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How many Esperanto words do you need to know to understand most things?

от SPX, 20 юни 2015

Съобщения: 17

Език: English

SPX (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 02:40:25

I was reading something today that said the average English speaker knows about 12,000 words, but that only about 3,000 are necessary to understand most conversations, read most newspaper articles, etc. So I was wondering what the comparable stat is for Esperanto.

Does anyone know if any studies have been done on this? How many words are necessary to be considered a functional Esperanto vocabulary?

orthohawk (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 03:07:07

SPX:I was reading something today that said the average English speaker knows about 12,000 words, but that only about 3,000 are necessary to understand most conversations, read most newspaper articles, etc. So I was wondering what the comparable stat is for Esperanto.

Does anyone know if any studies have been done on this? How many words are necessary to be considered a functional Esperanto vocabulary?
I should think that if thee memorizes all of the 900 some roots from the fundamento, thee would be able to understand most (if not all) things by using the word building principles of Esperanto

Urho (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 10:00:50

Maybe 1,217 words, please see at lernu!:

novatago (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 10:33:39

As told Orthohawk, in Esperanto the thing is not about words but about roots and affixes. The number of words you know always is higher. So almost for sure you need to know less than 3.000 roots and affixes. Although the number maybe is no so different because I would say that English has more polysemic words than Esperanto.

Ĝis, Novatago.

Tangi (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 11:10:24

Such claims are absurd, as the information in such texts is contained in terms which lie outside the most common 3k words.

Sfinkso (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 11:42:13

Tangi:Such claims are absurd, as the information in such texts is contained in terms which lie outside the most common 3k words.
Statistically, some words are used more than others and it is possible to work out which words these are. This is useful for learning vocabulary.

There will always be words outside of that group, but you will know the most common ones, minimising dictionary use.

This is a proven (and obvious) approach with many languages.

Urho (Покажи профила) 20 юни 2015, 15:25:45

Urho:Maybe 1,217 words, please see at lernu!:
See also Fakaj vortaroj, terminaroj at STEB and there
  • Baza Radikaro - Esperanto-Esperanto (de Wouter F. Pilger); ĉ. 2.500 radikoj, ĉ. 25.000 vortoj.

bryku (Покажи профила) 22 юни 2015, 11:30:45

Tangi:Such claims are absurd, as the information in such texts is contained in terms which lie outside the most common 3k words.
This is true with English, not with Esperanto, where one root can form many words. Esperanto vocabulary is multiplicative, so 1000 roots are more than enough to freely express oneself:
ami - ama - amo - amigi - amilo - amanto...

dbob (Покажи профила) 22 юни 2015, 15:57:51

This video explains quite well how this multiplicative feature works in Esperanto.

bryku (Покажи профила) 23 юни 2015, 08:21:59

Just a simple example (Esperanto, English, Polish):
manĝi - to eat - jeść
manĝas – eats - je
manĝis - ate - jadł
manĝos - will eat - będzie jadł
manĝo - a meal - posiłek,jedzenie
manĝaĵo - food - jedzenie,potrawa,pożywienie
manĝado - eating - odżywianie się
manĝejo - dining hall/room - jadalnia
manĝujo - container for food - naczynie na jedzenie
manĝiloj - silverware - sztućce
manĝebla - edible - jadalny
manĝinda - worth eating - wart zjedzenia
manĝeti - to snack - przekąsić
manĝegi - to feast - pożerać
manĝaĉi - to eat badly - obżerać się
manĝema - interested in eating - łakomy, żarłoczny
manĝanto - eater, diner - jedzący
manĝotaĵo - something to be eaten later on - coś do zjedzenia później

Esperanto is regular, the other two are not! In English, Polish... we have to memorize many different words for similar concepts. In Esperanto it is much easer, since there are roots and affixes/prefixes modifying the word class as well as its meaning. That is why 1000 roots are enough.
Polish novel "Pharaoh" was translated by Kabe using those 1000 roots given by Zamenhof in his first book. Reading this novel you don't get any feeling of lack of words.

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