It Turns Out That Studying Linguistics Can Change The Way You Think About Gender, If Only You’re Willing

Confiscated pens containing cheat notes intricately carved by a student at the University of Malaga, Spain. (2022)

reminder that the hit star trek voyager episode “threshold” in which the captain and the pilot go too fast, turn into lizards, and have lizard babies together, won an emmy

Language Learning Stats

*Different resources give slightly different answers, but in general, these are the results:

Elementary: 1,000 words

Intermediate: 3,000 words

Advanced: 6,000- 8,000 words

Highly educated native fluency: 25,000 words

CEFR Levels:

A1: 550 words

A2: 1100 words

B1: 2200 words

B2: 4400 words

C1: 8800 words

C2: 17600 words

1000 words

1000 words allow you to understand about 80% of the language which surrounds you, as long as it is not too specialized.

In theory, it sounds great. JUST 1000 words and you understand that much! Unfortunately, the remaining 20% is what really matters.

Just look at this sentence:

“I went to the … to buy …. but they told me that they can’t … .’

Sure, you understand a lot of words. But does it really help?

3000 words

3000 words allow you to understand about 95% of most ordinary texts (Hazenberg and Hulstijn, 1996).

It seems like a lot. Sure, on this level, you will be able to hold a decent conversation. You will also be able to get the general ideas and concepts of most of the articles.

BUT…general comprehension is not the same as full comprehension, as it involves some guessing.

Still, there is no shortage of enthusiasts who claim that such level is high enough to start picking up new words from context. However, researchers tend to disagree and say that the “magical” number of words which allows learning from the context is….(drum roll)

5000 words

5000 words allow you to understand about 98% of most ordinary texts (Nation (1990) and Laufer (1997)).  Such a vocabulary size warrants also accurate contextual guessing  (Coady et al., 1993; Hirsh & Nation, 1992; Laufer, 1997).

It means that you can function surrounded by this language without bigger problems. Sure, you will struggle if you want to formulate your thoughts really precisely, or when you encounter specialized vocabulary.

But other than that, you will be fine.

10,000 words

10,000 words allow you to understand about 99% of most texts (Nation (1990) and Laufer (1997)).

This is the pinnacle of language learning. A counterpart of having the vocabulary of a college graduate.

With that many words, you can express yourself with amazing precision and pass for a native speaker if your accent is good enough.

Wondering what are the most common words to start learning? Here's some help:

(total is about 600 words. add in some grammar and you're off to a great start!)

EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)

‘Yes’ and 'no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.

Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?

Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.

Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.

Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.

NOUNS (about 120 words)

Time: morning, afternoon, evening, night; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; spring, summer, autumn, winter; time, occasion, minute, half-hour, hour, day, week, month, year.

People: family, relative, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife; colleague, friend, boyfriend, girlfriend; people, person, human being, man, woman, lady, gentleman, boy, girl, child.

Objects: address, bag, book, car, clothes, key, letter (=to post), light (=lamp), money, name, newspaper, pen, pencil, picture, suitcase, thing, ticket.

Places: place, world, country, town, street, road, school, shop, house, apartment, room, ground; Britain, name of the foreign country, British town-names, foreign town-names.

Abstract: accident, beginning, change, color, damage, fun, half, help, joke, journey, language, English, name of the foreign language, letter (of alphabet), life, love, mistake, news, page, pain, part, question, reason, sort, surprise, way (=method), weather, work.

Other: hand, foot, head, eye, mouth, voice; the left, the right; the top, the bottom, the side; air, water, sun, bread, food, paper, noise.

PREPOSITIONS (about 40 words)

General: of, to, at, for, from, in, on.

Logical: about, according-to, except, like, against, with, without, by, despite, instead of.

Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from, behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below, under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.

Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.

DETERMINERS (about 80 words)

Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.

Demonstrative: this, that.

Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.

Comparators: both, neither, each, every, other, another, same, different, such.

ADJECTIVES (about 80 words)

Color: black, blue, green, red, white, yellow.

Evaluative: bad, good, terrible; important, urgent, necessary; possible, impossible; right, wrong, true.

General: big, little, small, heavy; high, low; hot, cold, warm; easy, difficult; cheap, expensive; clean, dirty; beautiful, funny (=comical), funny (=odd), usual, common (=shared), nice, pretty, wonderful; boring, interesting, dangerous, safe; short, tall, long; new, old; calm, clear, dry; fast, slow; finished, free, full, light (=not dark), open, quiet, ready, strong.

Personal: afraid, alone, angry, certain, cheerful, dead, famous, glad, happy, ill, kind, married, pleased, sorry, stupid, surprised, tired, well, worried, young.

VERBS (about 100 words)

arrive, ask, be, be able to, become, begin, believe, borrow, bring, buy, can, change, check, collect, come, continue, cry, do, drop, eat, fall, feel, find, finish, forget, give, going to, have, have to, hear, help, hold, hope, hurt (oneself), hurt (someone else), keep, know, laugh, learn, leave, lend, let (=allow), lie down, like, listen, live (=be alive), live (=reside), look (at), look for, lose, love, make, may (=permission), may (=possibility), mean, meet, must, need, obtain, open, ought to, pay, play, put, read, remember, say, see, sell, send, should, show, shut, sing, sleep, speak, stand, stay, stop, suggest, take, talk, teach, think, travel, try, understand, use, used to, wait for, walk, want, watch, will, work (=operate), work (=toil), worry, would, write.

PRONOUNS (about 40 words)

Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, one; myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs.

Demonstrative: this, that.

Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.

Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.

Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.

ADVERBS (about 60 words)

Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind, nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.

Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally, again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always, often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then (=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.

Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.

Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course, only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too (=also), unfortunately, very much, well.

CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)

Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.

Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.

Manner & Logic: how, why, because, since (=because), although, if; what, who, whom, whose, which, that.

I love space, I love shuttles, I love telescopes, I love learning about galaxies and stars and supernovas and blackholes and planets no matter how far away they are. I love looking at pictures of the stars, I love showing those pictures to my friends, I love talking about new things I learn about space, I love hearing about humanity working together in order to see things millions or billions of lightyears away because of our ingrained want to explore and learn.

people who are like “please stop using incomprehensible words like ‘ontological’ and ‘epistemology’ and ‘teleological’ in the social sciences”..... okay but.... counterpoint..... you could consider, god forbid, learning something

For my linguistsics degree, I did a project on why I'm seeing more people saying "on accident" instead of "by accident." I looked at almost a million pieces of writing pulled from news sites, blogs, academic articles and television transcripts. I found almost three hundred cases of "on accident" being used. It was a surprisingly even spread across sources. Even more interesting, I organized the hits by date and tracked an upward swing in use as time goes on. This means that the use of "on accident" is increasing over time, and may eventually supplant and drive out the classic usage of "by accident." I like to call this prepositional shift.

Now, looking at my data and looking at the age ranges of the writers or speakers, the majority of them were under the age of thirty. So I interviewed a panel of people, choosing twenty with a spread of about half above thirty, and half below. Those older than thirty years of age felt "strongly" or "very strongly" that "on accident" was wrong in all cases, and that "by accident" was the only correct phrase. However, those younger than thirty were much less rigorous, with more than half feeling "ambivalent" or "less strongly" about which was correct. This demonstrates a generational link in preposition usage.

When presented with options for the definitions of "by" and "on," we also get some interesting data. For by, there are two main definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary: 1. Identifying the agent performing an action. Or 2. Indicating the means of achieving something. Whereas "on" has many more definitions, the pertinent ones being 1. To indicate the manner of doing something or 2. To indicate active involvement in a condition or status. By the above definitions, either "by accident" or "on accident" is a correct usage of the term. However, native speakers of English could not successfully define either preposition, instead just choosing one, the other, or both as "sounding correct."

The only evidence for a rule-based shift that I could find was a correlation with the paired phrase for the opposite condition "on purpose." While the younger interviewees were ambivalent about the correctness of "on accident," they uniformly rejected the correctness of the suggested phrase "by purpose." So the shift can only be in one direction according the the native ear, towards the preposition "on."

Whether this means that the particular usage of "by" is becoming archaic or the definition of "on" is expanding is a possible subject of further study using a wider range of phrases. But I found the wider acceptance of "on accident" versus "by accident" to be a fascinating look at how prepositions can shift meaning and usage over time.

So now I'm curious, five years from my initial study (and itching to try the Tumblr poll feature):

i miss her so fucking much (independent reading time)

i be like “damn i got a lot of shit to do” and then go lay down for 17 hours

Seeing foreigners learn my language just overwhelms me with joy, they're studying my language! The one I use to speak! They're translating my culture! Beautiful!