Is knowing 5000 words considered as advance level?

[surfinglife]

You need to know about 1500 words to be able to read a newspaper. Apparently it has been proven that most Americans operate quite happily on less than 1000 words.....yes, 5000 is a lot in any language and other then inorganic chemistry you should be able to have a chat about almost anything.

[Pla shado]

Since we've sort of drifted into Thai pronunciation of foreign words, today my wife asked me something about Ah Buddha Bee. (Abu Dhabi) Emphasis on the Bee.

[GotR1GHT]

Since we've sort of drifted into Thai pronunciation of foreign words, today my wife asked me something about Ah Buddha Bee. (Abu Dhabi) Emphasis on the Bee.

Just wait until she ask you about an actor Harry Stanford:)Hint= it's Harrison Ford

[thaichalina]

I have a coworker who speaks Thai ( in terms of knowing the words) quite well. No one knows what he's saying because of his American accent and missing the tones completely.

That is so true.I knew couple of guys that had decent vocabulary and read quite well but they were totally ignoring importance of tones which made them so hard to understand.They all stopped learning thai at some point because they were annoyed how no one can understand them.

It's better to know 2000 words with correct tone than 5000 without knowing tones or in which context to use the words

[duanebigsby]

I have a coworker who speaks Thai ( in terms of knowing the words) quite well. No one knows what he's saying because of his American accent and missing the tones completely.

That is so true.I knew couple of guys that had decent vocabulary and read quite well but they were totally ignoring importance of tones which made them so hard to understand.They all stopped learning thai at some point because they were annoyed how no one can understand them.

It's better to know 2000 words with correct tone than 5000 without knowing tones or in which context to use the words

Agreed. I have a grade 12 student tutoring me in Thai and she tells me that even though I don't know much she understands what I say.

She can't understand much of that other foreign teacher's Thai at all.

[carter1882]

I know Thai kids and young adults with vocabularies of 50000 plus...yes 50k.....but then we are all professional Scrabble players! We all speak in Thai at tournaments......

[skashoon]

Apparently your English is not so great either.

[DA3NDORPHIN3]

Apparently your English is not so great either.

Did you make a new account just to post that or did you take your time to deliver your best first post?

[jcisco]

The Economists language guru, spewed out some stats, link to the post is here---> Blog Post

You can google it, the post is called : "lexical Facts" and it was published

May 29th 2013, 16:02

by R.L.G. (in case I am breaking a linking, quoting, coup or whatever rules and my links are killed)

Originally: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/vocabulary-size

• Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words
• Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age
• Adult test-taker vocabulary growth basically stops at middle age
• The most common vocabulary size for foreign test-takers is 4,500 words
• Foreign test-takers tend to reach over 10,000 words by living abroad
• Foreign test-takers learn 2.5 new words a day while living in an English-speaking country

In my personal experience the measure of advanced level is not the depth of the vocabulary but more practical utility. However I have learnt several languages and do highly recommend growing a fat vocab quickly, as the expressive ability is functional almost instantly.

I could go on about all the particular points of languages like accent and tone etc etc, Basically as with computers Garbage in Garbage out. If yours skills are seriously off the Bell curve, thats all you can expect in communication.

Advanced level, is the ability to express a difficult concept or nebulous idea or feeling, through to a detailed explanation of say something technical or procedural in business and be done without it being a fill in the blank sessions.

I'd say at 5000, most people would be working at refining their language skills to address the finer points or whatever particular environment they need it for. My personal experience and what I have gleaned from others in the same sort of space.

[ezzra]

Knowing 5000 words? it's depends on how many of them are swear words.... they don't count...

[sabotos]

s0.

[AbeSurd]

Without claiming to be any kind of expert, I have naturally thought about what makes Thai harder for us to learn than, say, French. A large part of it is probably due to the dissimilarity between the languages. English is a West German variety among the Indo-European language group while Thai belongs in the Tai-Kadai group which belongs either in the Sino-Tibetan group or the Austronesian group, depending on who you ask. Either way, the "language distance" between the two languages is much larger than between Germanic English and Romance French, which are both in the Indo-European group. "Language distance" is apparently an accepted concept in the linguistics literature, but is not considered to be measurable at this point. We would expect that languages that are more closely related and therefore share more features would be more easily acquired and there is data to support this although with exceptions.

In my experience Thai is vastly different from English, French or Spanish and in sometimes surprising ways. Here are some differences that I have noted so far:

1. new phonemes: tones, long and short vowels, unaspirated consonants, the "ง", the open "u" of เรือ and ตึก, etc. According to Marvin Brown, these phonemic additions result in a variety of vowel sounds in Thai amounting to 105 as compared to 35 for English. Unfamiliar phonemes are both especially difficult to pronounce and difficult to remember, the latter because we tend not to pay attention to them. Tones in English, which operate at the discourse, not phonemic, level have meaning certainly, but seldom affect word recognition. So, we pay too little attention to them in Thai and then find that we can't remember the tone. With practice, especially at reading and writing, we become able to remember tones and vowel length and distinguish the closed "u" from the open "u" readily, etc. The mistake many of the failed learners of Thai make is thinking that because they don't get it readily they can't learn it at all. Just takes more work than they expect. A lot more.

2. Yes, there is less grammar. Thai lacks verb tenses, gender, number in nouns, articles, subjunctive mode, punctuation, word separation, capitalization, and probably more. In addition, there is not a strong distinction between a verb and an adjective. But it becomes less clear to me that less grammar makes the language easier to learn rather than harder. Syntax means more regularity and it means learning a few rules allow you to generate and recognize thousands of specific examples. Whereas narrative time is explicit in French or English, it is not absent from Thai, but is implied. The Thai reader has to infer it from the semantics mostly in the absence of syntax. Consider an analogy: pronouncing written Thai is a lot easier for the Thai language learner than pronouncing written English is for the English language learner. Written Thai language has clear rules of pronunciation which you can learn in a month. There are exceptions that have to be learned individually, but a lot fewer of them than there are in English. Similarly with grammatical structure. Latin which has more grammatical syntax than English, having noun declensions in addition to complete verb conjugations which are only residual in English, is very seldom grammatically ambiguous. The role of each word in the sentence is easy to determine from the word ending no matter where the word happens actually to be positioned. (Please note I am not saying that ambiguity is a defect. Indeed, it may be rather a language resource. But it poses difficulties for the Western learner.)

3. The roles of vowels and consonants are not the same! Big shocker. Marvin Brown, the Cornell linguistics prof, also pointed out that in English as in other European languages, it's the consonants that carry the information. Indeed, if we remove all of the vwls frm pg f txt n nglsh t trns t w cn stll rd t prtt wll. The same is true of all European languages. The word "vowel" itself comes from the French voix elle meaning "little voice." The little voice merely enables the consonants to speak. Without vowels we can read and understand the page of text that lacks them, but we cannot read it out loud. By contrast, Thai needs all those 105 vowel sounds, because that's where the information is, not in the consonants. The reason there are only 8 final consonant sounds in Thai is that the purpose of the consonant is merely to cut off the sound of the vowel preceding it. In addition to having fewer of them, Thais pronounce the final consonants much more briefly, less clearly, than we do in English. When Thais speak English they habitually drop final consonants or speak them too indistinctly making it hard for us to get the word, since we are listening just for those very consonants. The result is that we Thai learners pay too much attention to the wrong part of the word, the consonants, and tend to pay too little attention to the vowels, which is where the meat is.

The experiment of subtracting the vowels from a page of text, by the way, cannot even be performed with the Thai abugida, since the vowels are mostly not written at all.

4. The different cultures and history result in a far different role for speaking, especially public speaking, between Thai and European/American cultures. There is no historic culture of public speaking in Thailand. There are no published collections of the speeches of famous political leaders. There is no Gettysburg Address, no speech of Napolean inspiring his troops to victory in Italy ("Soldiers! Your country owes you everything and can give you nothing!") No heroic public speakers from antiquity like Demosthenes who overcame his speech impediment by practicing with pebbles in his mouth over the roar of the waves of the sea. There are no ruins of ancient fora where the citizens met to debate publicly or amphitheaters where they enjoyed public performances that depended entirely on speech. Rhetoric was not a critical component of classical education. All this basically because there was no public, collective decision-making. Troops were not exhorted; they were simply commanded.

In my own education, we began to practice making classroom presentations at about age 10 which continued up through graduate school in a scale of increasing importance, the importance of being able to express our ideas being ever impressed upon us. Thais don't do this. Their business leaders have no platform skills by and large, which they don't need anyway since they don't give speeches. I first noticed this absence when I began to watch videos of university professors and politicians being interviewed. They mumbled like cab drivers or else spoke as informally as if they were sitting in the kitchen with the family. I was hoping at first for the slow, measured pronunciation of Charles De Gaulle whose speeches I used to like to listen to as a beginning French student. Thai politicians aren't like De Gaulle. The result is that Thai public speakers speak very quickly, mumble, don't make their points very clearly, do not make clear pauses between words to assist their listeners, and mix colloquialisms indiscriminately all of which makes them hard to understand for us Western learners. Thais speak faster than pokey Americans, but then nearly everyone does. I remember reading somewhere that Spanish speakers were clocked at 40% faster than Americans.

5. The most important language skill to Thais is not what we expect. One of my Thai teachers, a smart guy and a philosophy PhD from the Sorbonne, once recounted to me the response of a French friend to whom he had asked the question, "What does it mean to speak French well?" The Frenchman replied, "To make the liaisons and enchainements correctly." I have experienced this myself when, after a few days of tutorial on that very subject at the Alliance Francaise in Paris, French people suddenly started complimenting my French, forgiving in the process a host of grammatical and usage errors. So, this teacher followed with the question, "What then does it mean to speak Thai well?" His answer was, "To use pronouns correctly." I find this answer astonishing. That's not remotely true in any of the European languages of which I have any knowledge. What is says to me is that for Thais the important issue is always to establish the right social relationship with the other speaker, a task for which language is essential, but secondary. The top-level French speaking skills mentioned, by contrast, are mostly linguistic although they do have a social component in that you have to be able to read and spell French in order to make the liaisons and enchainements correctly. So, it's an advertisement of status, also. But for Thai speakers negotiating relative status is foreground at all times apparently. That's why the first order of business when encountering a new person is to establish who is older or otherwise to clarify the nature of the relationship. So, when my current Thai teacher was invited to give a talk to a group of students at a private high school, the first question the students had was, "Should we call you kru or phi?" American students would never bother with such a question. It's also the reason that Thais ask us directly how old we are and are shocked when we explain that the question is not always a polite one in Western society. It's the same reason that Thais complain much more about our using formal Thai language in social situations. It surprised me at first because universities always teach formal language and expect you to pick up familiar and slang usages on your own. So, what would they imagine I would be speaking at first? Among the Thais speaking too formally can be inappropriate to the point of presenting a deliberate insult. So now, in order to speak Thai well, I have to figure out whether to address the cab driver as "Nong" when I ask him if he will go to my destination? And that issue will arise all day long in every interaction? This represents a dimension of language that I had never expected, even though we have all heard about the importance of hierarchy, and face in Thai society.

Add to that the fact, that although every Thai word has an implied usage level (government, spoken, written, half-government, poetical, legal, doctor, etc.) and that Thais attach great importance to establishing and maintaining the appropriate degree of closeness in conversation through appropriate word selection, the dictionaries don't report that information. There is no Petit Robert or OED for Thai. The dictionaries don't provide usage information nor do they always even provide examples of usage. Makes it tough for us.

6. The quality of nearly all Thai language schools for foreigners is abysmal.

7. Standard English in America is what midwestern news announcers speak. There is no Standard Thai. Therefore you cannot judge the educational level of the Thai with whom you are speaking by his pronunciation or language usage, for instance.

So, that's some of the differences so far. There's more: stringing together verbs in narration, the frequent implication of direction in concepts whose English translation does not incorporate direction, and so on, but that's enough for a starter. I hope it doesn't discourage anyone, which is not my intention. In fact, although language learning always involves a high degree of frustration, learning the Thai language is, in fact, what I like most about Thailand, just because it is so far from English. When I read French these days, by comparison, it seems to me to be just English with a slightly different vocabulary. I remember that French seemed exotic as an undergraduate.

So, Thai is hard. In my limited experience the key difference between successful language learners and the failures is motivation, rather than intelligence or language ability. Learning a language is a long grind. The fun increases only gradually, like learning to play the piano. If your goal is to achieve full, near-native competence which might require a vocabulary amounting to 17,000 words, then learning the first 5,000 will be, if not easier, then more bearable and won't leave you wondering why it is you can't yet banter as wittily as the Thais.

Very good.You've helped explain a lot to me here.

And thank you for the Anki recommendation. Have downloaded it just now.

[CaptHaddock]

Very good.You've helped explain a lot to me here.

And thank you for the Anki recommendation. Have downloaded it just now.

Anki is terrific, but there is a learning curve particularly with formatting the cards. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get the display of the Thai word I have typed to show the vowel and tone markers. If you need help send me a PM and I can send you a template.

[Aforek]

• Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words
• Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words
• Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age
• Adult test-taker vocabulary growth basically stops at middle age
• The most common vocabulary size for foreign test-takers is 4,500 words
• Foreign test-takers tend to reach over 10,000 words by living abroad
• Foreign test-takers learn 2.5 new words a day while living in an English-speaking country

It means that a child 4 years old knows 5000 words ? it's a lot , I think .

All the other figures seem very high to me ; I am not bad in my own language, but I am sure I don't know 20000 words.

For allowance of thai people, above, I meant of course " if sometimes tones are not correct," not every tones

[SPALAX]

I'm French and studied Latin, Ancient Greek, English and German. When I was young, we had outstanding teachers in every subject. The way of learning was:

- Vocabulary: About 50 words to be perfectly known

- Grammar: Homework about 10 exercises

- Translation: One thema/version (from the best authors)

all this weekly not forgetting etymology. A teacher told us that with 100 greek "roots" we could know thousands of words and exactly or appromixately the same in many european languages. Example: "Theos" means god, if you know "cratos" which means " power", you know or guess what is theocratie in French, theocracy in English, theocratia in spanish ...

When I graduated (bachelors' degree) I couldn't speak English. Then at University, it was totally different: We still had French teachers but also "native" lecturers, several of them in a year, and from different origins, english, japanese, australian, italian, indian... because we had to understand as many accents as possible. I could speak english within 6 months because I had a solid base.

Nowadays, it's all about "SPEAKING". A huge mistake. At the end of Matthayom 6, after 12 years, only an elite knows more than 5 tenses and just a limited elite can "SPEAK".

Why did I write all this?

If you know 5 000 thai words (listening, speaking, reading, writing), your level of vocabulary is great. It's even better if you know the main "root words", the monosyllabic ones. If you know the meaning of djai in the middle or at the end of a word, it can help you to memorize about 250 words.

It is necessary to know that "you" is translated by "Khun", then to know the most frequently used translations for "you" about 20 ways and finally to know that there are more than 250 words for "you" and that the Tthais use the third person and rarely the second one. I would say that a very few well educated Thais know all that.

So the first point is: you have to learn Thai grammar, which is very difficult but possible.

If you know " Where" and "go" you'll quicky know how to say "go where please"

But to go from "Where have you gone" to the thai "go where come please" or reverse is a long and difficult process. Very interesting because you actually learn more about the thai way of thinking and reasoning than the language itself.

As a member pointed, translation is a must. Get a novel both in thai and in English and study the translation.

Nowadays we are brainwashed with "SPEAKING" and terrible methods so lets study vocabulary, grammar and translation and then we can pretend to say:

Fluent in Thai (read, written, spoken and understandood.

Good luke to You.

[SPALAX]

I'm French and studied Latin, Ancient Greek, English and German. When I was young, we had outstanding teachers in every subject. The way of learning was:

- Vocabulary: About 50 words to be perfectly known

- Grammar: Homework about 10 exercises

- Translation: One thema/version (from the best authors)

all this weekly not forgetting etymology. A teacher told us that with 100 greek "roots" we could know thousands of words and exactly or appromixately the same in many european languages. Example: "Theos" means god, if you know "cratos" which means " power", you know or guess what is theocratie in French, theocracy in English, theocratia in spanish ...

When I graduated (bachelors' degree) I couldn't speak English. Then at University, it was totally different: We still had French teachers but also "native" lecturers, several of them in a year, and from different origins, english, japanese, australian, italian, indian... because we had to understand as many accents as possible. I could speak english within 6 months because I had a solid base.

Nowadays, it's all about "SPEAKING". A huge mistake. At the end of Matthayom 6, after 12 years, only an elite knows more than 5 tenses and just a limited elite can "SPEAK".

Why did I write all this?

If you know 5 000 thai words (listening, speaking, reading, writing), your level of vocabulary is great. It's even better if you know the main "root words", the monosyllabic ones. If you know the meaning of djai in the middle or at the end of a word, it can help you to memorize about 250 words.

It is necessary to know that "you" is translated by "Khun", then to know the most frequently used translations for "you" about 20 ways and finally to know that there are more than 250 words for "you" and that the Tthais use the third person and rarely the second one. I would say that a very few well educated Thais know all that.

So the first point is: you have to learn Thai grammar, which is very difficult but possible.

If you know " Where" and "go" you'll quicky know how to say "go where please"

But to go from "Where have you gone" to the thai "go where come please" or reverse is a long and difficult process. Very interesting because you actually learn more about the thai way of thinking and reasoning than the language itself.

As a member pointed, translation is a must. Get a novel both in thai and in English and study the translation.

Nowadays we are brainwashed with "SPEAKING" and terrible methods so lets study vocabulary, grammar and translation and then we can pretend to say:

Fluent in Thai (read, written, spoken and understandood.

Good luke to You.

[Strangebrew]

Well I'm American And to be honest English is the hardest language to master. Thai is easy for me I listen I ask and I learn and always find Thai's eager to hell me better my Thai. Now go to New York and try that You will likely end up in an alley with knife in you.

[AbeSurd]

Very good.You've helped explain a lot to me here.

And thank you for the Anki recommendation. Have downloaded it just now.

Anki is terrific, but there is a learning curve particularly with formatting the cards. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get the display of the Thai word I have typed to show the vowel and tone markers. If you need help send me a PM and I can send you a template.

Wow. Thank you. Done!

[ChristianPFC]

Very interesting subject. Le me add.

I am German but do most of my reading and writing in English. Some years ago, I got a list of the 50,000 most common English words, and from ticking off those I know (in a list shortened to 5000 words, and then multiplying by 10), I counted that I have a passive isolated vocabulary of 22,000 words. That is approximately the level of an educated native speaker.

"Passive isolated vocabulary": I understand the word (i.e. can explain in English or translate to German) when I read it without context (but I wouldn't use most of these words in writing, leave alone in speaking).

However, 22,000 is not enough, I constantly look up words, here a list from history in "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" free app on my mobile: turpitude, guttersnipe, timorous, arduous, arcane, truanting, internecine, gules, dredge, succor, propitious, ingratiate. Some of them I didn't know, for others I wanted examples of usage.

I learned Thai vocabulary with flash cards, I made about 2000 of them, and know over 90%. From that I derive that I have a passive isolated vocabulary of Thai of 2000 words, which is enough for all my daily business and reading articles about sightseeing and traveling in Thailand.

My main problem is listening (I am a visual learner, I have to match the word I hear with a word I know in writing) and slang, not acquiring vocabulary.

I tentatively claim that Thai is not as easy to learn as a European language (I have experience with English, French, Russian and Spanish). I would say three years of learning Thai got me to intermediate level, whereas a similar effort in French got me to advanced level. But you have to consider that English and French are mutually reinforcing for a German learner, due to overlap of vocabulary. And when I studied Spanish for a year, already having intermediate level of French, it was a piece of cake. Just recently I had a look at a Spanish text and could understand the main points, simply from having and advanced level in French.

[Krataiboy]

When the Sun first rose over Fleet Street, I was told it catered for individuals with an English vocabulary of no more than 800 words.

Three decades later, it seems most of the rest have sadly followed suit.

[CaptHaddock]

Very interesting subject. Le me add.

I am German but do most of my reading and writing in English. Some years ago, I got a list of the 50,000 most common English words, and from ticking off those I know (in a list shortened to 5000 words, and then multiplying by 10), I counted that I have a passive isolated vocabulary of 22,000 words. That is approximately the level of an educated native speaker.

"Passive isolated vocabulary": I understand the word (i.e. can explain in English or translate to German) when I read it without context (but I wouldn't use most of these words in writing, leave alone in speaking).

However, 22,000 is not enough, I constantly look up words, here a list from history in "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" free app on my mobile: turpitude, guttersnipe, timorous, arduous, arcane, truanting, internecine, gules, dredge, succor, propitious, ingratiate. Some of them I didn't know, for others I wanted examples of usage.

I learned Thai vocabulary with flash cards, I made about 2000 of them, and know over 90%. From that I derive that I have a passive isolated vocabulary of Thai of 2000 words, which is enough for all my daily business and reading articles about sightseeing and traveling in Thailand.

My main problem is listening (I am a visual learner, I have to match the word I hear with a word I know in writing) and slang, not acquiring vocabulary.

I tentatively claim that Thai is not as easy to learn as a European language (I have experience with English, French, Russian and Spanish). I would say three years of learning Thai got me to intermediate level, whereas a similar effort in French got me to advanced level. But you have to consider that English and French are mutually reinforcing for a German learner, due to overlap of vocabulary. And when I studied Spanish for a year, already having intermediate level of French, it was a piece of cake. Just recently I had a look at a Spanish text and could understand the main points, simply from having and advanced level in French.

You probably know more English words than you think. Here's an online test:

http://testyourvocab.com/

When I take this test it estimates that I know 38,500 English words. Sounds high, but as a lifelong reader I guess it's possible.

[Richard W]

However, there are many words that mean the same thing. For example DuTaWa = DuMuen = "It Seems Like", So, if you only knew DuTaWa, you could express the utterance using that word and not need to know DuMuen.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm neither persuaded that their meaning is quite the same nor that they are syntactically interchangeable. Moreover, I'm inclined to see ดูท่าว่า as three words ดู ท่า and ว่า (the first and third are very common) and to see ดูเหมือน as the two very common words ดู and เหมือน. What is the reason to see them as single words?

[Aforek]

And when I studied Spanish for a year, already having intermediate level of French, it was a piece of cake. Just recently I had a look at a Spanish text and could understand the main points, simply from having and advanced level in French.

You could understand a Spanish text because you studied it for a year, not because you have an advanced level in French

I have a very advanced level in French, because I am French myself; I just try to understand a Spanish text, knowing nothing in Spanish, I can tell you I understand only 2 % ;

surely after a few months, it will be easy for me, but from the first day, it's not the same language ( same for Italian )

[bhthai]

Personally, I don't you can judge your level only on vocab.

There would be a huge different between someone who can speak 5000 words clearly and 5000 with the typical farang bad Thai.

Unfortunutly there is a lot of farang who have a decent vocab, but still have trouble being understood.

That being said, 5000 is still a lot...You don't learn that many without effort.

[ChristianPFC]

You (ChristianPFC) probably know more English words than you think. Here's an online test:

http://testyourvocab.com/

When I take this test it estimates that I know 38,500 English words. Sounds high, but as a lifelong reader I guess it's possible.

Thank you very much for the link. I get a result of 14,900 English words.

You (ChristianPFC) could understand a Spanish text because you studied it for a year, not because you have an advanced level in French

I have a very advanced level in French, because I am French myself; I just try to understand a Spanish text, knowing nothing in Spanish, I can tell you I understand only 2 % ;

I had Spanish about 15 years ago, evening classes, about 60 hours over one year. Due to knowing French and being one of the youngest participants, I progressed more than 10 times faster then the slowest participants.

I just checked (Bangkok article in wikipedia in Spanish and Dutch), I can understand about half of it (Spanish because I have advanced French and Dutch because I'm German). When I travel in Laos, if I take a close look and have an idea what a text is about, I can match the text with my idea because I understand intermediate Thai.

[Aforek]

You forget my last line " surely after a few months, it will be easy for me, but from the first day, it's not the same language "

of course, knowing French helps to learn Spanish, but for me who has never learned Spanish, the first day, I understand only 2%. after a few lessons, ok ...

But, as to compare with Italian, same situation: never learned Italian but I recognize many more words than in Spanish: surely the Latin origin