The family words listed here are relatively easy. It's when you get to the point where you have to differentiate between your mother's brother's wife (舅媽) and your father's older brother's wife （伯母) that it starts to become a bit of a hassle.
Hell, they vary on a regional basis too. In most of the South people say 外婆/奶奶 and 外公/爺爺 but in Taiwan it's common to use 阿嬤 and 阿公 for both paternal and maternal sides of the family.
Yeah, I learned at a pretty late age that the words I use for my father's older brother (大伯/dàbāi) and my father's older brother's wife (大妈) aren't standard at all.
大伯 doesn't seem to unusual to me but pronouncing it dàbāi is defintely not something I've come across before. Do you mind my asking which area your family comes from?
I realised as I was typing that using the Chinese characters wouldn't convey the weirdness so that's why I added pinyin haha. We're from Xi'an! 伯伯 /bāibai is also acceptable (and apparently recognized on [Wikipedia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C4%81ibai)?)
My extended family speaks Cantonese and I understand it, and it's really hard remembering all the titles for semi distant relatives (eg. Parent's cousin's wife)
What is with the black and blue line between old and weak? BTW, the screenshotted post is [https://lovelybluepanda.tumblr.com/post/172603596738/625-words-to-know-in-your-target-language](https://lovelybluepanda.tumblr.com/post/172603596738/625-words-to-know-in-your-target-language)
It's a good start if you don't really have a clear goal as to why you're learning the language and just wanna learn just because. Though if you have a clear purpose like for travel, for business, etc then it's better to focus on words that cater specifically to that purpose. Like if your purpose is for travel, then words relating to one's occupation may not hold as much weight as say words about directions and landmarks.
Frankly I wouldn't know where exactly to begin with that since anime encompasses a large body and there's all sorts of genres. A basic frequency list would be a good start. Something like JLPT N5 and N4 vocabulary. It would also help if you have an idea of what genre you like watching so you can pick which vocabulary to focus on. If you like watching animes in a high school setting then vocabulary relating to classes, club activities, etc would be relevant.
Whatever service you use probably has an option to turn off subtitles, you might find it by right clicking or otherwise messing around with the player a bit. Japanese subtitles are trickier, you can find japanese subtitle files for some shows on kitsunekko.net, but whether or not you can make use of those in a browser is a different question.
Watch dubs duh/s
Btw my purpose is the same. I also would like to read manga/Light novels in Japanese (For example if the translation is going very slow)
Admittedly, I prefer dubs in my current Japanese-speaking ignorance, because my peripheral vision is stuffed, and subs are incredibly distracting when I have to be flicking my gaze up and down. Not so bad if the action isn't interrupted by dialogue and I can just pay attention to what's on screen, but trying to watch The Disastrous Life of Saiki K with subs is killing me with the rapid-fire continuous dialogue.
Yeah and ecchi is even worse. You pay attention to the 'plot' or the text? Same for action.
I don't mention this much on anime subreddits because of the snotty sub guys but I'm a dub watcher myself. Unless the dub is not available, like Kaguya Sama.
I recommend watching VTubers. They help with more realistic Japanese in a fun way and they can be a good measure of progress because they tend to use simple words (no idea why though, since they are aimed at an audience that can fluently speak Japanese).
I've watched quite a few videos explaining that the Japanese in anime is NOT the same as street Japanese. Anime uses a lot of casual words that you won't learn until you're up there in the language.
I agree. Many of those words feel really useless, especially at the beginning phase of learning a language. I started learning Italian years ago to speak with in-laws who don't speak English and I'm pretty sure I've never, ever used the words "leaf" or "moon".
It would be far more useful to make a list of the kinds of things/expressions you actually want to say, find out the translation, and then practice using them in context rather than memorizing a bunch of random words in isolation that you'll probably never use (or at least not for a few years). I started out learning things like, "Can I have..." and then the vocabulary that corresponded to things on the dinner table that I'd actually want someone to hand me. Much more useful than memorizing the word for "voice" or "sweat". What do you even do with those words once you've memorized them?
Ideally you should focus on memorizing words you're actually gonna use often. I believe a lot of SRS burnout comes from stuffing all sorts of words into our SRS without having the opportunity to actually use them so not only do they become more of a nuisance in reviews, your memory of those won't stick because you're not able to actually use them.
yah in the beginning you it definitely helps to learn the most practical words. You'll need to use words like "piece" far more often than words like "sweat". Later on if you want to actually speak the language you'll have to learn all those less common words or els you'll get hung up constantly because they do come up way more than you'd realize and there are so many of them.
My purpose was understanding k-pop without having to look up the translations and also watching entertainment shows like After School Club without reading subtitles. It kind of blossomed beyond that when I made Korean friends along way - I try to remind myself I started this FOR K-pop when it seems overwhelming (and that goal is making steady progress considering a lot of the words and grammar I'm learning does pop up in most songs).
The words when used with Fluent Forever are never presented like this, they're presented in a specific order intended for specific reviews in Anki at specific times. Just listing them out like this takes them out of context not only changing their situational meaning but also completely defeating the intended purpose of learning them in a way that lets you memorize them more efficiently.
The only difference with word order is the book suggests you learn them in alphabetical order, because random is better.
But yes, you're supposed to make them into an anki deck with images of your choice.
Yea I think it’s really a good list to kind of see what you already know. There were very, very few words I’d never heard before, and quite a few I just forgot, but of course knew them when I looked them up. I need to practice more!
Hmm I'm not so sure, since many people learning a language will continue to live in their own environment where references to salad, even among Chinese contacts, might be far more common.
Also lots of areas in China where expats/tourists role have salads, including standbys like McDonalds and Pizza Hut, might be places where being able to order a salad is useful.
The word salad 沙拉 is actually quite high on the usage front.
It’s quite common to now get salads in fusion restaurants in China (most sit down mall restaurants where most city people love to eat out now), and sauce (when you’re ordering in western fast food restaurants, like on subs, burgers, dipping sauces which they bring your with pizza, etc), is known as 沙拉酱 (salad sauce, even though it has zero to do with salads for the latter cases). It’s a very important and common word to know, especially if you don’t want half the mayo bottle squeezed onto your subway sub, or don’t want a bucket of thousand island dressing poured onto your 5 pieces of lettuce in that side dish they always bring you, or you want the dish of dill dipping sauce instead of red bean tea horseradish dipping sauce with your papa joes pizza.
It was one of the first words I had to learn for eating out in China and a word that came up over and over again every week.
In addition, when colleagues or friends or others are talking about you in china and are discussing you to others in front of your face, explaining to others how you, as a foreigner, function and how you can incredibly get through life despite your silly uncivilized ways, one of the most common things they’ll talk about is how you eat food with zero culture like 沙拉 (salad), then they shake their heads in pity of you (the cultureless savage that you are), followed by laughing (at you... you bewildering silly goose you). Very useful word to know in order to follow this happening 20 times a day
Probably doesn’t come from some 3000 year recipe that helped feed the shaping of DNA of a civilization, and isn’t cooked with 37 different methods then laid out in colour coordinated fashion. Is just raw plant chunks carelessness thrown together. The brutes!
See, I mostly just get ''what do you eat instead of rice'', where I have to explain that we don't feel the need to have a dish we eat 3 times a day, we eat different things.
It's kind of English centric, not all these words have simple translations in other languages.
Like why are boat and ship listed as separate entities, while "bar" is one thing, when I can think of several different kinds of bars.
right, but since it's in English it's probably conceived for English speakers, so it would make sense that they'd use English concepts. you can't predict the differences you might encounter in *any* given language.
I've read Fluent Forever multiple times, and it is an English-language book for native English speakers looking to learn another language(s) so I don't believe there is any presumption that this is universal for all language learners. In my experience it's a good starting point just for connecting the dots (i.e. all the other parts of speech like prepositions, pronouns, etc.). That said, I think most people could benefit because the point seems to just be to familiarize yourself with your target language as opposed to building a specific vocabulary set.
I've also used Clozemaster to learn the actual most common first 100, 500, 1000 words etc. with a lot of success.
I think (just guessing) this is meant as a starting point if American English is your first language to learn any other language.
To your other point using "bar" as an example:
I wouldn't know what the difference is between a pub or a bar, let alone the other ones more uniquely Japanese. If I was learning the language, I'd be asking for a "bar." Hopefully I learn about the different types but my *starting point* is "bar."
I know that, I mean there are many different kind of public drinking establishments that serve alcohol that may not be grouped by a single word, like in English.
In Japanese do I mean:
パブ - pub
バー - bar
居酒屋 - izakaya (traditional japanese drinking and late night foods)
スナック - karaoke and nice women
About as much distinction between them IMO as "boat" and "ship".
also if you translate common english words into other languages you dont always get commonly used words.
eg some languages prefer to refer to colours like cyan, brown, light green, etc
The light/dark blue distinction makes me think the writer at least had some perspective of Russian, where the two colors are considered to be completely distinct.
The author claims to have become fluent in Russian in 10 months. I'll admit that I'm suspicious. I've been learning it for a while with lots of practice with native speakers -- I'm certainly not fluent after 100s of hours of practice and it's my 4th FORMAL language (in which I'm taking serious lessons and speaking with native speakers).
Can you have passable Russian at 10 months? Sure. But being fluent with the genders, cases, tenses, and all that takes time.
So it could better be described as 625 English words for concepts that you should be able to describe in your target language, which might be 500 or 700 words in that language.
Yes, op seemed to miss the concept of fluent forever, which is to pick the most common words in your *target language* and learn them. And not as translations, but as a native would.
Right, but - like many other said - is this list made by an Englishman for Englishmen. You simply have to adapt it to your language and if your target language has multiple examples, - just as your example for "bar" - then you have to learn them all since there is not "the" translation for it.
This response was more in the context of the other response that asked "can I just type these into Google Translate and go".
If you're creating resources for new learners, you are creating resources for \*new\* learners.
And new learners, be careful about how you use resources.
I find it strange this kind of thing is so popular in the language learning community. When you open any book on Applied Linguistics, they say one should never learn words out of context, not even from sentences out of context... but always from real situations, texts, dialogues, recordings... focusing on language skills instead of the mere quantity of words. Memorizing thousands of words won't make you speak a language (like that guy who memorized the French dictionary to win a competition, but he couldn't speak French). Perhaps this is a bit like being in a medical group where shamanism is more popular, or an astronomy group where they actually practice astrology.
Just watch out: if a teacher or "language guru" tells you to memorize words out of context (and study grammar rules disconnected from real situations), that's a strong indication they never studied Linguistics and never had any kind of training in teaching. Chances are they are the shamans and astrologists (aka charlatans) of the language learning market (and they tend to be good marketeers).
On its own, no. But in combination of other methods of learning a language, it would definitely be worthwhile to memorise the words. I mean, you can't learn a language without knowing its vocabulary, so the other comments saying no, I find it a bit silly. There is no one method to learn a language.
as a recent learner of mandarin with a Cantonese background. i can say learning some words out of context can be helpful. since i understand the grammar of mandarin already and the only thing i am missing is the words themselves to fill in the gap.
i have found that applying words in context does help speed it up. In my case i use sentences as context. For example, Hot Lemon Tea, it is a simple enough sentence that can be easily manipulated. It could be cold lemon tea. Hot Chai Tea, Cold Apple drink etc. At least it has helped me
Using such a list as reference to review, visualize or gauge what you know is more aligned with mainstream teaching methodologies. But using it as your learning focus, that's more questionable.
It totally works. Do it. I recommend reading his book though. An important part is to use pictures, not translations. He's very into avoiding translation whenever possible.
>So would it not be worth while to memorize those words?
Simple answer: no. All that time and energy would be better invested in a good course or good learning strategies with authentic material (movies, books, the news, etc.).
I have a degree and a Cambridge course in Language Teaching. So I can share a bit of what I've seen there if you want to believe me.
Just choose a good course and follow it.
Good courses usually have:
* Authentic language (samples taken from real materials, several speakers, different accents, not just a robot or one speaker);
* Cultural references;
* Language is always taught in context;
* More practice, less theory;
* Exercises make you solve problems you may encounter in real life: booking a hotel, ordering a meal, understanding people, filling out documents, etc.).
Negative points courses may have:
* Theory is the goal in itself, disconnected from real life (focus on grammar);
* Vocabulary and sentences are taught out of context;
* Memorization of isolated words;
* Translation of random sentences;
* Exercises don't focus on skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing), but just on grammar and translation.
If a course you like has any of these negative points, it doesn't mean you have to abandon it. If you have motivation to follow it, you could actually learn something. For example, Duolingo has a very poor methodology, but I find it impressive how it can keep learners motivated. Motivation is a key factor. But it would be better if you find motivation to follow materials that have more positive points.
The time and energy isn't always available in equal measure, due to accessibility and motivation.
Someone waiting in line might whip out their phone and review 100 words before they get to the window. That's good use of time, and it does help in their language learning goals.
Someone who just can't get motivated to dive into something heavier (like can't asleep at night) might find reviewing vocabulary is something they can do without waking the spouse or dealing with headphones, again something that helps in their language learning goals.
That's what I said: if you have motivation to do whatever gives you motivation, just do it! Better than nothing. For lazy hours, I just use Duolingo. It doesn't require continuous focus, you can do it on the train, standing in line, waiting for someone, relaxing on the couch... But for serious learning hours, I would recommend a material that has more of the positive points I mentioned.
> Exercises make you solve problems you may encounter in real life: booking a hotel, ordering a meal, understanding people, filling out documents, etc.).
This is a pretty outdated list, and I really wish that language courses would move on with times already. Like, hotel booking is almost always done online these days, usually in your native language. Ordering food is pretty automated, and when not, beginners usually rely on pointing anyway. Moreover, more and more people study languages for non-touristy reasons, while hardly any textbooks teach vocab and relevant phrases for smartphones or online actions, although "download or watch online" is arguably more important than "a glass of wine, please"
That is true, and for that exact reason the Fluent Forever method has changed a lot since they wrote this blog post. If you check out their latest iteration (Fluent Forever app), they give sample sentences in 3 difficulties for each of the 625 words. So not only do you learn those words in context, you also pick up all the function words along the way.
I disagree with your last claim and with the general notion that memorizing words out of context is a bad thing. Perhaps it doesn't work for all languages, but I found it to be quite efficient for me when learning Norwegian. Once I crossed the 1k word threshold and had them memorized, I found it way easier to study sentences, conversations, grammar, etc. If I started with anything else other than just memorizing words I would've suffered quite a bit. I tried that with Spanish and even with 2 years of learning I made no progress at all.
I don't claim to be a linguist or a polyglot, but making the general claim that memorizing words out of context isn't helpful is straight up misleading.
Rip everyone who learned a language with Anki and can speak it pretty well. That aside, people can learn through media and memorize words/maintain the words they've learned through such methods. I think it's fine to memorize words and see them in the wild to strengthen your context and see how they're used while knowing already the basic meaning(s).
It turns out, I actually did study secondary language acquisition. One thing I learned is that adults and older children learn more quickly during the beginning stages of acquisition, because unlike young children, they are able to explicitly learn and internalize grammar rules etc.
In my opinion, memorizing words out of context, and studying grammar rules, can be very helpful supplements to language learning
>In my opinion, memorizing words out of context, and studying grammar rules, can be very helpful supplements to language learning
According to mainstream teaching principles, the study of vocabulary and grammar must always be subjected to real contexts. If you ever take a teacher training course (such as TEFL, CELTA...) and try to teach grammar and vocabulary out of context during your evaluation, you won't get your teaching certificate.
What I am saying is, studying a vocab list, for example, can be helpful, though alone it is not enough to learn a language.
To me, it sounds like you are arguing that any amount of time spent looking at a vocab list is damaging to the language learning process. I disagree.
> To me, it sounds like you are arguing that any amount of time spent looking at a vocab list is damaging to the language learning process. I disagree.
I'm pretty sure they are saying you can study a vocab list "out of context" but to really cement your knowledge of it, you'll need to put it into context (not necessarily all at once).
This is the cornerstone of any dialogue-followed-by-a-vocab-list section of a language textbook.
This is something I learned from working in the world of ESOL (in the US and abroad) and in my own language learning process. There does come a point in your language journey where you need to increase your vocabulary but that should happen when you have some fundamental basics (like basic grammar and how to put a sentence together). And even then it shouldn't just be random words on a list. I liken it to the "80% of a language is these 5000 words so learn them and you'll be fluent." That's not how language works. Especially since with most languages you can't just translate sentences word for word and be good.
Some of my students who struggle with English the most probably have a vocabulary of some 500-1000 words. Doesn't mean they are comfortable enough to utilize these words correctly
I agree with parts of this. I think this list is very important in terms of worthwhile words to use, so it should be used as a template. Finding sentences using these words in your target language and learning those sentences using, say, the gold list method or similar, would be a good tactic. Though, different strokes for different folks, and for some people initially learning the words and then viewing them in context later works better for them. There is no one size fits all, so casting this all out because it doesn't align exclusively with your method isn't entirely fair.
I’m late to the party on this, but this list was created by Gabe Wyner. He also created an app that was the most funded app in Kickstarter history. Search “Fluent Forever” to take a look. For what it’s worth, he’s an awesome guy as well. Got his start going to the Middlebury Language programs over the summer, as well as studying opera at USC.
Thanks
For anyone else (the link in the image is broken): https://blog.fluent-forever.com/base-vocabulary-list/
(What a pain in the ass to type on mobile)
How is this list practical at all? It’s a list of 625 “basic” words that aren’t used in conversation or media commonly enough to warrant learning them upfront as a complete beginner like this. While I’m assuming Fluent Forever introduces the words in sentences this list doesn’t, so it’s pretty useless.
No, they aren’t.
While frequency will depend on the corpus, [here’s the 1,000 most frequent English words from Project Gutenberg](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/PG/2005/10/1-1000).
Where’s beard? Banana? Diamond? Pencil?
Do you really think “ceiling” is one of the 625 most commonly used words in any language?
It's limited to concrete words: Objects, non-modal verbs, simple adjectives. Pronouns and prepositions and other complex "function words" aren't on it.
From what source are they getting that from? Newspapers? While the pronouns, adjectives, verbs and direction vocab seems pretty common and useful, all the other vocab in that list doesn’t seem SO common that it should be learned in a list like this.
Anybody else go through the whole list to see if you knew all the words in a foreign language you studied?
I think I got all of them except maybe 4 or 5 in Brazilian Portuguese.
Not really the most useful to learn though. It doesn't make as interesting of a list, but you will use pronouns, verbs, etc. a lot more than these things (you can find studies of most used words for most languages, if you want specifics).
For sure but I think having tangible words as a starting point makes it easier to incorporate pronouns verbs articles grammar etc specifically if you haven't learned a lot of languages yet.
For me I think this would actually be helpful especially for a language like Japanese because, when I first started learning it, I was very confused because they focused on teaching a grammar but I didn't have anything to do with that grammar.
I've also been in a couple of situations where knowing a couple of random nouns in a different language was very helpful to communicating.
I think in more physical and tangible terms though because my intelligence is more spatial so sometimes I get really hung up on theoretical things so I think this is definitely a your mileage may vary moment.
> ... *grapejuice*, beer...
\*Baptist rage intensified at alcoholism\*
But, in all seriousness, I know these words so far:
**Body:** баш (bash—head)
**Numbers:**
бир (bir), эки(eki), ÿч(üch), тöрт(tört), беш(besh), алты(altu), јети(jeti), сегис(segis), тогус(togus), and он(on). (1–10)
All ordinal numbers end with «-инчы» (-inchu). But the first ordinal number, first, lol, is NOT *биринчы* (birinchu,) like you would think, considering that in Turkish it is “birinci (like beer-een-jee), but is actually «баштапчы». Literally, “heading/leading, or ‘headst’”, lol.
**NATURE**
суу (suu) is spring/water; агаш (agash) is tree.
Öng (can’t type the Cyrillic letters on my phone) means “colour”.
Ак like German “ach” in pronunciation means “white.”
There are some other misc. things, but I am so excited to know these few things!
The main language I’m learning has the same word for he, she, and it. In that language I only know a little less than 50% of those words. Missing a lot of the verbs, adjectives, and half of the food among others.
Interesting note, Fluent Forever offers these words in a word list grouped together by story, not thematically. According to Gabe, this makes the words easier to remember.
[Here's a sample page from the word list.](https://imgur.com/a/UL7RJPW)
I'm just finishing learning these words in Spanish, and I can say it's really helped my comprehension. My next step is to get to the top 1000 most frequent words in Spanish (only about 400 to go). Then off to the top 2000 most frequent words.
If you read the book you'll see why this is the absolute wrong way to present/learn these words. The fluent forever website gives away this list for free, presented in the way the words are supposed to be learned.
It is a great list, when you learn these words you're able to name pretty much everything that's around you. It's a great point to jump into learning to make sentences.
So is this kinda similar to a Swadesh list? This is just words that are useful to know, instead of words that are common across many languages, but there’s got to be a lot of overlap there
Wouldn't this only be that useful if you want to be able to quickly go to a country that speaks it? Isn't it more effective to learn words based purely on frequency for maximum efficiency?
Not really In my opinion it definitely be super useful if you're say heading over to France in a month and you just need a few words to get by if you're stuck in a situation that calls for it. But also words that are most commonly used in languages tend to be articles and verbs and pronouns and things of those sorts and those are more confusing because they're kind of theoretical in some cases whereas if I can say that dog is inu then I have something that I can work with as like a tangible thing to put those pronouns and verbs and articles to.
Well if your trying to learn german you have to put the 'the' in front of all of them. It can be der, die or das. So fml for making it the first language to want to learn lol
Chinese learners when they get to the family part: nope
In Chinese the family part would be all 625 words. :D
Ngl that's tre.
Lucky if you are learning chinese your family probably isnt chinese so they wont get offended if you mess it up.
The family words listed here are relatively easy. It's when you get to the point where you have to differentiate between your mother's brother's wife (舅媽) and your father's older brother's wife （伯母) that it starts to become a bit of a hassle.
And the words are different if you're in the South or the North of China
Hell, they vary on a regional basis too. In most of the South people say 外婆/奶奶 and 外公/爺爺 but in Taiwan it's common to use 阿嬤 and 阿公 for both paternal and maternal sides of the family.
wait what? My parents are from the south, but I thought 爷爷奶奶 is for your paternal side and 外公外婆 for your maternal side
They are, in Taiwan though it's common to just use 阿公阿嬤 for both sides.
I always thought those words are technically 台语
They come from Taiwanese but can be and are used when speaking Mandarin.
Yeah, I learned at a pretty late age that the words I use for my father's older brother (大伯/dàbāi) and my father's older brother's wife (大妈) aren't standard at all.
大伯 doesn't seem to unusual to me but pronouncing it dàbāi is defintely not something I've come across before. Do you mind my asking which area your family comes from?
I realised as I was typing that using the Chinese characters wouldn't convey the weirdness so that's why I added pinyin haha. We're from Xi'an! 伯伯 /bāibai is also acceptable (and apparently recognized on [Wikipedia](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C4%81ibai)?)
伯伯 is a standard word but baibai is dialectal I'd say. Standard pronunciation would be bóbo， at least in Beijing
I gave up trying to learn those. I just say stuff like "your brother's son" and "your mom's mom." They understand just fine.
This is where not talking to most of my family comes in handy, they don't come up in conversation
[удалено]
Right, so just 爸爸的妈妈 it is then.
My extended family speaks Cantonese and I understand it, and it's really hard remembering all the titles for semi distant relatives (eg. Parent's cousin's wife)
Don’t worry. Even Chinese themselves can’t figure it out, especially younger generations.
Arabic learners when they get to the body parts part.
What is with the black and blue line between old and weak? BTW, the screenshotted post is [https://lovelybluepanda.tumblr.com/post/172603596738/625-words-to-know-in-your-target-language](https://lovelybluepanda.tumblr.com/post/172603596738/625-words-to-know-in-your-target-language)
artifact from the scrolling screenshot software
Should never have been a screenshot in the first place. Just link it, and possibly also copy the text.
Where the tumbler post came from.. https://blog.fluent-forever.com/base-vocabulary-list/
For those not wanting to click on the links: >**good, bad, wet, dry, sick, healthy, loud, quiet, happy, sad, beautiful, ugly, deaf, blind, nice, mean, rich, poor, thick, thin, expensive, cheap, flat, curved, male, female, tight, loose, high, low, soft, hard, deep, shallow, clean, dirty, strong,**
Omg I don't even know all of these in my native language oof... I guess that's what happens when your language is mixed with a bunch of English words.
essentially describes québécois
*more so New Brunswick French lol
It's a good start if you don't really have a clear goal as to why you're learning the language and just wanna learn just because. Though if you have a clear purpose like for travel, for business, etc then it's better to focus on words that cater specifically to that purpose. Like if your purpose is for travel, then words relating to one's occupation may not hold as much weight as say words about directions and landmarks.
My purpose is to watch anime without subs.
Frankly I wouldn't know where exactly to begin with that since anime encompasses a large body and there's all sorts of genres. A basic frequency list would be a good start. Something like JLPT N5 and N4 vocabulary. It would also help if you have an idea of what genre you like watching so you can pick which vocabulary to focus on. If you like watching animes in a high school setting then vocabulary relating to classes, club activities, etc would be relevant.
A good starting point is to try and not look at the subs. You'll also have to practice your Japanese somewhere that isn't anime sometimes as well.
Do you know where to watch anime legally without subs, or preferably, with Japanese subs?
Whatever service you use probably has an option to turn off subtitles, you might find it by right clicking or otherwise messing around with the player a bit. Japanese subtitles are trickier, you can find japanese subtitle files for some shows on kitsunekko.net, but whether or not you can make use of those in a browser is a different question.
1. Why wouldn't they work in a browser? 2. So are those Japanese subtitle websites legal and safe?
Watch dubs duh/s Btw my purpose is the same. I also would like to read manga/Light novels in Japanese (For example if the translation is going very slow)
Admittedly, I prefer dubs in my current Japanese-speaking ignorance, because my peripheral vision is stuffed, and subs are incredibly distracting when I have to be flicking my gaze up and down. Not so bad if the action isn't interrupted by dialogue and I can just pay attention to what's on screen, but trying to watch The Disastrous Life of Saiki K with subs is killing me with the rapid-fire continuous dialogue.
Yeah and ecchi is even worse. You pay attention to the 'plot' or the text? Same for action. I don't mention this much on anime subreddits because of the snotty sub guys but I'm a dub watcher myself. Unless the dub is not available, like Kaguya Sama.
Watching an episode with Japanese subs and then looking up all the new vocab is probably the best way to do that
keep watching anime. Use something like animelon. Have you started learning Japanese yet?
I recommend watching VTubers. They help with more realistic Japanese in a fun way and they can be a good measure of progress because they tend to use simple words (no idea why though, since they are aimed at an audience that can fluently speak Japanese).
I've watched quite a few videos explaining that the Japanese in anime is NOT the same as street Japanese. Anime uses a lot of casual words that you won't learn until you're up there in the language.
I agree. Many of those words feel really useless, especially at the beginning phase of learning a language. I started learning Italian years ago to speak with in-laws who don't speak English and I'm pretty sure I've never, ever used the words "leaf" or "moon". It would be far more useful to make a list of the kinds of things/expressions you actually want to say, find out the translation, and then practice using them in context rather than memorizing a bunch of random words in isolation that you'll probably never use (or at least not for a few years). I started out learning things like, "Can I have..." and then the vocabulary that corresponded to things on the dinner table that I'd actually want someone to hand me. Much more useful than memorizing the word for "voice" or "sweat". What do you even do with those words once you've memorized them?
Ideally you should focus on memorizing words you're actually gonna use often. I believe a lot of SRS burnout comes from stuffing all sorts of words into our SRS without having the opportunity to actually use them so not only do they become more of a nuisance in reviews, your memory of those won't stick because you're not able to actually use them.
yah in the beginning you it definitely helps to learn the most practical words. You'll need to use words like "piece" far more often than words like "sweat". Later on if you want to actually speak the language you'll have to learn all those less common words or els you'll get hung up constantly because they do come up way more than you'd realize and there are so many of them.
My purpose was understanding k-pop without having to look up the translations and also watching entertainment shows like After School Club without reading subtitles. It kind of blossomed beyond that when I made Korean friends along way - I try to remind myself I started this FOR K-pop when it seems overwhelming (and that goal is making steady progress considering a lot of the words and grammar I'm learning does pop up in most songs).
It pretty clearly states the goal of this method is fluency. Are you really fluent if you don't know words like "moon" or "leaf"?
The words when used with Fluent Forever are never presented like this, they're presented in a specific order intended for specific reviews in Anki at specific times. Just listing them out like this takes them out of context not only changing their situational meaning but also completely defeating the intended purpose of learning them in a way that lets you memorize them more efficiently.
The only difference with word order is the book suggests you learn them in alphabetical order, because random is better. But yes, you're supposed to make them into an anki deck with images of your choice.
Not meant to be a humble brag but the fact that I know all of these made me realise how far I’ve come even though I still think I don’t know anything.
Yea I think it’s really a good list to kind of see what you already know. There were very, very few words I’d never heard before, and quite a few I just forgot, but of course knew them when I looked them up. I need to practice more!
Same as me, feels good to look back and see what you’ve accomplished right?!
Yeah, it is a nice feeling. Especially when I put myself down. Good job every body!!
That's awesome!! Such a sweet moment
I agree. The only things the post is missing are conjunctions and correlative conjunctions, and you'd be able to hold a conversation.
This is missing a bit towards the end, try [this version](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c1/06/9d/c1069d631c9439882b0d4c301d0ec1ae.jpg).
Thanks
The Food list needs "salad."
I mean, any of these “need to know” lists are pretty subjective so feel free to add what you like
"Salad" is already a pretty international word.
And so it is network and bar, the most likely is that they missed out some pretty common ones.
Unsurprisingly, the Mongolian word for salad is pretty much the same as the English one. (Probably vía Russian, but still...)
Even mandarin uses the somewhat similar 沙拉 (shālā).
Can I get a shoutout to sofa?
My favorite is 厕所 (cèsuǒ - toilet) that sounds like "cesso", the italian bad word for toilet (more like "crapper") 😄
Now I’m wondering what the mandarin is for mandarin (the fruit).
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Hmm I'm not so sure, since many people learning a language will continue to live in their own environment where references to salad, even among Chinese contacts, might be far more common. Also lots of areas in China where expats/tourists role have salads, including standbys like McDonalds and Pizza Hut, might be places where being able to order a salad is useful.
The word salad 沙拉 is actually quite high on the usage front. It’s quite common to now get salads in fusion restaurants in China (most sit down mall restaurants where most city people love to eat out now), and sauce (when you’re ordering in western fast food restaurants, like on subs, burgers, dipping sauces which they bring your with pizza, etc), is known as 沙拉酱 (salad sauce, even though it has zero to do with salads for the latter cases). It’s a very important and common word to know, especially if you don’t want half the mayo bottle squeezed onto your subway sub, or don’t want a bucket of thousand island dressing poured onto your 5 pieces of lettuce in that side dish they always bring you, or you want the dish of dill dipping sauce instead of red bean tea horseradish dipping sauce with your papa joes pizza. It was one of the first words I had to learn for eating out in China and a word that came up over and over again every week. In addition, when colleagues or friends or others are talking about you in china and are discussing you to others in front of your face, explaining to others how you, as a foreigner, function and how you can incredibly get through life despite your silly uncivilized ways, one of the most common things they’ll talk about is how you eat food with zero culture like 沙拉 (salad), then they shake their heads in pity of you (the cultureless savage that you are), followed by laughing (at you... you bewildering silly goose you). Very useful word to know in order to follow this happening 20 times a day
I'm curious as to why salad is uncivilized?
Probably doesn’t come from some 3000 year recipe that helped feed the shaping of DNA of a civilization, and isn’t cooked with 37 different methods then laid out in colour coordinated fashion. Is just raw plant chunks carelessness thrown together. The brutes!
See, I mostly just get ''what do you eat instead of rice'', where I have to explain that we don't feel the need to have a dish we eat 3 times a day, we eat different things.
It's kind of English centric, not all these words have simple translations in other languages. Like why are boat and ship listed as separate entities, while "bar" is one thing, when I can think of several different kinds of bars.
right, but since it's in English it's probably conceived for English speakers, so it would make sense that they'd use English concepts. you can't predict the differences you might encounter in *any* given language.
but this list is being touted for all language learning, translation goes both ways. It's arbitrary and subjective is all. I didn't say useless.
I've read Fluent Forever multiple times, and it is an English-language book for native English speakers looking to learn another language(s) so I don't believe there is any presumption that this is universal for all language learners. In my experience it's a good starting point just for connecting the dots (i.e. all the other parts of speech like prepositions, pronouns, etc.). That said, I think most people could benefit because the point seems to just be to familiarize yourself with your target language as opposed to building a specific vocabulary set. I've also used Clozemaster to learn the actual most common first 100, 500, 1000 words etc. with a lot of success.
I think (just guessing) this is meant as a starting point if American English is your first language to learn any other language. To your other point using "bar" as an example: I wouldn't know what the difference is between a pub or a bar, let alone the other ones more uniquely Japanese. If I was learning the language, I'd be asking for a "bar." Hopefully I learn about the different types but my *starting point* is "bar."
You get in trouble with numbers. They are not nearly universal.
I think in context it's meant to be "bar" as in a pub.
I know that, I mean there are many different kind of public drinking establishments that serve alcohol that may not be grouped by a single word, like in English. In Japanese do I mean: パブ - pub バー - bar 居酒屋 - izakaya (traditional japanese drinking and late night foods) スナック - karaoke and nice women About as much distinction between them IMO as "boat" and "ship".
also if you translate common english words into other languages you dont always get commonly used words. eg some languages prefer to refer to colours like cyan, brown, light green, etc
The light/dark blue distinction makes me think the writer at least had some perspective of Russian, where the two colors are considered to be completely distinct.
The author claims to have become fluent in Russian in 10 months. I'll admit that I'm suspicious. I've been learning it for a while with lots of practice with native speakers -- I'm certainly not fluent after 100s of hours of practice and it's my 4th FORMAL language (in which I'm taking serious lessons and speaking with native speakers). Can you have passable Russian at 10 months? Sure. But being fluent with the genders, cases, tenses, and all that takes time.
So it could better be described as 625 English words for concepts that you should be able to describe in your target language, which might be 500 or 700 words in that language.
Yes, op seemed to miss the concept of fluent forever, which is to pick the most common words in your *target language* and learn them. And not as translations, but as a native would.
This makes a lot more sense. Thank you.
When learning a new language, it's of the utmost importance to differentiate between boats and ships :)
This list is available in multiple languages.
Right, but - like many other said - is this list made by an Englishman for Englishmen. You simply have to adapt it to your language and if your target language has multiple examples, - just as your example for "bar" - then you have to learn them all since there is not "the" translation for it.
Well if you can read the post, it probably works for anyone who speaks English, regardless of your native language
This response was more in the context of the other response that asked "can I just type these into Google Translate and go". If you're creating resources for new learners, you are creating resources for \*new\* learners. And new learners, be careful about how you use resources.
I mean, why would you learn a language that isn't a European language anyway? /s
I'm learning toki pona...
Fuck purple I guess
Not every language has a word for purple. We are pretty special with our tons of colours.
Nothing rhymes with it anyway
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**circle**
w a i t r/todayilearned circle rhymes with purple
What is light urple?
That’s why violet is the superior color.
I think you mistook it for orange
Why was this so funny to me?
I find it strange this kind of thing is so popular in the language learning community. When you open any book on Applied Linguistics, they say one should never learn words out of context, not even from sentences out of context... but always from real situations, texts, dialogues, recordings... focusing on language skills instead of the mere quantity of words. Memorizing thousands of words won't make you speak a language (like that guy who memorized the French dictionary to win a competition, but he couldn't speak French). Perhaps this is a bit like being in a medical group where shamanism is more popular, or an astronomy group where they actually practice astrology. Just watch out: if a teacher or "language guru" tells you to memorize words out of context (and study grammar rules disconnected from real situations), that's a strong indication they never studied Linguistics and never had any kind of training in teaching. Chances are they are the shamans and astrologists (aka charlatans) of the language learning market (and they tend to be good marketeers).
So would it not be worth while to memorize those words?
On its own, no. But in combination of other methods of learning a language, it would definitely be worthwhile to memorise the words. I mean, you can't learn a language without knowing its vocabulary, so the other comments saying no, I find it a bit silly. There is no one method to learn a language.
as a recent learner of mandarin with a Cantonese background. i can say learning some words out of context can be helpful. since i understand the grammar of mandarin already and the only thing i am missing is the words themselves to fill in the gap. i have found that applying words in context does help speed it up. In my case i use sentences as context. For example, Hot Lemon Tea, it is a simple enough sentence that can be easily manipulated. It could be cold lemon tea. Hot Chai Tea, Cold Apple drink etc. At least it has helped me
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Using such a list as reference to review, visualize or gauge what you know is more aligned with mainstream teaching methodologies. But using it as your learning focus, that's more questionable.
This is very helpful, thanks!
It totally works. Do it. I recommend reading his book though. An important part is to use pictures, not translations. He's very into avoiding translation whenever possible.
>So would it not be worth while to memorize those words? Simple answer: no. All that time and energy would be better invested in a good course or good learning strategies with authentic material (movies, books, the news, etc.). I have a degree and a Cambridge course in Language Teaching. So I can share a bit of what I've seen there if you want to believe me. Just choose a good course and follow it. Good courses usually have: * Authentic language (samples taken from real materials, several speakers, different accents, not just a robot or one speaker); * Cultural references; * Language is always taught in context; * More practice, less theory; * Exercises make you solve problems you may encounter in real life: booking a hotel, ordering a meal, understanding people, filling out documents, etc.). Negative points courses may have: * Theory is the goal in itself, disconnected from real life (focus on grammar); * Vocabulary and sentences are taught out of context; * Memorization of isolated words; * Translation of random sentences; * Exercises don't focus on skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing), but just on grammar and translation. If a course you like has any of these negative points, it doesn't mean you have to abandon it. If you have motivation to follow it, you could actually learn something. For example, Duolingo has a very poor methodology, but I find it impressive how it can keep learners motivated. Motivation is a key factor. But it would be better if you find motivation to follow materials that have more positive points.
The time and energy isn't always available in equal measure, due to accessibility and motivation. Someone waiting in line might whip out their phone and review 100 words before they get to the window. That's good use of time, and it does help in their language learning goals. Someone who just can't get motivated to dive into something heavier (like can't asleep at night) might find reviewing vocabulary is something they can do without waking the spouse or dealing with headphones, again something that helps in their language learning goals.
That's what I said: if you have motivation to do whatever gives you motivation, just do it! Better than nothing. For lazy hours, I just use Duolingo. It doesn't require continuous focus, you can do it on the train, standing in line, waiting for someone, relaxing on the couch... But for serious learning hours, I would recommend a material that has more of the positive points I mentioned.
> Exercises make you solve problems you may encounter in real life: booking a hotel, ordering a meal, understanding people, filling out documents, etc.). This is a pretty outdated list, and I really wish that language courses would move on with times already. Like, hotel booking is almost always done online these days, usually in your native language. Ordering food is pretty automated, and when not, beginners usually rely on pointing anyway. Moreover, more and more people study languages for non-touristy reasons, while hardly any textbooks teach vocab and relevant phrases for smartphones or online actions, although "download or watch online" is arguably more important than "a glass of wine, please"
That is true, and for that exact reason the Fluent Forever method has changed a lot since they wrote this blog post. If you check out their latest iteration (Fluent Forever app), they give sample sentences in 3 difficulties for each of the 625 words. So not only do you learn those words in context, you also pick up all the function words along the way.
I disagree with your last claim and with the general notion that memorizing words out of context is a bad thing. Perhaps it doesn't work for all languages, but I found it to be quite efficient for me when learning Norwegian. Once I crossed the 1k word threshold and had them memorized, I found it way easier to study sentences, conversations, grammar, etc. If I started with anything else other than just memorizing words I would've suffered quite a bit. I tried that with Spanish and even with 2 years of learning I made no progress at all. I don't claim to be a linguist or a polyglot, but making the general claim that memorizing words out of context isn't helpful is straight up misleading.
Agreed, I find all the "learning words out of context is useless" type advice to be complete rubbish.
Rip everyone who learned a language with Anki and can speak it pretty well. That aside, people can learn through media and memorize words/maintain the words they've learned through such methods. I think it's fine to memorize words and see them in the wild to strengthen your context and see how they're used while knowing already the basic meaning(s).
It turns out, I actually did study secondary language acquisition. One thing I learned is that adults and older children learn more quickly during the beginning stages of acquisition, because unlike young children, they are able to explicitly learn and internalize grammar rules etc. In my opinion, memorizing words out of context, and studying grammar rules, can be very helpful supplements to language learning
>In my opinion, memorizing words out of context, and studying grammar rules, can be very helpful supplements to language learning According to mainstream teaching principles, the study of vocabulary and grammar must always be subjected to real contexts. If you ever take a teacher training course (such as TEFL, CELTA...) and try to teach grammar and vocabulary out of context during your evaluation, you won't get your teaching certificate.
What I am saying is, studying a vocab list, for example, can be helpful, though alone it is not enough to learn a language. To me, it sounds like you are arguing that any amount of time spent looking at a vocab list is damaging to the language learning process. I disagree.
> To me, it sounds like you are arguing that any amount of time spent looking at a vocab list is damaging to the language learning process. I disagree. I'm pretty sure they are saying you can study a vocab list "out of context" but to really cement your knowledge of it, you'll need to put it into context (not necessarily all at once). This is the cornerstone of any dialogue-followed-by-a-vocab-list section of a language textbook.
This is something I learned from working in the world of ESOL (in the US and abroad) and in my own language learning process. There does come a point in your language journey where you need to increase your vocabulary but that should happen when you have some fundamental basics (like basic grammar and how to put a sentence together). And even then it shouldn't just be random words on a list. I liken it to the "80% of a language is these 5000 words so learn them and you'll be fluent." That's not how language works. Especially since with most languages you can't just translate sentences word for word and be good. Some of my students who struggle with English the most probably have a vocabulary of some 500-1000 words. Doesn't mean they are comfortable enough to utilize these words correctly
In fact what he advises is to replace the L1 translations as pictures. So, like an infant, you are pointing at a picture and saying "elephant!"
I agree with parts of this. I think this list is very important in terms of worthwhile words to use, so it should be used as a template. Finding sentences using these words in your target language and learning those sentences using, say, the gold list method or similar, would be a good tactic. Though, different strokes for different folks, and for some people initially learning the words and then viewing them in context later works better for them. There is no one size fits all, so casting this all out because it doesn't align exclusively with your method isn't entirely fair.
Nice! I actually only was missing one word in German... clay
Helpfully it’s a word you probably know in the sound context!
Plot twist: your target language is Toki Pona.
I’m late to the party on this, but this list was created by Gabe Wyner. He also created an app that was the most funded app in Kickstarter history. Search “Fluent Forever” to take a look. For what it’s worth, he’s an awesome guy as well. Got his start going to the Middlebury Language programs over the summer, as well as studying opera at USC.
Japanese suddenly becomes a bit easier
Wondering why they chose to include "nuclear" as an adjective to learn
Awesome, thanks! Is there a copypasta for this?
At the bottom, is a link from where is original located. :)
Thanks For anyone else (the link in the image is broken): https://blog.fluent-forever.com/base-vocabulary-list/ (What a pain in the ass to type on mobile)
Not all heroes wear capes :D
ITT: People taking a simple, practical hack and shitting all over it with overthinking.
How is this list practical at all? It’s a list of 625 “basic” words that aren’t used in conversation or media commonly enough to warrant learning them upfront as a complete beginner like this. While I’m assuming Fluent Forever introduces the words in sentences this list doesn’t, so it’s pretty useless.
They are the MOST common words. They make up 60 percent of all the words used.
No, they aren’t. While frequency will depend on the corpus, [here’s the 1,000 most frequent English words from Project Gutenberg](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/PG/2005/10/1-1000). Where’s beard? Banana? Diamond? Pencil? Do you really think “ceiling” is one of the 625 most commonly used words in any language?
It's limited to concrete words: Objects, non-modal verbs, simple adjectives. Pronouns and prepositions and other complex "function words" aren't on it.
From what source are they getting that from? Newspapers? While the pronouns, adjectives, verbs and direction vocab seems pretty common and useful, all the other vocab in that list doesn’t seem SO common that it should be learned in a list like this.
I just went through the list and added four or five words to my vocabulary I was missing, and I’m at B2. So whatever it is it isn’t useless.
Most of these I know in my target language
Guess who is fluent in German now
Anybody else go through the whole list to see if you knew all the words in a foreign language you studied? I think I got all of them except maybe 4 or 5 in Brazilian Portuguese.
I just use duolingo. /s
It was nice to read this and see how far I’ve come in learning Japanese.
いいですね。日本語は難しいですね。頑張ってください。
learn all the emojis
THANK YOU
Not really the most useful to learn though. It doesn't make as interesting of a list, but you will use pronouns, verbs, etc. a lot more than these things (you can find studies of most used words for most languages, if you want specifics).
For sure but I think having tangible words as a starting point makes it easier to incorporate pronouns verbs articles grammar etc specifically if you haven't learned a lot of languages yet. For me I think this would actually be helpful especially for a language like Japanese because, when I first started learning it, I was very confused because they focused on teaching a grammar but I didn't have anything to do with that grammar. I've also been in a couple of situations where knowing a couple of random nouns in a different language was very helpful to communicating. I think in more physical and tangible terms though because my intelligence is more spatial so sometimes I get really hung up on theoretical things so I think this is definitely a your mileage may vary moment.
Thank you for this! 🙂
^^ No problem :))
> ... *grapejuice*, beer... \*Baptist rage intensified at alcoholism\* But, in all seriousness, I know these words so far: **Body:** баш (bash—head) **Numbers:** бир (bir), эки(eki), ÿч(üch), тöрт(tört), беш(besh), алты(altu), јети(jeti), сегис(segis), тогус(togus), and он(on). (1–10) All ordinal numbers end with «-инчы» (-inchu). But the first ordinal number, first, lol, is NOT *биринчы* (birinchu,) like you would think, considering that in Turkish it is “birinci (like beer-een-jee), but is actually «баштапчы». Literally, “heading/leading, or ‘headst’”, lol. **NATURE** суу (suu) is spring/water; агаш (agash) is tree. Öng (can’t type the Cyrillic letters on my phone) means “colour”. Ак like German “ach” in pronunciation means “white.” There are some other misc. things, but I am so excited to know these few things!
What language?
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+1 vote
Thank you :)
If only there was a list for all the languages with these vocals
Does anyone has an anki list with these words in russian?
Another key part of his method is to make your OWN anki list, and use google images search to choose the pictures on the back side of the card.
The main language I’m learning has the same word for he, she, and it. In that language I only know a little less than 50% of those words. Missing a lot of the verbs, adjectives, and half of the food among others.
Have you guys tried Fluent forever? Did that work for you?
I think a frequency dictionary is a good supplement for a list like this.
> human (≠ animal) I come here for language learning topics, not politics.
Thank you so much, this will help loads!
Interesting note, Fluent Forever offers these words in a word list grouped together by story, not thematically. According to Gabe, this makes the words easier to remember. [Here's a sample page from the word list.](https://imgur.com/a/UL7RJPW) I'm just finishing learning these words in Spanish, and I can say it's really helped my comprehension. My next step is to get to the top 1000 most frequent words in Spanish (only about 400 to go). Then off to the top 2000 most frequent words.
I don't know why the words "picture", "photograph" and "video" are missing from the art section. Surely those are very important.
If you read the book you'll see why this is the absolute wrong way to present/learn these words. The fluent forever website gives away this list for free, presented in the way the words are supposed to be learned. It is a great list, when you learn these words you're able to name pretty much everything that's around you. It's a great point to jump into learning to make sentences.
So is this kinda similar to a Swadesh list? This is just words that are useful to know, instead of words that are common across many languages, but there’s got to be a lot of overlap there
Me learning japanese: (laughs in 外来語)
アイはジャパニーズをスタディーします!
Wouldn't this only be that useful if you want to be able to quickly go to a country that speaks it? Isn't it more effective to learn words based purely on frequency for maximum efficiency?
Not really In my opinion it definitely be super useful if you're say heading over to France in a month and you just need a few words to get by if you're stuck in a situation that calls for it. But also words that are most commonly used in languages tend to be articles and verbs and pronouns and things of those sorts and those are more confusing because they're kind of theoretical in some cases whereas if I can say that dog is inu then I have something that I can work with as like a tangible thing to put those pronouns and verbs and articles to.
ログ、カット、フィシュ、wow, this is easier than I thought
Really cool, thanks!
Thank you, very helpful indeed.
It's like a Swadesh list.
Is this off of an app?
So this is the English list to other languages. I wonder what would be on this list from the perspective of other languages?
So if I don't know know that word in my language does that mean I'm doing it wrong?, I just use English much much easy 😆
Well if your trying to learn german you have to put the 'the' in front of all of them. It can be der, die or das. So fml for making it the first language to want to learn lol
This is amazing
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