Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

[kulaputra]

just watch TV

I honestly doubt the accuracy or usefulness of such lists for even major, frequently studied languages, much less Finnish or Tagalog. They're ultimately going to be limited by the corpora they use, which is usually from print, for reasons of convenience.

TV shows, specifically ones depicting daily life, are much better at this kind of thing.

Here are frequency lists of the most common words in TV shows and movies (based on 29 million words corpus):

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktiona ... ts#English

A 5000 frequency list based on all episodes of The Simpsons:

http://pastebin.com/anKcMdvk

Do you think most TV shows really depict daily life of common people?

Again it depends on the show/movie and your interests.

In Spanish, Cuéntame Cómo Pasó is one example of a great show for just general, every day vocabulary, albeit slightly dated. In English, I imagine many family-oriented sitcoms or dramas would serve a similar function.

On the other hand, El Barco or La Casa de Papel are not good for daily vocabulary but great for nautical and criminal terminology, respectively.

The Simpsons is an unusual show, and not a great example for everyday vocabulary. Note, for example, the inclusion of "whoop-dee-do," "yello," "drederick," and quite a few proper names in that list.

[Cavesa]

just watch TV

I honestly doubt the accuracy or usefulness of such lists for even major, frequently studied languages, much less Finnish or Tagalog. They're ultimately going to be limited by the corpora they use, which is usually from print, for reasons of convenience.

TV shows, specifically ones depicting daily life, are much better at this kind of thing.

Here are frequency lists of the most common words in TV shows and movies (based on 29 million words corpus):

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktiona ... ts#English

A 5000 frequency list based on all episodes of The Simpsons:

http://pastebin.com/anKcMdvk

Do you think most TV shows really depict daily life of common people?

Again it depends on the show/movie and your interests.

In Spanish, Cuéntame Cómo Pasó is one example of a great show for just general, every day vocabulary, albeit slightly dated. In English, I imagine many family-oriented sitcoms or dramas would serve a similar function.

On the other hand, El Barco or La Casa de Papel are not good for daily vocabulary but great for nautical and criminal terminology, respectively.

The Simpsons is an unusual show, and not a great example for everyday vocabulary. Note, for example, the inclusion of "whoop-dee-do," "yello," "drederick," and quite a few proper names in that list.

I don't think Simpsons are such a bad example. A few series I got tons of useful vocabulary from (including the everyday stuff we are discussing here): Eureka (dubbed in French, a scifi show), Once upon a Time (dubbed in Spanish, a fantasy series), Angelos y demonios (a Spanish YA fantasy show, sometimes horror), Profilage (a French crime series), the Mentalist (dubbed in Italian, a crime comedy show).

Really, it doesn't have to be just such an obvious example as Cuentame, various genres and series can serve. They don't have to primarily depict the daily life of common people to include the vocab relevant to it.

[Axon]

And am I the only one around here with experience with foreign doctors and hospitals (not only in the professional sense), foreign policemen, getting stuck somewhere due to a technical problem, car crashes abroad, simply needing the words for household items, and so on? In situations like that, it is simply really impractical to start searching your dictionary for every word.

Why I am convinced anyone striving to get a practical high level in a language needs more than a frequency list and a pocket dictionary:
-sometimes, there is no time for searching.
-when you are searching too much (and what is "too much" depends on the native you are dealing with), you look like a moron and make things complicated.
-too much searching can cause loss of respect. We are not always talking about weather while drinking tea in a café. We are learning languages to serve us in various situations. That includes heated ones with stress included, and including really unpleasant people who will use any advantage over you. You definitely don't want to need a dictionary in those moments.
-Large vocabulary is a sign of a high enough level. And without that, many people will treat you as inferior. Not in the touristy situations. In the more complicated yes.
-You would be surprised by the stuff many dictionaries don't contain (for example, I once had a dictionary by a well reputed publisher, that didn't include the word for "heating". You might agree solving a non functional heating is quite important in winter and communicating with the hotel staff without the word about it would have been complicated)

I absolutely agree with most of your main points here. Particularly about large vocabulary being a sign of a high level. Most of the people I speak Mandarin with are aware that I'm in kind of an intermediate rut and have trouble expressing myself precisely. Pretty much every time I use the exact word for what I'm trying to say, there's some kind of comment like "Oh, you know that word!" Through my previous lack of knowledge, I've convinced them somehow that I'm incapable of really using the language correctly. What fun.

I also agree that many coursebooks think the only "advanced" topics are politics, philosophy, and culture. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to revisit my intermediate German text just now (Stationen: Ein Kursbuch für die Mittelstufe) and find that Chapter 11 has a recipe (vocab includes schnetzeln, hacken, schmelzen, warm stellen, anbraten, dünsten, der Topf, die Zitronenschale), a text about Müesli (vocab: die Rohkost, das Gericht, die Haferflocken), and a note on Swiss military service.

But I've been in stressful situations without English available as a lifeline, and I got through it. People who are about to go live abroad for a while (I just returned from Abroad and I'm going back to Abroad in four days) should certainly be making an effort to improve their vocabulary - but it's hard. Sitting in your living room at home, it's much easier to imagine that everything will go well instead of preparing what words you need to explain some terrible predicament.

So I suppose it comes down to being prepared by finding material that really does cover real life - the point of the thread, in fact. Yesterday I watched a short German documentary on lifeguards and learned a handful of pool and swimming related words I hadn't known before. Reading fiction has already been discussed with regards to its importance for vocabulary. This thread inspired me to make another video similar to my Kitchen English one, which should be uploaded shortly (the link will appear in my log).

News is very easy to find and "prestigious" in a way ("Can you read a newspaper in your target language?") but news sites always have lifestyle, auto, food, tech, entertainment sections with, perhaps, more immediately useful vocabulary for many people.

[Ani]

This thread inspired me to make another video similar to my Kitchen English one, which should be uploaded shortly (the link will appear in my log).

I like it. I'm sure the vast majority of advanced learners of English don't know the difference between colander, sieve, and chinois! they are all strainers or drainers for them. Personally, I don't know the difference between tongs and tweezers. I use them for two things only, picking up coal and cockroaches!

Try to make similar videos in your office, bedroom, etc.

Also there are native speakers of English who've never heard of a chinois...I just had to Google it. I accomplish similar function with a nut milk bag or a jelly bag.

[zenmonkey]

This thread inspired me to make another video similar to my Kitchen English one, which should be uploaded shortly (the link will appear in my log).

I like it. I'm sure the vast majority of advanced learners of English don't know the difference between colander, sieve, and chinois! they are all strainers or drainers for them. Personally, I don't know the difference between tongs and tweezers. I use them for two things only, picking up coal and cockroaches!

Try to make similar videos in your office, bedroom, etc.

Also there are native speakers of English who've never heard of a chinois...I just had to Google it. I accomplish similar function with a nut milk bag or a jelly bag.

My mom called it a Chinese Hat. But we mostly used a food mill. Since it was French and bought when my parent lived in Grenoble, in was called the "mouli". It's basically a mechanical chinois.

[tommus]

As a native speaker of English, how would you call or describe it if you don't know the word?

I would call it a strainer, which is a general term for a device to separate liquids from solids. For very tiny particles, the general term would be filter, usually made from a paper-like product. I'm sure there are lots of specific and rare words for various kinds of these devices which many people wouldn't know and maybe never heard of, but most would know strainer and filter.

[Ani]

Also there are native speakers of English who've never heard of a chinois...I just had to Google it. I accomplish similar function with a nut milk bag or a jelly bag.

Did you ever see it before? (e.g. in a friend's house, supermarkets, or kitchenware stores)

As a native speaker of English, how would you call or describe it if you don't know the word?

No I've never seen one. I guess I'd call it a strainer, "that strainer that stands up", or maybe a "strainer press" if I had to describe it.

My mom called it a Chinese Hat. But we mostly used a food mill. Since it was French and bought when my parent lived in Grenoble, in was called the "mouli". It's basically a mechanical chinois.

Oh yeah food mills are very common here. In this area, people often call them a Foley, which is just one of the common brand names. "and then I run it through the Foley"

[Cainntear]

Unfortunately, it is extremely popular these days to criticise coursebooks exactly for teaching this kind of vocab the learner could need in the long run and to focus on the frequency lists too much instead.

How exactly do you identify what the learner would need in the long run? Even working in a fairly restricted environment (English for academic purposes) I can only anticipate a small set of necessary vocabulary... and that's all in a frequency list, the Academic Word List.

Once you start trying to anticipate vocab needs, where do you stop? Take that old beginner favourite, jobs. No lesson I have ever been a student in has ever matched the jobs of the students in the class (or their parents) and the lesson has either descended into a mess with the teacher presenting a whole host of additional, hard-to-pronounce jobs and/or various idioms (e.g. I work as a pharmacist, I work with computers, I work in a circus), and most if not all is forgotten by the next lesson.

[Cavesa]

Unfortunately, it is extremely popular these days to criticise coursebooks exactly for teaching this kind of vocab the learner could need in the long run and to focus on the frequency lists too much instead.

How exactly do you identify what the learner would need in the long run? Even working in a fairly restricted environment (English for academic purposes) I can only anticipate a small set of necessary vocabulary... and that's all in a frequency list, the Academic Word List.

Once you start trying to anticipate vocab needs, where do you stop? Take that old beginner favourite, jobs. No lesson I have ever been a student in has ever matched the jobs of the students in the class (or their parents) and the lesson has either descended into a mess with the teacher presenting a whole host of additional, hard-to-pronounce jobs and/or various idioms (e.g. I work as a pharmacist, I work with computers, I work in a circus), and most if not all is forgotten by the next lesson.

Of course it is impossible to predict everything perfectly. And it was very hard at the beginning of language learning, that's why I am surprised why so many beginning learners are claiming "I won't ever need all this stuff from the coursebook" with such a self-confidence. They are right there is often too much vocabulary included for the beginner to digest at that point.

I am drawing from three main sources:
1.real life experience abroad
2.real life experience in general. My long term goal is to make my foreign languages equal to my native ones as much as possible. I want to be free to express anything I want in them. There are areas, where I am an ignorant even in my native language, of course I won't do much better in a foreign language (except for medieval weapons. I know many in English and almost none in Czech ). But why should I sound ignorant in areas I am not ignorant in.
3.the native input. Not only do the hundreds of hours spent listening and thousands of book pages read build my passive and active vocabulary. They also give me a very good instinct for what is and is not natural and important, when I see a word in a different source or situation.

You're right all this is problematic to do with the beginners. That's why I love one of my textboooks giving small vocab in the unit and exercises and then an additional list of thematic vocabulary to learn or postpone as the learner wishes.

That's why I think the way the coursebooks are designed just with the CEFR on mind is sometimes a little bit problematic. Ordering the stuff more by difficulty of the grammar, than the order of touristy situations, and presenting small frequent vocab first and expanding the lists later, that would be more practical. But that would mean a different mentality and advertisement. Instead of a strict distinction Textbook 1=A1, Textbook 2=A2, and Textbook 3=B1, it would require the customers/learners to pay for a set of Textbook 1+2+3 leading to B1, without clear lines between the levels, and to have the patience to stick with the language "without immediate outcomes".

I am definitely not against the idea of small core vocabulary for beginners. And the frequency lists are an awesome tool for many beginners and intermediate learners. But an advanced learner should know tons of vocabulary not on those lists too.

And where does one stop? I don't think anyone stops. Ever.

[leosmith]

So where can we find wordlists of important and useful words whether they are frequent or not?

You find the words in the places you are most likely to be. For example, if your number one goal is conversation, then get your words from that. You make the lists, flashcards, etc yourself. You can study pre-fabricated lists, and they have value, but they won't be as useful as what I just described.