The number of words is a bit misleading. If you're an English-speakers and you know 3,000 words "actively" (you're able to translate them to and from English) you actually know way more words because of the "passive" knowledge due to common Latin or French roots, especially for educated learners. For instance, you may not include a complex word such as "xenophobia" in your 3,000 word count and you may never use it in a discussion, but for sure if you read a newspaper or hear on TV the word "xenofobia" you'll recognize it and understand it. For more distant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, or Mandarin you can't leverage etymology to "passively" increase your vocabulary.
This is very true. The relative distance between two languages is what determines how “leveraged” the learning is. For linguists though, I think the greater the relative the distance, the more interesting the language is.