Wednesday 25 February 2015


Words you need to know about Foreign Language


Words You Need To Know About Foreign Language

Someone once said that learning a new language is like becoming a whole new person. True actually, language is for communication, what light is to the world. Simply put, you limit your life when you limit your language skills. Like riding a bicycle for the first time, you jump on and take off, you may fall but you learn to balance yourself along the way. Grammar, vocabulary and diction will help you balance and hone your language skills.

Number of words you need to know

The thumb rule is to plan yourself; use the Pareto principle,do the 80 - 20 rule.The Pareto Principle is very clear, Italian engineer and philosopher Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto observed and researched plants and animals for a considerable length of time before drawing a conclusion, known as Pareto’s Law. It works out as follows: in the cycle of life for many actions, approximately 80% of the effects usually come from 20% of the causes. In other words, with regard to work or study, 20% of your efforts can bring in 80% of the results.

For this to work, we need to understand 95% of words commonly used in a foreign language. When you go about grasping this, the remaining 5% comes to you through contextual situations and experience in the language.

As exasperating as it is trying to figure out the right tools and methods to learn a new language, there is something even more vexing, none of the numbers and statistics on this subject are the same, they are all impossible to nail and thus  keep you confounded, varying  from source to source.

The basic foundation should include

With any foreign language, at the foundation level, you will require to know a basic 250 - 300 most frequently used words of the native speaker. These words are the ones you will be using 65% of the time. On the other hand, it has been noted that 2000 - 2500 words form 90% of what is used all the time.

Of course, the million dollar question is what are those 300 words? There is no magic answer; the jury is still out there on this one. Each language has its own parameters and that is the beauty of it. You learn with practice.

However, for your learning ease, supported by facts and research that is out there, we have listed the category of baseword groups we feel are important to any language you want to learn.

        . Animals
·         . General nouns- objects, articles, singular nouns
·         . Transportation- land, air, sea
·         . People – relationships, genders etc
·         . Food- local, cuisine this is very important
·         . Beverages
·         . Body
·         . Clothing- man , woman, children
·         . Location-  places, areas
·         . Colors
·         . Months
·         . Society- to include religion, money, culture, genders etc
·         . Home- furniture,
·         . Nature – sea, river , ocean, trees
·         . Materials- metals, glass, wood
·         . Measurement and math
·         . Seasons
·         . Number
·         . Time- to include days of minutes, morning, week, months, year etc
·         . Verbs
·         . Adjectives
·         . Pronouns

Each language is unique to its region and dialects can differ marginally from place to place even within a country, so there is no hard and fast rule per se. All you can do is bend and adapt, take Chinese, for instance, it has approximately 370,000 words, English on the other hand has 171,476 words, Dutch 430,000 words and French 100,000 words. As you can see each language varies and with it the number of words you need to learn may run the gamut. So do your math and apply yourself to the task with the dexterity of a gymnast and the willingness to learn.


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