How many words do you need to understand a language fully?

Question

I am aware that you need grammar too ,but I'm interested in being able to read the newspaper ,watch TV and just understand ,it is necessary for me to know how many words are mandatory.

I am learning German by the way ,and I can help with Romanian too

FUNCTIONS WORDS LEVEL

Limited Survival 0-300 Absolute Beginner
Surviving 300-600 Beginner
Adjusting/Settling in 600-1200 Low Intermediate
Participating 1200 - 2400 High Intermediate
Integrating 2400 + Advanced

In summary, an absolute beginner knows fewer than 300 words and cannot really function well without a bilingual friend or possibly a bilingual phrase book. A beginner is a learner who can accomplish some basic tasks with some difficulty (survive) and knows up to 600 words. An intermediate learner can get around and knows up to 2400 words, and an advanced learner knows at least 2400 words and is beginning to function completely in English.

One final note on the dividing lines of 300, 600, etc. Of course there are no sharp lines in the language learning process and the decision to place a word at the 300, rather than 600 level, is based mostly on experience and intuition. However, it would be best
to approach this list with the understanding that most of the words at the 0-300

Not even one of you could come close to the real answer!!
I'm so ******* dissapointed

sorry for any typos

Answer 1

In fairness, you're being a little hard on all the respondents. NOBODY understands a language fully - even his own. There are over 500,000 English words, but Shakespeare had an active vocabulary in all his writings of 30,000 words (29,066 to be pedantic) - probably less than 10% of the total vocabulary of his day - yet only a brave person would say that he didn't know English very well!

Your "levels" are a good guideline. My language books usually say that 2,500 or more and you're coping well with the language. Also, once you need to use more erudite words, there are often regular correspondences between English and a language such as Spanish.

I have a vocabulary of well over 4,000 in Spanish but still come across words for the first time. My dustman probably has an active vocabulary of 1,500 words, but nobody would say he didn't speak English.

Answer 2

This may vary from language to language. But let's take English as an example.
Some people have reached it a little and several proposals arose.
The Voice of America has broadcasts in several languages. One of the services is "Special English". Those are programs is English, but simplified. They take a core vocabulary of 1500 words.
My guess is that if you know those 1500 words in another language, you'd be able to understand most of a newspaper.
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/about_special_english.cfm

If this idea makes sense to you, you could also check the concept of basic English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_english

Answer 3

They say that most people only have a working vocabulary of about 2,000 words. To understand a language fully, however, I would focus more upon verbs and grammar. You can memorize a foreign language dictionary but if it all comes out like "I having seen you at store look fantastic", then it ain't going to matter.

Answer 4

If you want to be able to talk about any subject completely fluently, then yes, all of them.

However, you also need to understand grammar. Some languages contruct sentences completely different to English.

Answer 5

it all depends , for example you need about 450 words just to understand English , the more the better , some Language needs at least 2000 words to understand it .

Answer 6

I am learning Romanian...

So, I can honestly say...that you need to understand ALOT!!!!
basic words & phrases are ok.....BUT not enough to understand a complete conversation.

Answer 7

i think at least 60 percent of all words that exist in a language.

Answer 8

My German vocabulary: A beer please. How much? Where is the bathroom? That worked for 3 weeks.

Answer 9

all of them

Answer 10

enough to ask where the bathroom is.....