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Eugen Rochko

How many words can a person learn in a day and actually remember? Is there a limit?

9 comments
Sjôk'Dīze :macos:

@Gargron o think ir might depend on the language in which those words are. For example, learning words in Esperanto is gonna be way faster than most languages, but learning a word from an logogramic language (ie. Chinese) will probably be slower.

Also, it depends on the language you already know and use…

But now that I think about it I guess you’re referring to English, bein a native English speaker 😅

  Eugen Rochko

@revisaALT I'm not a native English speaker! And I've started learning Spanish now

  Sjôk'Dīze :macos:

@Gargron my bad. Sorry 😖
However…I made a quick research and found about active and passive vocabulary. The first ones are used very frequently, and the later are those that were learned but are barely used…so I assume you may take longer to remember what that fancy word you found on an article meant, for example.

Susie Dent says that an adult English speaker has an average of 20.000 words in their passive vocabulary.

Around 1,000 words represent the 89% we use for writing

@Gargron my bad. Sorry 😖
However…I made a quick research and found about active and passive vocabulary. The first ones are used very frequently, and the later are those that were learned but are barely used…so I assume you may take longer to remember what that fancy word you found on an article meant, for example.

Exa :calim:

@Gargron I guess it also depends on how long are words in a language.

(xla).
Ankheg

@Gargron: Words are learned through repetition, as pretty much everything. That means strengthening synaptic connections in your brain through their use. So that means you have to use these words throughout your life.

Григорий Клюшников

I don't think there's any real hard limit, but it depends on the context and how many times you hear a word. It's kind of like it was with phone numbers before phones had contact lists, if you call someone often enough, you only look up their number first five times or so. Or like it is with getting around an unfamiliar city. Or board games. Memory seems to be working the same way regardless of the data type.

Fusterclucker

@Gargron This depends on several factors. How are you learning the words? (Anki is my favorite tool for this). How much time a day are you devoting to studying? Are you getting good quality sleep m(as sleep is when the things you studied yesterday are moved to long term memory).

My general experience with learning Mandarin was that ~40 words a day was a pretty rough go but possible, but 20 words was easy.

James Richardson

@Gargron 7. I have no evidence or study to back this up, but that is the answer.

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