10000 German words? 20000 German words? How many are enough?

[Eugene111]

My German-English self-made dictionary actually contains 15600+ words. And I keep on writing out 20-30 new German words from Der Spiegel daily. How many words does your dictionary contain--whatever the foreign language you are studying? Is it enough? If no, how many words you feel would be enough for you to reach your goals?

[thistle]

The Economist actually had a really interesting article on this a while back and apparently the vocabulary size for native English speakers was only about 20,000-35,000 words, so I would guess that a vocabulary of 15,000 would be well on the way to proficiency in a language....although it also depends on the language.

In Latin, for example, one scholar rather famously found that knowing a list of only 1500 words (including all the conjugations, etc.) would let you understand about 85% of any classical or medieval Latin text. It's the last 15% which gets much harder.

[sidney]

I have an English to Spanish dictionary, but it's just a small book. I haven't thought of making my own self-made dictionary yet since I don't have time to do it. Sure it would help you to learn more words and you can memorize them easily, but I would just prefer remembering them by constant repetition.

[Eugene111]

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.

[spanglish1205]

Yea I heard that 25,000-30,000 word figure as well too for native speakers. If I were you I would kind of view it as a journey rather than as a destination. Keep adding words everyday and just keep learning at a pace you can sustain. Even when you do reach 25k words there's still a ton more out there to learn so I wouldn't obsess too much on the number.

As an aside I dont know where you are putting these words in but Anki, a flashcard app which is free on Android and the computer, has been an awesome resource for me to learn and retain vocab. I download decks and I have my own deck to put in words I see from reading.

[Eugene111]

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.

[spanglish1205]

Transposing 15k words is an onerous task but I would check out a flashcard app like Anki for new vocab, I  could retain new vocab pretty damn quickly with it.

[Eugene111]

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.

[spanglish1205]

Yea like I said that´d be an onerous task because you would have to input it manually. It doesn't function as a dictionary it helps you learn new vocab. The program gives you the vocab card at spaced repetitions to retain the memory of it. On the flashcards, you have options of "Again" "Good" or "Easy" that will determine when the card is shown to you again. For a completely new card that is usually Immediate/10 minutes/4 days. After that Immediate/1 day/4 days. Then it'll be Immediate/3 days/5 days. So its great to retain new vocab over time. And you could download decks that other people have. For you, it'll prob be hard to find a pre made deck that has your level of German. But as you go day to day with Dey Speigel you could enter in words there and use to app to retain them.

[Eugene111]

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.