Eugene111

@Johnboyq You can download my list at this link: https://germanwordlist.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/hello-world/ However, I'm sure I have also attached the list to the post of mine that you've quoted above.

I think it's pretty hard to find a well-compiled list of French or Italian words with English translations. I'm saying this from experience: In February 2014, as I was contemplating learning German, I quite thoroughly looked through the Internet in search of a good word list. The plan was to learn a few thousand German words first and then start reading German newspapers. However, I found no good word list. So, I had to compile one of my own. The situation may be different with French or Italian, but I'm quite skeptical.

I noticed there seems to be a shortage of quality and user-friendly German word-lists with English translations on the Internet. So, I decided to share a list of 1000+ German nouns that I wrote out from SPIEGEL and other German newspapers. These nouns are some of the more useful ones that I came across in spring of 2014, as I began to read the German press and put together what has now become a Mega Word List with 28000 words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, short phrases). I've been putting together my German-English word list from 2014 till 2019.

I've been self-studying German for the past 15 months. I read German newspapers, for 4+ hours every day. I've compiled a German-English dictionary of over 18000 words. So, I'm pretty familiar with the problem of memorizing the words. I think visualization is ineffective. It might work for a wordlist of 500 or 1000 words, but hardly for a wordlist of 5000 words or more. Your associations (visualizations) will just get totally confused as time passes by and you add new associations. I tried using the method a while ago for a few words that adamantly resisted entering my (long-term) memory. And for a week or two I really could refresh the words in my memory with the aid of the visualization technique. But then I moved on to new words (which still come by the dozen daily), and the analogies I have initially drawn up for the words kept on becoming mistier and mistier. Now, about 6 months after trying this technique I only remember that the analogy had to do with a forest. I now don't remember either German words or their English translations. Based on my experience in learning German, I would say that there’s no trick to fool your mind. It will remember foreign words or their visualizations only if you repeat the words or visualizations very many times. A while ago I’ve read a study that said that to remember a new word one needs to repeat it about 15 times (if you stick to visualizations, you need to visualize the word for at least 15 times). From experience, I can say that for some words even 30 repetitions are not enough. The key is to repeat foreign words over extended periods of time. If you learn a word today, repeat it tomorrow morning (most likely, you’ll remember it; but, most likely, you’ll have forgotten it in a week, without additional repetition during this time). Then in a week. And in a month. In addition, every time you look up the word in your self-compiled dictionary while reading Spanish newspapers, books etc., you increase the chances of lodging it permanently in your long-term memory. So, you constantly repeat the words from your self-compiled dictionary and also repeat them as they pop up during your reading. Two-pronged approach, so to speak. However, as your word list grows bigger and bigger, repeating older words becomes problematic—because if you regularly repeat older words, little time will likely remain for adding new words to the list. That’s my case with a wordlist of 18000+ words. My plan is to reach a milestone of about 25000 words and then set aside a month or so to just repeat the words from the list, without adding any new ones in the meantime.

Just an update on the number of German words required to read German newspapers: I posted the original question on March 10, 2015 and back then my self-compiled German-English dictionary contained 15560 words. Today I added to the list the word number 18000. But not much has changed with regard to my German proficiency over the past 3 months. I still keep on writing out 20-30 unfamiliar German words per day. I just finished reading a 1400-word-long article from Die Welt (German newspaper) about the German language (http://www.welt.de/kultur/article124064744/Die-deutsche-Sprache-hat-5-3-Millionen-Woerter.html). I have spent over 3 hours reading it and wrote out 23 new German words. In case you're also learning German and are wondering what these 23 words are that have evaded me for the past 15 months, I attach the list on 2 screenshots below. By the way, according to the article I've just read, there are about 70.000 general-vocabulary words in German. In the "Large Dictionary of the German Language" ("Große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache"), there are about 200.000 words. The total number of words in German is estimated to be between 300.000 and 500.000, including technical terms, slang and regional dialects. For comparison: Oxford Dictionary of English contains about 620.000.

Mix, hi! Ever since reading your post on April 15, I've switched from reading SPIEGEL to reading Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (thanks for the hint!!!). Based on my 11-day experience with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, I'd say that the amount of vocabulary required to read an article is more determined by its topic than by the general writing style of either SPIEGEL or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung there're indeed truly formiddable articles, especially in their "Travel" section. Also difficult are rather technical articles, like this one about insurance companies: "Ewig einzahlen, wenig bekommen" (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/meine-finanzen/vermoegensfragen/viele-private-rentenversicherungen-sind-unrentabel-13557409.html). I'm not sure a SPIEGEL article on the same topic would be much easier. But the article "Tsipras bittet Merkel am Telefon um Geld" (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/griechenland-in-not-tsipras-bittet-merkel-am-telefon-um-geld-13560884.html) is a piece of cake. And there're quite a few articles like this in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Just as there're in SPIEGEL.

Lushlala, I noticed in your other postings on this forum that you also speak French. How long did it take you to learn French? Do you read French newspapers? If so, do you have to use the dictionary--if so, how often?

Hi, Lushlala! Thanks for your comments! I actually hadn't known my reading speed either until another forum participant (Hardufyr) asked me about it, at which point I calculated the speed. And it turned out I'm a slow reader, as you could have noticed in the earlier comments. I began to read SPIEGEL in February 2014 only because of misleading information I found on the Web about the number of words one needs to know to be fluent in German. Back then, from the info I could garner, I thought 6000 words would more than suffice and that by August 2014 I would be pretty good at German. But the reality turned out to be very different. Since my first posts on the forum about a month ago (by then I had already been reading SPIEGEL for 13 months) my self-compiled German-English dictionary has grown to 16350 words, but I still keep on writing out 20-30 new words per day. My current estimate is that I'd need to learn 25000 German words to feel comfortable with German. By "feel comfortable" I mean a level tantamount to Goethe-Institut's C2 level (highest level). Here's what is said about C2 level of fluency (from Goethe-Institut's website): "Can effortlessly understand practically everything which he/she reads or hears. Can summarize information from various written and spoken sources, logically recounting the reasons and explanations. Can express him/herself spontaneously with high fluency and precision and also make finer nuances of meaning clear in more complex topics."

Hi! Just curious: Do you feel any eyestrain in learning Japanese? Japanese letters/words seem to require very close visual examination of the letters/words. Also, how long have you been studying Japanese? 13 months ago I opted for studying German. Ever since I've been reading Der Spiegel (German newspaper) daily, writing out unfamiliar words. So far, my self-compiled German-English dictionary contains 16000+ German words with English translations. Result: I can understand about 90% of what I read--without using a dictionary (even though I still keep on writing out 20-30 new words a day). I can also understand about 80% of news programmes. WHAT'S YOUR PROGRESS IN JAPANESE IN READING AND LISTENING COMPREHENSION?

That's very interesting! Thanks! Yet, the above graph is not necessarily in contradiction with the claim that a word should be repeated about 30 times in order to be remembered. 30 times during a day might not be that productive. It would be much more useful to repeat a word 30 times over a month, or 6 months. As for me, I repeat a word about 9 times on the day I learn it and the next day (thus, 9 times during 2 days). Then, in about 10 days or so (when I write out a new batch of about 500 words), I repeat it about 7 times over 4 days. And then--almost good-bye the word! I look it up in my self-made dictionary only if I don't remember the word when seeing it in a German newspaper. The plan is to have a major review of all words once I reach 20000 words milestone.

Thanks for clarification!!! Actually, it's strange one cannot download an Excel file into the program! That should be easy for developers to do. In my case, I can barely keep up with reading new articles and writing out new words. I repeat words older than the latest 500 entries only when I come across them in an article and I don't know them (so, I look them up through Search function). But the latest 500 words I repeat about 15 times, each word over a number of days.

What's the benefit of Anki as opposed to having an Excel file with German words in column A and their English translations in column B? With my Excel file, I can easily navigate through the entire list of words and repeat any particular word (that i find through Search function) or any block of words. And where do you take the words that you learn through Anki--do you add them in yourself, or are they already in the App? I actually have installed Anki a moment ago. But shortly afterwards I have deleted it, since the program could not recognize Excel file format--I wanted to input my Excel file into Anki to see how it would look in flash-card form.

Fully agree with your destination metaphor! My experience with English, which is not my native tongue, proves your point: I've considered myself fluent in English for the past 15 years, never bothering over the timespan to write out any new words (many could be guesstimated; as for the ones I did look up in the dictionary, I relied on my memory to remember). But 6 months ago, I decided to start writing unfamiliar English words as well. Now I have a separate English self-composed dictionary with about 300 words. My self-compiled German dictionary is in Excel. That may sound old-fashined, but I find it convenient.

Example: In my self-made dictionary, there is a German word "der Hinweis" with a translation of "clue; evidence; suggestion". In the online dictionary dict.cc that I predominantly use, there are 23 (!!!) translations of "der Hinweis." My point is that it's easier to memorize by constant repetition the words from my own self-made dictionary than from a published dictionary--because I regularly swot only 3 words, not 23. For some words, with one or two translations, the above illustration would not apply obviously. But still there're tons of words with very many translations. Of course, if you are time-pressed, putting together such a self-compiled dictionary is not an option.

For the past 13 months I've been reading Der Spiegel (German newspaper) for 4+ hours daily. Also have been listening to German version of Euronews and German-language radio (about 20 minutes per day). Am I satisfied with my German proficiency? Certainly, not. But I doubt I would have learned as much as I actually did through any other manner,--except for immersion, of course.