Charles Ogden and the main 850 words to learn

One of the things that used to confuse me when trying to learn languages at school was the really small words with vague meanings. I remember, well actually I don't, something like "q'est que ce que ca", French obviously. Was that the phrase that meant "what is it that it is"? I mean, even if you translate that, do you really get to its meaning?

Now, I know this isn't a solution to that particular problem, but I got interested in why I didn't know obvious and common words like 'but' after maybe six months of learning the language. Yet I do remember learning, and can almost still remember the word in German, for a water desalination facility. And I got to thinking that there must be a list somewhere of words in order of their frequency of use. I've kept my eyes open ever since, and I left school almost thirty years ago, and I've never seen it.

So, I planned, and still do, to make one.

However, as I expected, someone did work on something similar, Charles Ogden. Back in 1930 he published a book in which he'd basically worked out that 90% of the concepts in an English dictionary could be communicated using just 850 words.

I haven't found a Spanish equivalent, but it seems to me that we could learn the Spanish word for each of the English words provided here, and that would give a basic vocabulary. If you learned five a day you'd be done in six months.

Clearly that doesn't come close to giving you everything you need to communicate in Spanish, but it is very interesting indeed. I wonder how many of the language courses use this. Certainly I feel the learn Spanish fast course I've been working through covers the basics really well .. that's its strength I think. But there are other courses that hint at this sort of approach more strongly, maybe this one.

Russian learns French by reading Harry Potter

Well here's an interesting article. A few things have been coming up recently about how long it actually takes to learn a foreign language. This chap would say a year of reasonable effort, there's another story about students learning English in Arizona will have to spend four hours a day learning English in the hope that they'll become fluent in one or two years.

I read, too, a book which I've subsequently lost which talked about learning to read a language before trying to speak it, which seems to be the way Ryabitsev approached it. I think, too, that book talked about reading kids books.

Compared to all that, my favourite Learn Spanish Fast course seems rather small somehow. It takes a lot to get proficient in a language, and 12 days doesn't really cut it. But I absolutely stand by the course. Where Ryabitsev looked for a grammar primer to help him with his first steps, I'd say something like Learn Spanish Fast course would give an even better primer because it gives you really solid foundations. And no-one's saying in 12 days you'll be able to make a living as a Spanish language after dinner speaker.

But, you know, I do have some doubts about Ryabitsev's strategy. Doesn't it make sense that a course, designed to teach and help you learn, will be the most effective and efficient way to learn a language? What Ryabitsev has done is designed his favourite way to learn a language. It may very well not suit you. He's clearly used to learning and has the time and space to read Harry Potter in French. A well designed course will suit everyone. If Ryabitsev's methods work for you too, they'll work better than any course. But I think it's very likely 99% of people wouldn't like to study that way, wouldn't be as determined as he obviously was, and wouldn't be happy to self direct the way he did. So a course that's aimed at satisfying the majority of students, that's more likely to work.

Spanish learning books

One of the language learning techniques I read, can't remember where, was to trawl the secondhand bookshops to buy lots of learn Spanish books, and then work through the first chapter of each one, then chapter two, etc.

I think there are a couple of good points to this strategy. First is that, in a sense, if you get ten cheap secondhand books and work through the first chapter, you're probably going to find by the end of it you know how to say "Hello, I'm Les and I'm from Jupiter" and in one sense that's the book's vote on what's the most important thing. Whether it is or not is the subject for another blog I think.

The second is, if you want to understand something, it's always good to get two or more books to explain it to you. Then you don't just have one view, you have a few different styles.

I guess also if the books have tapes or CDs where you can listen to native Spanish speakers saying the phrases, perhaps that gives you a few different accents to experience.

So take a wander to your local secondhand book shop and buy all the learn Spanish books. It's probably not worth doing it with Amazon or eBay, just think of the book miles required and support your local bookstore :-)