602. DanDillon - Dec. 17, 1998 - 5:46 AM PT
Irv,
Aku mengerti dengan sangat baik!
Mari berpesta!!!!!
603. hashke - Dec. 17, 1998 - 7:52 AM PT
DanDillon:
Bijí ni'dizhchíigo naa hózhóo doo!
604. DanDillon - Dec. 17, 1998 - 9:24 AM PT
hashke,
um... thanks?
605. Jenerator - Dec. 17, 1998 - 2:06 PM PT
dan,
Do I get anything for beating both PseudoErasmus and JeffreySteele on the quiz??
606. DanDillon - Dec. 17, 1998 - 6:56 PM PT
Jen,
Yes. You get another quiz. Most likely tomorrow.
(You also receive vast sums of that highly coveted intrinsic reward commonly referred to as self-satisfaction. There is--perhaps with the exception of self-confidence--no finer prize. And it's yours, Thump.)
607. resonance - Dec. 17, 1998 - 11:37 PM PT
Jenerator beat PE on a frickin' *language* quiz?
That's it. I'm calling it. The Cubs in the Series.
608. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 12:57 AM PT
Please:
Does anyone know where this exchange is from:
"Why do I feel like such an asshole?"
"It could be because you have Preparation H all over your face!"
(The design studio where I work is doing something for Preparation H in Israel. Seems I'm not the only asshole out here!)
609. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 5:26 AM PT
RP,
Isn't that from a piece of dialogue between pe and one of his detractors?
610. resonance - Dec. 18, 1998 - 5:48 AM PT
It's some cheesy eighties comedy flick but I can't remember which one.
611. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 5:55 AM PT
Sixteen Candles? (John Hughes, no doubt.)
612. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 7:36 AM PT
Could it possibly be "Wayne's World"?
613. ChristinO - Dec. 18, 1998 - 10:35 AM PT
Rustler,
It might be Waynes World, but I'm not possitive. It is some guy who is borrowing a "beauty secret of the stars" trying to reduce puffiness around his eyes with Prep H.
I can't rememeber what the movie is, but I'll ask around and see if I can find out.
614. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 11:33 AM PT
Oh - so it's true then? That they use Preparation H to reduce wrinkles, or puffiness?
Hmmm.
Does anyone remember what the commercials for P-H in the 70's went like? All I remember is "relieves hemmorhoidal itching". And I remember how Jimmy Carter admitted he had hemmorhoids - what a buffoon!!!
615. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:35 PM PT
Enough about ass cream. It's time for...
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE QUIZ!!!
1) Approximately how many words does the average college graduate know?
2) Approximately how many words did Shakespeare know?
3) Who wrote the *Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation*?
a) Queen Boadicea
b) Lindisfarne
c) Alfred the Great
d) Venerable Bede
4) Present-day London dialect derived essentially from
a) Kentish
b) East Midland
c) East Anglian
d) Merseyside
5) During what century did the first comprehensive English dictionaries begin to appear?
6) A tripthong is illustrated in which word?
a) sure
b) fire
c) they
d) toy
7) What is the American version of the British "Give Way" street sign?
8) How many parts of speech does traditional English grammar recognize?
9) Why could "stug" be a word in English, but not "ztug"?
10) The huge influx of French words into English during the ME period resulted in the addition of what two new phonemes?
616. philistine - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:43 PM PT
7. Yeild
617. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:45 PM PT
phil,
Sure, go for one of the easy ones.
618. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:46 PM PT
3d
6b
7 Yield
7b put out
619. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:47 PM PT
9. because (duh!)
620. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:48 PM PT
10. The telephoneme and the mobile phoneme.
621. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:50 PM PT
RP,
Nice one. You snagged two of the more challenging questions. (Your 7b, however, demonstrates nothing more than your erstwhile randy side. Why revive it now? Ass cream-curious?)
622. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:51 PM PT
My 621 refers to RP's 618.
623. philistine - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:51 PM PT
Dan -
Why mock my limited knowledge? I barely understand most of the questions.
624. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:52 PM PT
4a ? (though my instinct says d)
625. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:53 PM PT
phil,
My apologies. No mocking intended. You're a true sport to even play at all.
626. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:53 PM PT
Ass cream, you scream, we all scream for ass cream.
627. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:54 PM PT
RP,
Both your guess and your instinct are wrong.
628. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:56 PM PT
Oh come on Dan - we all know 4 is c.
629. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:56 PM PT
RP,
Your 626 barely elicits a smirk.
Barely.
630. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:57 PM PT
RP,
By proces of elimination, you are now on the cusp of stumbling upon the right answer to #4.
Good luck.
631. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 2:59 PM PT
b?
(I admit I'm guessing here)
632. RustlerPike - Dec. 18, 1998 - 3:01 PM PT
OK - I'm off to sleep. Otherwise I'd cream your asses like I was Preparation H.
G'nite all!
633. DanDillon - Dec. 18, 1998 - 3:01 PM PT
"(I admit I'm guessing here)"
No shit. And yes, the East Midland dialect accounts for why Londoners say what they do as well as how they say it.
634. CalGal - Dec. 19, 1998 - 12:29 AM PT
Okay, some wild guesses:
2) the most conservative count I've seen is 17,700. The highest is 25,000. Has there been an official number given?
5) early 17th century? (assuming Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall as first--1604)
6) b
8) 8
9) I don't know the official definition. But zt is not a consonant digraph, so it doesn't form a new, single sound. There's no way to pronounce zt without breaking it down into two syllables, and every syllable must have a vowel.
635. Slackjaw - Dec. 19, 1998 - 1:10 AM PT
Aha! I knew sophomore English drills would come in handy. And what are the eight English parts of speech?
636. CalGal - Dec. 19, 1998 - 1:16 AM PT
Noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction, interjection
637. RustlerPike - Dec. 19, 1998 - 1:56 AM PT
There used to be ten, but 'inhalation' and 'ejaculation' were abolished by presidential decree.
638. DanDillon - Dec. 19, 1998 - 9:18 AM PT
CG,
Good goin'. You nailed almost every one of 'em, except #2--and you were well within the ballpark there. Your answer for #9 is a fair explanation but wasn't exactly what I was expecting: the word-initial consonant cluster 'st' exists in English, so "stug" could very well be a word (assuming we come up wit a definition for it), but word-initial 'zt' does not exist in English, so "ztug" couldn't be an English word. Well done, all the same.
The questions that still need answering: #1, 2 & 10.
Let's see 'em!
639. DanDillon - Dec. 19, 1998 - 9:19 AM PT
The quiz we're carrying on about is Message #615.
640. CoralReef - Dec. 19, 1998 - 9:36 AM PT
Wild Guesses: 1) 10000, 2) 20000
note for future quizzes: multiple guess works better than other forms of answer when the audience is not a specialist...;)
The most common unposted answer to 10 is 'what's a phoneme?'.
641. DanDillon - Dec. 19, 1998 - 10:39 AM PT
CR,
Add 10 Gs to each of your guesses for #1 and 2, and you got it! The average college grad knows approximately 20 to 25,000 words, and Shakespeare knew an estimated 30,000. Impressive considering his relatively meager schooling. (All that Latin nad Greek must have paid off.) As to your question about what a phoneme is, I suggest you look it up, lazy man.
642. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 6:00 AM PT
Which language is the one most studied in the world as a second language? (This means some kind of classroom instruction, not second languages naturally picked up.) I'm certain it's English, and I thought it the obvious choice until I was challenged on it. See here.
643. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 7:53 AM PT
DanDillon, I'm sorry, but are you quite sure the average college graduate knows 20-25K words? This seems too great by at least 5K words, especially so as the average college graduate has not yet acquired a specialized vocabulary. I would have thought 15K-16K is about the norm.
644. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 7:55 AM PT
And how does Shakespeare arrive at 30K words? Surely the vocabulary in all his works does not account to that much.
645. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:02 AM PT
Oh, 30,000 words are quite easy to arrive at in the case of Shakespeare. The many regionalisms, nonce words, neologisms, and obscure trades jargon alone could account for those, I'm sure.
Who besides Shakespeare has ever used "inca(r)nadine"?
646. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:03 AM PT
oops, that's INCARNA(R)DINE.
647. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:17 AM PT
So, too, would I wish
one rare word that I might know be
the measure of my mind and vocabulary.
648. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:32 AM PT
One rare word measure of mind and vocabulary?
How about having coined the following neologisms?
Pedant, reliance, locate, indistinguishable, multitudinous, obscene, and a whole host of others?
649. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:55 AM PT
Take the humour as intended and not puff it into a chimera.
650. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 8:57 AM PT
And would you with DanDillon credit the average college grad with a vocabulary of some 20-25,000 words?
651. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:06 AM PT
I doubt that Shakespeare coined those words, but that attuned to the speech, street life and political times of late Elizabethan England the actor and playwright picked up and used what was going on around him even as the swordplay and wordplay in his dramas engaged and entertained the crowds well familiar and appreciative of such detail.
652. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:09 AM PT
To insist otherwise would be similar to crediting Snoop Doggy Dog and Flavor Rave with neologisms when it seems they are just "picking up from the streets". I may be wrong, I'm probably right.
653. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:14 AM PT
Message #649
I didn't think I had "puffed it" into anything, let alone a "chimera".
Message #650
20-25,000 doesn't sound unreasonable.
Message #651
Well, we know that those words did not appear in print before the publication of the First Folio. And why wouldn't Shakespeare have coined those words? Someone had to have. Do you really think he picked up "incarna(r)dine" and "multitudinous" from the streets?
654. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:16 AM PT
I don't think you need any specialised vocabulary to know 20,000 to 25,000 words. Just plain ordinary words would suffice, I wager.
Anyway, who says the average college graduate hasn't a lot of specialised vocabulary? Have not all biology majors heard of "motility" or psychology majors "projection"?
655. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:21 AM PT
Commenting on Message #653 in the order presented:
a) It seems I've stepped into some pseudoerasmus and can't wipe it off my shoe;
b) unreasonable, no, but probable?
c) in an age that gave us Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson as well I should ignore the extraordinary fecundity of the language particular to that time?
656. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:25 AM PT
re Message #654, before wagering on a guess take a look at an English language dictionary having, say, 20-25,000 words and let's see if it be possible they are all known to the average college grad. I don't know the outcome, but that seems a reasonable test.
657. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:34 AM PT
I make reference to "The American Heritage Dictionary (Second College Edition)", 1982, "The Mathematics of Language", in which Shakespeare's works "consist of a total of 884,647 wrods of text containing a grand total of 29,066 different words". However, "the figure of 29,066 different words used by Shakespeare thus refers to word forms, not lemmas. Assuming that with the application of the same lemmatization principles the ratio of forms to lemmas... also holds in Shakespeare's case, we can conclude that the total vocabulary of lemmas in the poet's work is approximately 18,000."
658. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:38 AM PT
ScottLoar (Message #655)
(a) Perhaps what you stepped on was the indiscernible simulacrum of wit in Message #647. And to think, one more line and you could have inadvertently produced a clerihew.
(b) Yes, I think probable.
(c) No, you shouldn't ignore the fecundity of 16th century England. But that is rather the point! Everyone was inventing words, experimenting with language and dabbling in rhetoric. It's not unreasonable that in such an environment Shakespeare himself was the originator of many new words.
659. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:39 AM PT
Further defined:
"We still have to decide whether to consider inflected forms, such as those formed from the verb 'play' ('plays','playing','played'), to be words in their own right or simply members of a single class represented by the base form PLAY. If we take the first approach, we have four distinct words. If we take the second, we ahve only one, having created a set of grammatical forms, differing from one another and from the base form only in inflection, that linguists call a 'lemma'" (ibid).
660. IrvingSnodgrass - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:40 AM PT
Pseudo Message #642:
I think the case for English as the number one second-language is unassailable. Virtually every country on the planet requires some level of English-language instuction in its school curriculum. One can travel around the globe using only English to communicate -- no other language even comes close. I would estimate a billion second-language speakers for English, as a conservative estimate.
Behind English would come those languages unifying large nations. In order, Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian and Russian, all with over 100 million second-language speakers (and Mandarin and Hindi over 200 million, easily).
661. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:40 AM PT
So now, how many lemmas has the average college grad?
662. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:45 AM PT
So, too, like Shakespeare would I wish
one rare word that I might know be
the measure of my mind and vocabulary
satisfying wit's Pseudoerasmus - intellection's Pharisee.
663. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:48 AM PT
Pseudoerasmus, don't quibble. I merely doubt that Shakespeare is singular author of all the vocabulary you wish him to be.
664. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:53 AM PT
Hey, I like "intellection's Pharisee". Let me be more pharasaical: Message #662 has good diction but appalling rhythm.
Message #659
I don't understand how "lemma" is used in that passage. The "lemma" I know has two meanigns: (a) from mathematics, a proposition demonstrated en route to the final demonstration; and (b) the title of scholia or glosses.
665. CoralReef - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:54 AM PT
Perhaps one way to put it is that English is the number one foreign language studied. This would mean second languages but discount nonforeign second languages such as Hindi.
666. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:54 AM PT
And to think I compose so not on stage or in study, but while doing the laundry. Muse, why hast thou forsaken me?
667. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 9:56 AM PT
Pseudoerasmus re Message #664: I'm doin' the laundry for fuck's sake!
668. CalGal - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:00 AM PT
"The "lemma" I know has two meanigns: (a) from mathematics, a proposition demonstrated en route to the final demonstration; and (b) the title of scholia or glosses."
I am *so* relieved. I, too, knew only two meanings--well. Three, but that was after I checked the dictionary and found out that it was also "the lower of the two bracts enclosing the flower in the spikelet of grasses".
I think it's derived from the a) definition, but I've never seen it used in that context.
669. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:00 AM PT
So does Message #659 mean that "multitude" and "multitudinous" ought not to be counted as separate words?
670. elliot803 - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:10 AM PT
Lemmas are those little animals that run over the cliff en masse and fall to their death.
671. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:16 AM PT
No, no, lemmas provide the wool for sweaters and blankets.
672. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:17 AM PT
Exotic Andean wool, of course, none of that Scottish or Kiwi thatching.
673. CalGal - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:18 AM PT
Christ. Now you've done it. Niner will start wailing about his Peruvian mistress and her family.
674. Jonesatlaw - Dec. 22, 1998 - 10:35 AM PT
I'll take a SWAG at #10- "age" as "ozh"- Camoflage, curetage, etc. , but I don't know another.
#2 17,677 per Shipley, Braught and Cable, but 30,000 per McCrum. It's hard to say given that many common words or concepts are not in the plays, but we could assume Shakespeare knew them.
675. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:26 AM PT
re Message #669: yes.
676. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:48 AM PT
"Lemma" is indeed a mathematical term, and the equivalent used by linguists for which I misappropriated the term is "root word".
677. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:50 AM PT
Well, given that dictionaries list "multitude" and "multitudinous" separately, I see no reason for your rather arbitrary disqualification.
How about compound words? Words with prefixes? "Interest" v. "interesting"?
How many words are in the English language, according to this "lemma" method?
678. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:52 AM PT
Perhaps dictionaries boasting 180,000 or 310,000 words among their pages would be reduced to pitiable 40,000 by this "lemma" method of counting.
679. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:54 AM PT
I can't tell from Loar's quotation whether the author means by a "lemma" an uninflected word or a root word (which is a much mcuh larger category).
680. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 11:58 AM PT
"(T)he working vocabulary of today's (1982) printed English could then be estimated at around 210,000 lemmas, including proper names. Without proper names a cautious estimate of 170,000 lemmas could be made. Naturally if we wanted to include various highly specialized and technical terms, the total vocabulary of the language would increase, easily doubling these estimated lemma numbers" (ibid.).
681. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:02 PM PT
snirv (Message #660)
According to Ethnologue, English has only slightly above a hundred million "second language speakers". Hindi has nearly twice as many; Mandarin has about the same as French; and Russian about the same as Spanish.
All the same, the question was not about second-language speakers per se, but about the total number of those who have studied a language.
682. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:04 PM PT
Message #680
I certainly don't believe there are 170,000 "lemmas" in the English language unless you included technical jargon. Otherwise, all of us should be encountering baffling words all the time. But I doubt most of us do.
683. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:04 PM PT
"If we compiled a good-sized English word list that listed all words, including regular inflections such as plurals or past tenses of verbs, and compared it to a list of exactly the same set of words represented just by a single base form, the ratio between the two lists would be about 1.6:1... We can then predict that a list of 100,000 word forms would contain about 62,500 lemmas and, conversely, that a 100,000-word dictionary giving base forms only could be expanded into about 160,000 word forms" (ibid.).
684. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:06 PM PT
Well, I suppose 170,000 might be believable if "lemma" means uninflected words, not root words. I bet anything this lemma method would count "multitude" and "multitudinous" as separate words.
685. Jonesatlaw - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:10 PM PT
OKAY- we give already, what are the two introduced phoenemes?
686. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:13 PM PT
On reflection and further reading you are right, for the ultimate clarification is, "(c)onventional dictionaries are, by and large, collections of lemmas, represented by their base forms, which appear as bold-face entries in alphabetical order; their inflected forms are given when their formation involves some irregularity or spelling change, but they are generally not listed when regular".
So, how's about a 20-25K word dictionary and see if all the entries are understood by the average college grad?
687. pseudoerasmus - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:19 PM PT
I had never even imagined that anyone would count "play", "played" and "playing" as separate words.
So, yes, I think 20-25K is a reasonable estimate of the vocabulary of the average college graduate.
688. Raskolnikov - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:36 PM PT
I think we have no choice but to settle this number of words argument once and for all. I'll go first. a, aardvark, aardwolf, abacus, abalone, abandon, abase, abatement, abattoir, abbess, abbey, abbot, abbreviate, abdicate, abdomen, abduct, abeam, abed, aberrant, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, ability, abiogenesis, abject, abjure, ablaze, able, abnegate, abnormal, aboard, abode, abolish...
whew, I'll do the rest later.
689. Jonesatlaw - Dec. 22, 1998 - 12:47 PM PT
ScottL-Is one of the Norman French phonemes ZH as is measure and one the "soft" j? I am dying to know.
690. DanDillon - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:14 PM PT
Jonesatlaw Message #685,
/v/ and /z/ are the two phonemes that entered Middle English as a result of the huge influx of French words. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm on the road.
691. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:16 PM PT
Jonesatlaw, although I'm proud to wear accomplishments as medals on my chest I will not claim knowledge that is not mine nor pretender or poseur be. In short, I have no particular knowledge in the field of linguistics, just some small knowledge of one or two languages, and even that knowledge is less than satisfying. Your question is better directed to Irvingsnodgrass or DanDillon or Hashke or some few others who properly have the knowledge and qualifications to comment here.
Me? I'm just muddling through here, trying to oil the ears of one donkey with a few fine lines of poetry.
692. Jonesatlaw - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:17 PM PT
DanDillon- thanks! I didn't mean to be testy, but I was as curious as a cat.
693. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:19 PM PT
The very DanDillon to the rescue.
694. CalGal - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:20 PM PT
Jones,
Message #691 translated: "Beats the shit out of me."
695. DanDillon - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:24 PM PT
The dicussion around lemmas and their significance in determining the number of words an (arguably educated) individual knows is mystifying.
My two cents: the root "play" and the lemmas "plays," "played," "playing," etc. are indeed separate words that ought to be counted individually. Why? They all convey vastly different meanings within various contexts. Would you count "shake" and "shaker" as one word? (Same point raised earlier with "interest" and "interesting" by I know not whom. Credit there.) The inflectional/grammatical morphemes at the crux of this issue alter words radically enough so as to render them worthy of individual enumeration. Indeed, they are some of the most functionally important constituents of the English language.
696. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:26 PM PT
Well, hell, I still cannot accept the average college graduate in these United States knows 20-25K words as I see no exercise of such wealth (do they hoard vocabulary, like, ya' know, I mean, misers), but I'll be convinced if given a stronger argument than Pseudoerasmus' conviction.
Erh, anybody listening?
697. DanDillon - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:42 PM PT
ScottLoar,
Would you believe me if I told you that a toddler (aged 2-5 or so) learns up to thirty words in the span of a single day? That means the very same child, having ascertained so many words in so many years, enters pre-adolescence equipped with some 10 to 12,000 words (rough estimates). Add to this number the sum of vocabulary that our schools worksheet and quiz into young students' heads, and you'll come up with a number close to 15- or 17,000. Then, the lad (lass) is off to high school. Then university. Thousands more words there, plus the gems learned from TV (a huge source--admit it), movies, all kinds of media in fact, textbooks (not huge enough a source--I admit it), friends from out of town, etc., etc.
Would you believe me *now* if I told you that the average college grad knows around 20- or 25,000 words?
698. DanDillon - Dec. 22, 1998 - 1:42 PM PT
Yes, I'm listening by the by.
699. ScottLoar - Dec. 22, 1998 - 2:11 PM PT
Okay, DanDillon, by your reckoning 20-25K words is probable, for I've no pride or sentimentality to any figure. I'm not surprised about 30 words a day for a toddler, as in language instruction one begins with about 10 words a day then quickly graduates to dozens and scores of new words daily, although this vocabulary seems to need some while to be ingested and used - about nine months.
Are you familiar with the language courses as refined by the US Army in WWII? One begins with a text several sentences long which you are obliged to memorize and the next day recite out loud followed by another, longer text to be memorized and recited out loud the following day, followed by another text until in a very short while you are memorizing and reciting pages of text. Still, a gestation period seems necessary before one can recall and use with facility the vocabulary.
My introduction to Vietnamese was less than 15 minutes' explanation of the phonetic system, grammar, eight tones, and then immediately to the text recited by a native speaker. Next day, regurgitate. Believe me, they'll learn ya'.
700. Raskolnikov - Dec. 22, 1998 - 2:31 PM PT
There is a passive, as well as an active vocabulary. I know quite well what "bucolic" means even thought this is the first time in my life I have ever written it down or typed it out.