Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

General discussion about learning languages
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FyrsteSumarenINoreg
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby FyrsteSumarenINoreg » Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:46 pm

For everday vocabulary try this
https://corpus.byu.edu/soap/


"The SOAP corpus contains 100 million words of data from 22,000 transcripts from American soap operas from the early 2000s, and it serves as a great resource to look at very informal language.

The corpus is related to many other corpora of English that we have created, which offer unparalleled insight into variation in English.

Click on any of the links in the search form to the left for context-sensitive help, and to see the range of queries that the corpus offers. You might pay special attention to the (new) virtual corpora, which allow you to create personalized collections of texts related to a particular area of interest."
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby StringerBell » Sun Aug 05, 2018 9:54 pm

What I'm doing now to increase my lower-frequency vocab for Italian is to periodically do a search in Italian on some topic that I'm vaguely interested in (but isn't a "passion") and then read a How-To article or a wikipedia entry on that topic.

For example, a few months ago, I did a search in Italian for "how to train my dog". I don't even have a dog, though I like them. I found an incredibly detailed step by step article describing the whole process, and it included a ton of other dog-related content in addition to training. I ignored any vocab that I didn't care about (like the name of dog breeds, since I don't even know those in English).

I learned A TON of vocab that was useful not just for talking about dogs (words like "to adopt") and I continually see words from that article pop up here and there. I personally think there is limited benefit in trying to memorize an isolated list of infrequently-used words, but learning them in context of an article can be really enjoyable and I think encountering them in context means there is more of a chance to remember them long term.

Alternatively, you could combine the word list approach with the context approach. For word you find on the list that you want to remember, you could try searching for articles or videos on youtube with that word in the title or content.
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby William Camden » Tue Aug 07, 2018 1:17 pm

Frequency lists can be very useful, though the exact results naturally depend on what kind of text is being sampled to produce them. I remember when I first set out to learn foreign languages being appalled by the amount of vocabulary in large bilingual dictionaries and wondering how you isolate the words you really need, pulling them out from the vast mass of other words.
One version of a dictionary series by Langenscheidt has the headwords of the 1,000 most common words in certain languages highlighted, which is a good way to go.
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby Alina Kuimova » Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:41 pm

I think frequency lists are very artificial. They give you the false confidence of knowing a lot of "useful" words that you simply cannot recall in a given situation.

Plus, what is fairly frequent for you may be not asuch frequent for me or someone else. We build our vocabulary with regards to our interests, profession and the situation we need the language for. If you want to learn Spanish for travel you need to concentrate on "on a counter" and "where I can find.." vocab. If you are going to work for a Spanish company, you probably want to expand your vocabulary for job-specific situations.

Personally, I prefer simply read books or articles on a certain topic to pick up the topic-specific vocabulary, and it works very well. Plus, it helps you to refresh the subject :)

I also like to use Google images or Wikipedia articles to find a translation of a technical term. If I know that a bicycle bottom bracket is called "каретка" in Russian, I simply enter "каретка" in Google search and show the picture of it to a bike mechanic.

It doesn't mean that you don't need wide vocabulary. It just more energy-efficient when you learn what you really need, rather than preparing yourself to all storms and catastrophes you might find yourself into :D
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby Cavesa » Sat Aug 11, 2018 8:59 am

Vast majority of people underestimates the range of situations they might get themselves into. Being robbed, injured, stuck somewhere, and so on, in a stupid conflict someone has dragged you into, those are normal parts of life. And those are the moments, when you really need 100% of your language abilities (no matter at what state they are at the moment), not shopping.

The travelling situations like "on a counter" or "where can I find", that is nothing specific at all. That is basic beginner stuff everyone learns. Every single beginner coursebook focuses on that. Of course the beginner needs to learn that, but I just think it is a really bad example of someone's specific interest, or something someone may need and others may not.

I think that is one of the issues here, that constantly gets in the way. Of course the beginners shouldn't spend tons of time learning long lists of vocab they may or may not use. But the fact most intermediates and advanced learners don't return to the same areas much, that is difficult.

And the usual resources are not helping much. Either people go for the frequency lists, or for the intermediate coursebooks, which despite all their advantages focus much more on less practical stuff.

Yes, looking up thematic articles and stuff like that works. The only catch is thinking of all the stuff I should look up an article about :-D
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby rdearman » Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:19 am

I imagine that everyone is living a life right now. In that life you are using vocabulary. Why not just spend a week paying attention to the words you are using and make sure you know them in the target language. For example name everything you touch and make sure you know that word.
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby Axon » Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:34 pm

Cavesa wrote:The only catch is thinking of all the stuff I should look up an article about :-D


rdearman wrote:I imagine that everyone is living a life right now. In that life you are using vocabulary.


I've spent the last seven days looking for an apartment in Kunming, China. I probably spent about 35-45 hours speaking Chinese in those days, and you bet I was paying attention to vocabulary.

What struck me the most was that I only really needed to fill about fifteen to twenty gaps in my vocabulary while actually visiting and examining the apartments. Part of this is due to the way Chinese words work, as I could and did immediately pick up quite a bit from context ("guest room" is "guest" + "room" and so on).

But I noticed that the vocabulary I was using was repeating itself a lot - even though I went to quite a few different places and many were quite different from one another, the actual language used tended to be quite similar. Number of rooms, which things were included in the price, cleanliness, location, and so on.

If I had sat down for a few hours before going and thought "what vocabulary will I need for finding a place to rent" I might have come up with words like sink, plumbing, flooring, heating, end table, outlet, raise the price, lower the price, etc.

In other words, any preparation I might have done beforehand, guessing what I needed, would have been virtually useless.

I would not have been prepared for the special word meaning "provide" as in "the landlord will provide furniture." I would not have known the particular way to express the equivalent of "2bed 1bath." I would not have expected to need the words hose, real estate agent, electronics, TV remote, house ownership certificate, rays of sunlight, construction, or concrete. But I did.

If you're not really experienced with a particular situation (I've barely done any apartment hunting in the past), it's likely that your expectations about the language you'll need will be flawed in some way. That's why I'm increasingly thinking that a guide or sentence pack or themed set of dialogues is a really, really good idea.

Anyway after I finally found a place and moved in, I wrote out 75 phrases in English particularly relating to my experience finding a house in China, and I plan to get them translated and recorded. I did a similar thing with phrases I realized I needed when teaching English pronunciation.

I strongly recommend anyone who has just done an interesting thing in any language to think of a few dozen phrases that could be of use to a language learner attempting to do that thing. Then get them translated and recorded and send them to me. :)
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby Chung » Sun Aug 12, 2018 6:13 pm

Learning vocabulary closely as a function to its frequency in a corpus or pool of output is a little too arbitrary for me, but I'm definitely for the idea of using example sentences of a lexeme as lifted from corpora (that is to say several that encompass different registers or domains so that you have a chance of seeing something used in contexts other than print journalism or technical writing (if applicable)).

The more that I think about the idea of everyday vocabulary (presumably defined as what you need to do the chores in your life), the more that I appreciate material that is designed to teach you something about how native speakers interact with each other (basically a certain emphasis on encountering colloquialisms in use, and even certain cultural references as they turn up in language) as well as phrasing and terms that you can expect while doing chores. Sooner or later we have to cook, clean or fix/heal something (even when we're lucky to get someone else to do it, we better know how to explain accurately what we want to accomplish).

I've recently started to see the value of the old DLI Headstart course for Italian because of the emphasis on learning language for survival (e.g. greetings, shopping, fixing a car, using public transport). I used to scoff at such material for foreign languages, but then I realize that I have no such qualms knowing such survival language in English. The translation of "estimate" (as in finding a quote or estimated price for repairing something at home) in isolation may not turn up on a frequency list, but it sure is part of everyday life when needing to express "Could you send somebody to see what we need and to make an estimate?" (Potrebbe mandare qualcuno per vedere quello che serve e per farci un preventivo?)

Nevertheless, I've yet to see a language course that combines the colloquial with the applied/everyday successfully but there are authors whose works show their sincere (and sometimes successful) effort to teach language that could be considered part of everyday life ranging from the colloquialisms he/she may overhear between native speakers to the necessary language encountered when going about life, which is admittedly quite often boring.

I've found one reliable way to start learning everyday vocabulary is to use what's designed for (im)migrants. From the author's point of view, he/she has to provide something that an outsider can use just to survive now rather than what some learner in a faraway land might need on a pleasure trip or structured student exchange. Unfortunately such material is understandably limited to languages used in countries that are popular destinations for (im)migrants or foreign transplants, and so it's dominated by languages used in certain "rich" countries or ones which seem to be considered as sufficiently prestigious (and perhaps "easy enough") for foreigners to learn as opposed to falling back on English. I can say for certain that any learner (especially a beginning one) of German or Finnish should look into "integration" material as found in some of the links here (for German) and here (for Finnish). I think that the situations' "earthiness" makes them useful when you realize that you're expected to call upon lexemes of differing frequency to form coherent sentences or understand the interlocutor for relatable topics; to hell with frequency lists.

I'm sure that similar material of "applied language" could be easily dug up for French, Spanish or Swedish. I wouldn't be surprised either if there's some similar material in Turkish considering how many refugees currently there speak natively some variant of Arabic or Persian only (despite some refugees professing to go home (or move on?) when the situation improves, it's obviously not certain when they'll do that, if ever) It's slimmer pickings though for most languages even other European ones. The nearest thing for BCMS/SC that I know of is this and this is nothing compared to what I can get for Finnish to say nothing of German.


***

The following is a closer look at Prof. Oscar Swan's textbooks for Polish and Slovak respectively, and elaborates in another way what I mean by a course for foreigners teaching everyday vocabulary/language without overtly incorporating frequency data. This isn't closely tied to the preceding about "applied language" for the (im)migrant or foreign transplant and can be skipped.

---

On this idea of "everyday vocabulary" I recall a few of my Polish and Slovak friends commenting on how unexpectedly good I was in expressing myself like a typical Pole or Slovak. I didn't have frequency lists that's for sure, but I have to credit exposure (meaning a steady dosage of Polish and Slovak over several years through friends and travel) and a couple of good courses.

For Polish and Slovak, the best courses out there to get going in these languages are the books by Prof. Oscar Swan. Prof - namely "First-Year Polish" and "Beginning Slovak" respectively. These are bit like other textbooks meant for classroom use in that they lack answer keys, throw a lot of language at students thus requiring a teacher/educated native speaker, and don't use the hackneyed story arc of travellers or exchange students visiting some country where the language is natively used for an extended period (i.e. nothing like the books in "Teach Yourself..." or "Colloquial..."). Instead each chapter begins with about half a dozen short and plausible dialogues involving native speakers. This means that you'd learn some colloquialisms and or phrases suitable for conversations or everyday life.

To illustrate, here is the set of dialogues in the first chapter of Beginning Slovak.

A) Dobrý deň
- Dobrý deň! Ako sa máte? "Hello! How are you?"
- Dobre, a vy? "Good, and you?"
- Dosť dobre. Kam idete? "Quite good. Where are you going?"
- Idem na prechádzku. Poďte so mnou. "I'm going for a walk. Come with me."
- Ďakujem, ale nemôžem. Musím niečo vybaviť (nakúpiť). "Thank you, but I can't. I have to take care of something (do shopping)"
- Tak teda dovidenia! "Well then, bye!"
- Dovidenia! "Bye!"

B) Dobré ráno
- Dobré ráno! Kam sa tak ponáhľaš? "Good morning! Where are you hurrying off to?"
- Servus. Idem do školy (na univerzitu). A ty kde ideš? "Hi. I'm going to school (to the university). And where are you going?"
- Ja idem do práce. Veľmi sa ponáhľaš? Mám chviľu času. "I'm going to work. Are you in a hurry? I have a sec."
- Bohužiaľ, musím bežať. Prídem neskoro. "Sorry, I have to run. I'm going to be late."
- Tak ahoj! "Well bye!"
- Ahoj! "Bye!"

C) Ahoj!
- Ahoj! Čo tu robíš? "Hi! What are you doing here?"
- Čakám na kamaráta. A ty tu čo robíš? "I'm waiting for a friend. And what are you doing here?"
- Nič. Idem domov na obed. "Nothing. I'm going home for lunch."
- Tak ahoj! "Well bye!"

D) Dobrý večer
- Halo? "Hello?"
- Dobrý večer. Tu je Mária Urbanová (Ján Urban). Je Katarína (Artúr) doma? "Good evening. This is Mária Urbanová (Ján Urban). Is Katarína (Artúr) home?
- Nie, nie je doma. Príde neskôr. "No, she's (he's) not home. She's (He's) coming (back) later."
- Tak zatelefonujem neskôr. "Then I'll call later."
- Dobre. Dovidenia. "OK. Goodbye."
- Dovidenia. "Goodbye."

E) Ako ináč?
- Kam ideš? "Where are you going?"
- Na poštu, Musím poslať list. "To the post office. I have to send a letter."
- Idem s tebou, ja musím kúpiť známky. "I'm going with you. I have to buy stamps."
- Ideme pešo? "Are we going on foot?"
- Áno, ako ináč? "Yes, how else?"

After each dialogue, you get some comprehension questions, and notes on some phrases/lines (especially if they involve grammar or vocabulary more complicated than what Swan wants to teach in the chapter). Of course, you get some explanation of several points in grammar from the preceding dialogues followed by a ton of exercises and a simple text for reading whose level of difficulty is similar to the dialogues. First-Year Polish is laid out in a similar way right down to the short dialogues that native Poles could relate to for everyday life. Working through Swan's material nicely complemented what I had to learn/use on the fly when hanging out with Polish and Slovak friends and visiting Poland and Slovakia.
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Re: Is everyday vocabulary = the most frequent vocabulary?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Aug 12, 2018 6:45 pm

Chung wrote:The more that I think about the idea of everyday vocabulary (presumably defined as what you need to do the chores in your life), the more that I appreciate material that is designed to teach you something about how native speakers interact with each other (basically a certain emphasis on encountering colloquialisms in use, and even certain cultural references as they turn up in language) as well as phrasing and terms that you can expect while doing chores. Sooner or later we have to cook, clean or fix/heal something (even when we're lucky to get someone else to do it, we better know how to explain accurately what we want to accomplish).

I've recently started to see the value of the old DLI Headstart course for Italian because of the emphasis on learning language for survival (e.g. greetings, shopping, fixing a car, using public transport). I used to scoff at such material for foreign languages, but then I realize that I have no such qualms knowing such survival language in English. The translation of "estimate" (as in finding a quote or estimated price for repairing something at home) in isolation may not turn up on a frequency list, but it sure is part of everyday life when needing to express "Could you send somebody to see what we need and to make an estimate?" (Potrebbe mandare qualcuno per vedere quello che serve e per farci un preventivo?)


Yes!

I'd say the most problematic are the courses for intermediate learners. The beginner ones have their struggles (too much focus on touristy and exchange students' life, long lists of vocab that the beginner struggles to digest), but the B1 and B2 coursebooks leave this stuff too much and focus on the "more advanced subjects" only.

Every course includes shopping but almost no course includes having something fixed. Or there is a long list of sports' names but not the vocab and phrases you need while signing up for a gym. It's stuff like that.

Courses for migrants are a good tip, thanks.
Or some kinds of media include that. I've learnt a lot of such practical stuff from the vampire novels by Charlaine Harris :-D
Phrasebooks partially try to cover stuff like this but they have their own catches, such as mistakes or unnatural stuff (I am more and more convinced the publishers count on the users not being able to find out).

I've been thinking about making a list of stuff like this and building on it, but it looks like it would be a too large project for me now.
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