How many words do you need to know to be fluent in English?

I am in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and one of my favorite things here is food especially this this is ketchup and also this is ketchup and also this you see ketchup is the Malaysian word the sauce and over time this word got sucked into English and now today it only means that tomato stuff that you buy at your local supermarket ketchup is one of the many words that English has borrowed from Malaysian but English hores words from lots of other languages as well so the question is how many words has English borrowed from other languages well I don't know okay so how many words has English got that are actually real true native English words well also I don't know I have no idea now the reason I can't answer those questions is not because I'm ignorant it's because those questions are impossible to answer [Music] you see before we can start to count words we need to define what exactly a word is and that is more difficult than you might expect let's look at a simple word like dog now dog exists as a noun we all know dog but it also exists as a verb to dog somebody to follow them persistently and a dog as if dogged could also be an adjective so are they one word or three then also we have the conjugations of the verb in the past and in the gerund is that one word or five then we have the plural is that another word what about the diminutive doggie is that another word and then what about other words that contain dog like hot dog guard dog and the Sheep dog is dog one word or is it one two three four five six seven eight nine ten words and this doesn't even include all of the words with dog that I can't even think of right now now why is this important well a really common question that learners have is how much vocabulary do I need for fluency and if you ask the internet for example on reddit then you will get various different replies for example I think about two to five thousand active words you know and use well for daily conversations I already got quite far with around 500 words and phrases depends on the language some languages use less words than others but each word carries a wider meaning I'd say around 5,000 words in most languages is going to get you into that conversationally fluent level most people generally suggest around 2,000 words to carry a simple conversation so the internet thinks somewhere between 500 and 5,000 words is is about right not very helpful maybe we can look to science for the answer this 2016 paper estimates that the average 20 year old native speaker of American English knows 42 thousand words and 4,200 multi-word expressions maybe that's a good guide to how much vocabulary you need for fluency the truth is that they are all wrong and the reason is Scrabble [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Nigel Richards is the 2017 and 2018 French Scrabble champion his fellow competitors described him as an extra-terrestrial a machine a person with a perfect command of French vocabulary but here's the thing Nigel Richards isn't French he's from New Zealand he doesn't even speak French he just memorized the French scrabble dictionary he's not a francophone I can confirm that Yves Brene the vice president of the Belgian Scrabble Federation and organizer of the francophone championships told France TV Nigel will say bonjour with an accent and he can also give the score in French which is obligatory but that's all so although he knows more French vocabulary than most French people his fluency in French is zero so how much vocabulary do you need for fluency well the answer is that you are asking the wrong question it's a bit like asking how many tomatoes you need to make the perfect Neapolitan pizza yes you need Tomatoes good tomatoes but you also need flour and yeast and salt and water and mozzarella cheese and olive oil and basil and all of those ingredients come together to make something beautiful so instead of asking how much vocabulary you need for fluency you should be asking how much practice you need for fluency and the answer is a lot now I'm not saying that vocabulary isn't important in fact the size of your vocabulary is a good in educator of your language ability but it's not as important as you think you don't need a huge vocabulary this study shows that actually using advanced vocabulary makes you appear less intelligent and this study shows that the three most common ways of learning vocabulary flashcards close activities and crosswords are actually not very effective now maybe you think I'm trying to sell you the easy way learn a language without all of that difficult and boring memorization but actually it's the opposite sitting down and memorizing lists of vocabulary that is what's easy what's really hard is to enter into a conversation and share your thoughts and feelings and ideas and listen and show your personality and put yourself at the risk of being ashamed you can't hide behind those language learning apps on your telephone that only teach you how to memorize vocabulary vocabulary is nothing without Grandma without good pronunciation without rhetoric without the art of conversation without having something to say we must always approach our language learning with a view to communication language is not something to memorize it's something to use I'm Christian this is kangaroo English and I'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 94,429

Keywords: how many words for fluency, how much vocabulary for fluency, canguro, learning english, learn english, english teacher, english grammar, grammar, esl

Id: rnrHYR6yKnQ

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2019