Estimate your English vocabulary size

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 17, 2011, 11:48 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #211

gimpf wrote: post #108

I'd be really interested in the percentiles of the non-native speakers. With an alarmingly low 10.700 words, there is not even a percentile for me... And I know that my fluency of English is at least above the median around here (edit: here = where I live). This also shows how extremely time-consuming it is to learn a second language. I started in school, 10 years old, am moderately well educated (some college drop-o…

Site creator here, again -- my research (small sample size) having Brazilians take the test is that a couple years of learning will get you around 1,500-3,000 words, several years around 4,000-6,000, and a good student with, say, 8 years of classes might get around 10,000. Beyond this, it's pretty much necessary to live abroad for an extended period of time, or be exceptionally good (driven) at languages and watch TO…

Post by csomar » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 12:22 AM UTC

gimpf wrote: post #108

I'd be really interested in the percentiles of the non-native speakers. With an alarmingly low 10.700 words, there is not even a percentile for me... And I know that my fluency of English is at least above the median around here (edit: here = where I live). This also shows how extremely time-consuming it is to learn a second language. I started in school, 10 years old, am moderately well educated (some college drop-o…

Post by kmm » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 12:52 AM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #236

davidw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably have the vocabulary of an average 12 year old native speaker I very clearly remember my first time in Italy, when I saw a family at a restaurant and realized their 5/6 year old spoke much better Italian than I did. Kind of humbling.

But the average 3-year old Chinese speaks infinite better Chinese than I do (I can't even pronounce 'ni hao' correctly I'm sure, despite my colleagues kind praise of how I say it very understandably); I don't see how that's humbling. Language knowledge is imo rather useless; languages is a very inefficient idea transfer mechanism, and the amount of energy we collectively waste on translations and learning languages i…

Post by esrauch » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 1:16 AM UTC

flatline wrote: post #238

Eliezer wrote: post #29

I got 37,300. They claim this is not quite 95th percentile, which I am a tad skeptical accurately represents my vocabulary-size percentile relative to the general population. Perhaps this survey is being forwarded around unusually literate people at the top end, or more than 5% of responders are cheating. Where are the fake words to catch cheaters? I Googled a lot of what I didn't recognize, and everything I checked…

I can't imagine that the percentiles are reflective of the general population...I got 27,000 which it claims is the median score, and from practical experience my vocabulary is quite a bit larger than most people's. If this is measuring, say, the HN crowd, then perhaps it's accurate.

Post by eavc » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 2:31 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #245

robert-boehnke wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the quality of the result is highly dependent on the honesty of the person tested, but with multiple choice, wouldn't you be able to deduct the meaning of the word from choices you are given? E.g.: One of the words I encountered in the test was 'terpsichorean'. While I knew that Terpsichore is one of the Muses, I did not know which one and left the box unticked. Had there been multiple choices, I might h…

I ticked 'terpsichorean', because it made me think "dreamy travelogue writing of a scenic beach with either terpsichorean sky or sea, it means X looks a pale shade of blue-green". Google tells me it means dancing so I was way way off (maybe conflating turquoise and cerulean?). But I have no way of knowing how many words that I feel comfortable defining are actually nowhere near correct, so to be any kind of accurate,…