Frequency Lists are USELESS!

[@jamesfullerguitar]

This is a valid critique of how many people use frequency lists. However, I've found them to be very helpful in identifying which words I should look out for when I'm learning from extensive reading / listening, and they can definitely at least help set you up to read a raw beginner level text. It's definitely not true that knowing the most used 1000 words will let you understand X percent of a language though, which is why I think most people think they're a good idea in the first place.

[@SweetBananaDigital]

I agree. I think that the criticism here is valid because you certainly can’t rely on a frequency list as your only or your primary resource for learning a language. But I think it can be a helpful supplement, as you said, giving a heads up of what words you might want to look out for if you haven’t learned them already.

[@steffenpanning2776]

or you could start reading a beginner level text and lookup every word you don't know. You will also learn the essential words, but in context

[@jamesfullerguitar]

Yeah for sure. I would never advocate for "learning from" a frequency list per say, I don't think it's possible to learn vocabulary without context.

[@quirelll]

​@@steffenpanning2776that's what I did with French. Very painless way to learn languages, unless you learn Chinese or Japanese in which case you'd need to learn thousands of characters first

[@PC_Simo]

Also; you’d want to have translations of said words, in those lists. Preferably, in several contexts, wherever necessary. Imagine being a complete noob, in English, and coming across the word: ”can”, in one of these lists that doesn’t even tell you, whether they mean the noun (like a paint can), or the auxiliary verb (≈ ”to be able to”). 🤯

[@Cozonac3000]

4:00 "you need to enjoy the process" this is why we learn the insults and curses first haha.

[@katathoombs]

As a student of ancient languages I've rather longed for such vocabularies sorted by frequency. Luckily in this age of algorithms it's somewhat easy to build such lists with a bit of effort, as long as the _corpus_ is digitised.

[@nightcrawler2561]

Yeah they are somewhat helpful there

[@yannsalmon2988]

Frequency lists data are indeed pretty useful to create effective learning material. But like eggs, they should never be consumed raw. The worst way to serve them is on alphabetical order, with no definition, translation or sample. If you use them as is to learn words, they are useless, but they are pretty useful to determine in what order you should learn them. That said, whatever the way they are picked, learning irregular verbs just on their infinitive form is always pretty useless.

[@EpherosAldor]

Another reason to use lists is to narrow down topical information. For instance, you want to learn the vocabulary for buying produce, or baking, or household items. As I learn German I focus a bit more on food stuffs and instructions for recipes. Backen - to bake, grillen - to grill, Karotte - carrot, Spinat - spinach, etc...But, you are absolutely correct that the lists by themselves are worthless. In English we have the word 'to', but in German you have 'an', 'in', 'zu', 'auf', and 'nach', each with their own specific ways to be used in a sentence. Seeing these German words in a list would be useless and set me back in learning because I'd have no context for why they are used, only that there is more than one word for 'to'. Great information, thanks so much!

[@Flugs0]

It really mostly just becomes an issue with those little particles though. For verbs, nouns, and adjectives I think learning from a list like this is a perfectly fine idea.

[@Dualgas]

You may be interested to know something called the Core 2.3k Anki deck has been very popular within the Japanese learning community recently; it is a set of flashcards of the most common ¬2000 words in the Japanese language, complete with audio and sample sentences. Many prominent learners, such as Jazzy, who reportedly passed the N1 in under 9 months with zero starting knowledge of Japanese, advocate its use. However unlike the lists you reviewed in this video, it is clearly intended for use by learners who already understand how the language fundamentally works and is to be used supplementally with other forms of study. Also, in the case of Japanese in my experience, there is some merit to learning to recognize a word before you 'fully' understand what it means as learning the kanji associated with it beforehand can reduce the amount of work later when you begin encountering it regularly. I think your mileage may vary depending on the word as well, learning a word that has an almost 100% equivalent in your own language like 椅子 'chair', or 花 'flower' from a list might not be the worst thing, but doing so for a 'grammar word' that has a lot of complex usages such as ほど, よう, or ばかりwouldn't do you much good at all in my opinion.

[@adriangrana1239]

Yea I think Metatron is not up to date on these learning methods sadly, instead of actually showing something like Core 2.3k in Anki he just showcased the worst resources that are built on frequency lists... Even learning things like ばかり from a list wouldn't be so bad if it has an example sentence and explains the grammar on the back of the card, and while there is more than one way that ばかり can be used grammatically, it doesn't really matter as you can look that up when you encounter it again, no need to learn it all at ones anyways.

[@Sonicstillpoint83]

What specific search string do I use to find that specific deck? I see Japanese core then some number followed with step one/step two. Are you referring collectively to the ones that say with audio sentence examples? Thanks :-)

[@Dualgas]

@@diydylana3151 It is kind of amazing but he does explain and justify himself really well in both his Reddit post and this interview kzbin.info/www/bejne/jKeVZGehj8l1ndUsi=4BrbSSyshjNTqDsh . He is a native English speaker who had no previous language learning experience. The tldr is he spent 4-8 hours a day on study, which was possible because of covid as he only had to attend college online and had no other major responsibilities. He prioritized reading especially at the beginning as gains are more guaranteed compared to listening, starting with Japanese subtitled anime before moving to visual novels. While I think most people wouldn't quite have the same discipline or the ability to structure their free time that Jazzy had, I think his experience is nevertheless worth paying attention to for Japanese learners.

[@Dualgas]

@@Sonicstillpoint83 Try 'anacreon 2.3k' I can't seem to link it directly as my comment will be deleted

[@southcoastinventors6583]

Mastering Japanese means mastering the maybe

[@NidusFormicarum]

Remember that what words are included in lists like these depends on what material they are based on. I once went to a library to look up such a list in Greek. I probably knew some 3000 to 5000 words by then. My goal was twofold: 1. to strengthen my knowledge and memory of the most common words so that they became second nature to me in order to use what I already knew to easier learn even more. 2. to check if I had missed any words that I should have learned. It turned out (which is hardly a surprise when learning a language) that yes, I had missed a couple of words, some of which were relatively basic. It goes without saying that you have to the work yourself with each word in the list: put them in different contexts and look up how they are used, checking dictionaries, looking up related words and combining them with other words. But this shouldn't have to be taught - everybody should understand that you have to work hard in order to actually learn something long-term.

[@hglundahl]

0:29 Part of my Latin studies was actually a thematically constructed "the 1000 most common words of Latin" and it tended to help it can of course be mentioned, back in our days, Latin meant reading and writing, not necessarily conversation

[@Sonicstillpoint83]

I think, exposing yourself to what are empirically most used vocabulary can be a great reference as you study. As a child, my father taught me a bunch of random Spanish nouns that were used in carpentry/a construction site and my mother used a lot of random French phrases which ended up being largely wrong because of some grammar mistakes. In spite of none of that being ideal, it gave me a basis to work from because I had some thing to reference that my brain would process on a native speaker level since it was just flavoring for my English. Whenever I started studying foreign languages in college, I had all sorts of things to think about when learning vocabulary and grammar. It’s like how writing teachers tell you to put your thoughts on a page and then go back to fix them later.

[@Ari33sa]

I remember one time I wanted to refresh my Italian. I went through a few Italian courses, but it's been years ago, and I always kinda lacked vocabulary. So I thought, hey let's just look at these lists. And I think it was a list of 500 words... or something like that. But I was so frustrated, because they put in all the different forms of a verb (for example) apart from the infinitive. Cause turns out, I guess, people say "sono" a lot. but not "essere". So it felt like half the list were just different versions of "to be", "to go", "to have" and some filler words.

[@billnewby1976]

In general, yes they're useless, but for a particular corpus, such as the Greek New Testament, they are highly useful. The Greek New Testament contains about 5500 different words, but if you learn the 1000 most common you can read about 92% of it. Otoh, almost 2000 of those words are hapax legomena.

[@JMM33RanMA]

This is a great video. I am an unapologetic utilitarian ESL teacher. Maslow's hierarchies are real and ignoring the needs of the students sabotages learning as well as the fulfillment of the student's needs. Content is important, as is usable information, and practice in actually using it. There are textbooks with exercises for the students to remember, and the better ESL teachers have the students practice them. What I did was to prepare lessons to localize the content, and meet students expressed needs. For example: Where is [South Station/the Statehouse/Fenway Park] or Can you tell me where the nearest [Starbucks/drugstore/subway station] is? The students would then alter the content to fit their needs and ask other members of the class their own questions. I encouraged them to practice together, and go to places together outside the school environment. The book had a map of London for direction giving exercises. A map of London, England for students in Boston, MA is obviously stupid, so I created another map for Boston and vicinity and had the students provide their own destinations, and then ask other students for directions. After getting over the shock of everything not being UK oriented, they generally had fun and interesting as well as useful experiences. The students really enjoyed this and got a lot of useful information and practice from such things. I also encouraged them to ask ask other teachers besides myself and ask for information outside the school. Having been a foreigner in Germany, Korea, Japan and other places I know the fear of the unknown, fear of offense, etc. Being comfortable asking questions is also important. I would give them menus, explain the content, take them to a restaurant the first time for confidence building. They enjoyed it, and became comfortable with the exchanges. Moreover the personnel sometimes enjoyed both the experience and the additional customers. The Italian proprietors of my favorite Boston sandwich shop still call me "The Professor." because my students liked the friendly staff, the food and became frequent customers. Thanks Metatron for the interesting videos.

[@philipbossy4834]

At some point when you learn a new language you have to expand your vocabulary. These lists are a decent way to prioritise which words to focus on. I would recommend starting with words of topics that interest you, but when you're ready to expand these lists makes sense. But again, as a way to expand vocabulary. Not as a way to learn how to speak the language.

[@diddly-squat9332]

Imagine giving Spirit. Is it a ghost? Is it like a person of spirit, is it alcohol? What if it a language with levels of politeness? What if it is a word that changes depending on the accent?

[@SombreroPharoah]

Or if the word for an item changes entirely in a 20 min drive as it is where I'm from. Its not ones more common or another, just regional basis. Also, top banana to the Quagsire/Wooper pfp!

[@sststr]

Those lists are extremely useful in sporcle quizzes where you have to come up with the opening 1000 words of a book, or the lyrics of a song. If you don't know the book or song, frequency lists do indeed get you quite a large percentage of the answer.

[@travelingonline9346]

Using a list in alphabetical order is of course nonsense. However, having a list in frequency order and taking e.g. the first 500 words is a wonderful way to REPEAT what you already know and making sure that you solidify your knowledge of a given level. The best kind of lists are those which are ordered according to topic.

[@ctam79]

I find this to be a practical use case for large language models for accurately determining the frequency of words and assigning weights and priorities for what vocabulary you should focus on.

[@tasse0599]

Do you really need LLMs for that?

[@wirrbel]

It's like counting statistics.

[@ctam79]

@@tasse0599 LLM's don't just count based on frequency it can also assign weights to words based on context and relevance to topics being discussed.

[@pawel198812]

I think a good way to use frequency lists would be to use them as a help in course design. Similarly to how the present tense and the imperative form of a verb are introduced earlier than past tenses, conditional, subjunctive, passive etc. vocabulary items are introduced in descending order by usefulness and frequency

[@vaxrvaxr]

I'm using a 1000 words frequency Anki deck, in addition to my own mining. I do find it valuable because it primes certain words to pay attention to in my immersion. Just the knowledge that it's in the list means I don't need to worry about whether I should learn a new word yet.

[@JimNH777]

1000 is too much, but 100-200 I found very useful. At the very, very beginning. Eg. it will include words like hello, excuse me/sorry, please, thank you. Coffee, sugar, milk. I, you, want, speak, English. Yes, no. Where, there, here, toilet. Is, have. And now I can go to the country I learned the 100 words and at the cafe: - Hello, sorry, I speak no English. Coffee please. Milk no. Sugar yes. Thank You. - Toilet. Where is toilet. There? No? There? [pointing at the same time]. OK, thank you. If you're European, especially if you speak English and another language already, you can do it with so many languages with ease, because they're so similar. And not only it can help you, it makes people look at You differently. (imagine ordering coffee like this in Girona, heart of Catalonia trying to use Catalan words instead of Spanish or English ;) ). And when it comes to learning actual language. I find it a great start too. You start speaking about your daily life almost immediately. Mind it's I - go - in - toilet. I eat bread now. I leave bed this morning 7 AM. You don't know the word 'hungry' and that in some languages you are hungry, in others you have hunger, and in some your stomach is empty. Instead you say "I want eat". But you're actually using words and communicate in other language instead of waiting until you get to chapter 12 of your workbook when they introduce past tense and chapter 15 when they introduce phrasal verbs to say I woke up this morning at seven o'clock.

[@belstar1128]

i have been learning some obscure languages and sometimes all i get are websites like this or the dictionary.

[@angelmarquez5153]

I disagree. Of course, this kind of lists are useless if you use them like this, but if used correctly, then it can be very helpful and useful for starting learning a language that's not so similar as your native language

[@shadowbennett7499]

Absolutely agree, i really only use frequency list for as much words as possible, lest say i write 1000 adjectives and 1000 verbs in the language i learn, the goal for me is not memorizing them, but familiarity, since im already reading, listening to music and watching tv and films ill recognize more words the the ones i see people use more is the one ill use more, and of course you find some interesting or fun words along the way.

[@Fafner888]

I strongly disagree that they are "completely useless". Of course if a frequency list is your *only* source of learning then that would be a waste of time as you say, but if you use the list in conjunction with other resources (lessons, immersion etc.) then they can be very useful, if used correctly. For example, you can reinforce words you don't remember well. Or you can create customized learning materials that include words from the list (for example finding example sentences). And even learning individual words in isolation isn't always a terrible idea. If you already have some understanding of how the language works, you can figure out how to use many words correctly even without having a context. If you already know how to say "the dog saw the cat" but don't know how to say "the dog chased the cat" all you need to do is just to look up the word for "chase" (and with knowledge of how to conjugate verbs if needed) and you already know how to build the new sentence. And even if you have no idea how to use the word in context, it still can be useful to remember it, because it will be easier to learn its use when you actually encounter it in context.

[@Fafner888]

Also there is scientific basis for using things like flashcard or Anki as a learning method (the so called "spaced repetition" principle). It maybe not the most fun way to learn a language, but many people are willing to do it because they get very quick results, and this is supported by scientific research into human memory. So yes, you can't become fluent by just memorizing flashcards, but it doesn't follow that memorizing flashcards is not going to speed up your learning process considerably (if again used in conjunction with other methods), and the learning process is going to be sped up even more if you concentrate on words that are more common.

[@tohaason]

Learning individual words in isolation is totally different from what's discussed here - which is memorization of "the most common words (TM) in language X". If you already know how to say a sentence like "the dog chased the cat", but you're just missing one word, then the brain is curious about it and that's the best time to learn a word. The other way is even more common, where you are at a point where you can understand most of what's said or written, but here and there are words you don't understand, some may be crucial for getting the message. The brain gets intensely curious and you'll absorb the word when either a) you "get" it from context, or, failing that, b) you look it up. As for flash cards.. unless it's all simple nouns (cat, dog, table, car), even if you actually manage to remember 1000 of those (something I could never do, even doing Anki every day for all my life), it's still useless for learning most other vocabulary for exactly those reasons Metatron pointed out. Context, conjugations (or what serves the same purpose in whatever language it is), i.e. *how* to use words. Unless you're adding a full lesson to each flash cards it won't help you much. Better stop wasting time with that and instead find a course of whatever which specializes in creating true spoken and/or written input for you, with a useful vocabulary.

[@sztukaskill1656]

Context will you make same

[@EchoLog]

The only 'common word lists' that are useful are usually conjugation charts, a swadesh list* or all the swear words. They're usually short lists when you only list those things. Just enough to be able to use the target language to build more PRECISELY how Metatron described, interdisciplinary topic connections and actually using it, are the fastest way to learn. *do your research, different opinions and theories exist. Semantic primes are a fascinating realm of study.

[@gregcampwriter]

A list like that could be useful in one's area of interest--the most frequent words used in engineering in German or the one hundred words most likely to hear in cooking in Albanian and the like.

[@ジョジョさま]

I start by making lists based on word types, excluding verbs and nouns. So, Adjectives, Adverbs, Articles, Conjunctions, Interjections, Prepositions, Pronouns, etc. They tend to be fewer in number, but are used often in the making of sentences. And, will provide a lot of flexibility. Will make learning grammar easier. Then when I come across a verb or a noun, I can just add it in naturally. When I learn a new word in my native language, its always a noun or verb. And I'm prepared to use it immediately.

[@lostboy8084]

I think as a list if done correctly can be used as vocabulary letting you practice written, saying, and understanding the meaning of the words. It won't teach you the language but you will get accustomed to a wider amount of vocabulary and if you then use it in say word of the day trying to use that word in a sentence or more in the language for that day.

[@3rdand105]

When I had wanted to learn Romanian, I bought a book of 1,000 most frequently used words, in order of frequency, with the idea of learning 10 words a day. Once the book arrived, I went right to work on the first 10 words. Seven of them were prepositions. I did some reading ahead, and I wasn't going to run into a noun until next week. Currently, I'm not studying Romanian...

[@PC_Simo]

2:24 Considering that it’s a list of *_ENGLISH_* words, *_IN ENGLISH;_* there are 2 points, I would like to raise: *1)* If you understand the intro to that list, chances are that you already understand the majority of words, on that list. *2)* What language would they even translate those words into? Italian? Finnish? Quechua? It’s a crapshoot to guess, which language is the native language of the reader. 😅

[@grillinnchillin4009]

I like using these frequency lists for languages I already have some familiarity with. I may understand the majority/large percentage of the words, but it helps reinforce things (like flashcards) and learning new nouns and verbs after having a decent grasp of how to use them

[@yanneyanenchannel]

I agree, though I think frequency lists can be helpful as supplementary material if you use one alongside a dictionary when you come across an unknown word (there are some lists that can be integrated into dictionary add-ons, at least for Japanese, which makes using them like this quite effortless). If the word is very common, you should probably pay more attention to it, but if it's not, you might as well skip it for now, unless you're really interested and really want to remember it.

[@OZdoesArt]

Iron Maiden shirt and a Gauntlet N64 game in the background? A man of taste!! I've tried to look up frequency lists for Scottish Gaelic for the sake of just finding new vocab sources, but I agree that the lack of context is a problem! Gaelic does this thing where you sometimes throw random "h"' -es into words and while it absolutely makes sense after a bit of study, you do need context to know what words are going to do that. Also I think frequency lists probably won't be helpful in the same way to everyone- The vocabulary I find useful for writing in my journal about playing Pokemon is going to be different than the vocabulary an 80 year old fisherman from Stornoway finds useful when he talks about the time he had to fight a shark.

[@c0mpu73rguy]

I was just about to ask what the heck were these lists. I mean it can’t be as dumb as I imagine… And yes, yes it was…

[@paulwalther5237]

There’s no perfect tools for learning foreign languages so while frequency lists have a lot of cons I think they’re still a valid option. But obviously just studying a list alone is no good. You need to find sentences and explanations etc. You could check a dictionary but now with Chat GPT you have a good tool to quickly provide explanations and example sentences with translations. I was considering making an Anki sentence deck using example sentences from a frequency list from Chat GPT for Korean. I haven’t ruled it out but instead I’m using it to give examples sentences for vocabulary I find reading books etc. why not use the original content or sentence instead? It’s usually above my level or not a great example of the most typical use of the word. Usually too long for a flash card. It’s just recently that Chat GPT’s Korean has gotten good enough that felt safe using its sentences. I think combining frequency lists with Chat GPT can be a good combination.

[@zerosaki6170]

Since you recently made a video on Matt vs Japan and questions regarding teaching methods. Do you have any thoughts on Refold as a language learning tool and especially in this context about their vocabulary decks? For the japanese vocab-deck, there is a related video of Matt talking about his concept regarding the deck. It seems to bear a lot of similarity to such a frequency list just by its description.

[@JaredaSohn]

A bit off topic, but for those who are just starting out learning Japanese and they want to learn proper pitch accent when would you recommend learning it? At the very beginning? After a certain point un the journey? What would you recommend? Thanks for another great video!

[@tuluppampam]

As any part of the pronunciation, I'd recommend learning it as soon as possible, so that you do not have to later fight your memory to relearn words This goes for any language (in my opinion)

[@tohaason]

@@tuluppampam Agreed. And for many people it makes sense to listen *a lot* before you actually start speaking. Sometimes the language you're learning has sounds you can't even hear properly, never mind pronouncing them. With time the brain improves. When you try to say something, listen to someone, replay the sound in your mind, say it. (I do that exercise with my wife, among others). There's no point in learning things wrong and trying to fix it later, that's hard, and sometimes you can't even fix it - I've seen that on several occasions.

[@zachj61]

Ive made use of these sorts of lists for a non-language learning context, but they're often so skewed from whatever documents they're sourced from. 'Congress', 'administration', 'agency', 'Democrat'. These are words that may be used in some generic uses, but the primary reason they're included is because of all the American political context they're drawn from. Its too specialist for a 'general use' list.

[@ratoh1710]

Another list that is also useful in Japanese is the Jouyou kanji list, since it contains every kanji that is allowed to be used in government documents. This makes it useful for people who plan to live in Japan since if you know them you can read all the kanji on the documents the government hands out or on government websites. There are some rare kanji that might be useless in daily life but most of them are quite useful. This is all with the massive caveat that just learning the individual kanji is not good enough since that doesn't account for grammar or compound words, so you need additional resources together with it.

[@spaghettiking653]

This list is great for that purpose, but realistically any single list is artifically limiting, because you'll end up seeing more kanji than are on that list. I see a guy who passed Kanken level 1 at 2nd place in the country who still doesn't know a ton of kanji, because they just weren't in his dictionary and exam (ofc, he still knows more than 99.9% of people). But for sure that's probably the best starting point, I for one started by learning those kanji first.

[@workingmothercatlover6699]

One thing these lists probably don't teach is sentence structure. In English, you would say ( in honor of Halloween coming up) black cat. In Spanish, you would say it as cat black. Need something better than just a vocabulary list to learn a language.

[@velkylev4217]

This kind of list works for Chinese characters , because one has to learn them and they literally are pictures so its easier to get such list and get familiar with most used characters.

[@amj.composer]

I wouldn't call them useless but your points are admittedly very good

[@KC-vq2ot]

A frequency list in an alphabetical order is... A novel idea, that's for sure You aren't entirely correct, because frequency lists can be used to great effect in generic language learning. However, we are talking about very small lists of, say, 100 most common words in their most common meaning. Excluding grammatical particles and auxiliary verbs. At the very start of your journey learning that will allow you to tackle very simple texts and engage in very simple conversations. With 100 most common words Shakespeare or Dante is clearly beyond your reach, but tackling a a few comic books is very much doable. And from there you can start build your vocabulary in a more natural and organic way The problem with all those Internet lists is that at higher word count your words stop being frequent and start being just non-obscure and include just generic words you will commonly encounter. You were wondering how often you use the word "administration"? I don't know but I bet you use it more often than the word "defenestration"

[@AFVEH]

I think those lists are useful with the right guidance (a good teacher) who knows how to use them and implement it.

[@dopeimportcarvids3763]

I gave up but there is zero information before 8:00. It's just him complaining

[@Pagespinner]

How right you are. The main problem with frequency lists is that they tend to be compiled by computer geeks who have little ability or interest in linguistics. Best, I think, to select your own words, rather than accept the supposedly 'common' ones devoid of useful context. One of the most frequent words I hear in London begins with 'f'.

[@spaghettiking653]

The problem is therefore not the concept of a frequency list, but the specific frequency lists you're using. If you use a list intended for your goals, it'll work just fine ;-) the original argument lacks enough depth in my opinion for this reason.

[@finite1731]

What's your opinion on Stephen Krashen?

[@Epsilonsama]

Raf administration is used a lot in the corporate world.

[@jacquelyns9709]

Then there is its use in the name of an entity such as The Social Security Administration.

[@oakstrong1]

I don't think frequency lists were ever meant to be learned without context and certainly not in alphabetical order, let alone all 100 at once! But I do think they are helpful for knowing which ones to focus on for inference when I am trying to follow a TV program or KZbin video while still a beginner or read beginner level text in my target language. It definitely helps to avoid the trap of false friends! So, I wouldn't say they frequency lists, that ARE in order of frequency and wth the most common translations, are totally useless, they just don't replace learning from context. If I was teaching adults, I could choose a paragraph and pick 10 -20 words from it, give a list of the words with translations as they relate to the text for students to learn at home and the next lesson present them with the paragraph, with a simple questions to test their understanding before moving on to translation if needed, before focusing on a structure, idiomatic phrase, whatever. Then the student listen to the audio or me reading it and practising reading it themselves or have targeted speaking practice. The lesson could end with another independent read to evaluate how much of the text they understand now.... Homework could be fill in the blank,, write your own sentences or read another, similar paragraph and answer comprehension questions, depending on the focus of the lesson. I could of course mix the order and start with a listening exercise and I might skip the detailed translation. I might even focus on only some aspects, say, vocanulary & reading comprehension and introduction of in one (students will still listen to the text), listening, speaking and continue grammar in the next. Luckily, I don't teach languages to adults. 😅

[@fatimahmakgatho8968]

I immediately thought of words that mostly serve a grammar function. You don't need the definition. You need to know how to used it.

[@thorthewolf8801]

Let me preface this, Im not a professional like Metatron, but I disagree. Due to the pareto distribution just 20% of something occurs in the vast majority of cases, in 80%. The linguistic equivalent would be zipfs law I believe. Okay, but why is that relevant? The most common recommendation I hear is to start reading when you understand at least 90% of things of a particular text. You can reach that easily by using a frequency list. It sets you off very good for the future, gives you a good reference to what you need to still learn. Once you have that, you can figure out what something means by context.

[@tohaason]

I my opinion, lists of the most common words have one useful purpose: If you're setting up a language course where you're producing texts and podcasts or some other kind of input for your language learners, then you can use those lists for picking out vocabulary you want to include in the exercises (this assumes that you're proficient in the language yourself, of course). In other words, language teachers may find good use of such lists. Students can use their time better (e.g. find input created by the method mentioned)

[@thorthewolf8801]

​@@tohaasonIf you are learning a language alone you are the "teacher" and student at the same time. You as the teacher pick out the content you want yourself to study and as the student you learn it

[@tohaason]

@@thorthewolf8801 How will you pick out actual content (real audio, real reading material) by yourself - do you plan to first read tons of material, compare with a list of words, and pick the best one from there? Yes you can find material by yourself, it's just that using a 1000-word long "common word list" in the process is just a waste of time. Find something which you can understand to some extent, never mind the word list.

[@thorthewolf8801]

​@@tohaasonActual content? That is exactly why these lists are useful, the actual content is already compiled for you to learn. Obviously if you just read the word "brain" you wont magically know its meaning, but it points you in the direction that "hey, there is this frequently used word I dont know, maybe I should learn what it means!"

[@tohaason]

@@thorthewolf8801 I believe the point which was made is that those lists are *not* a particularly effective way of learning a langue (and I'm personally in the camp believing it's actually bad for you). In my opinion the only value would be as a starting point for someone (who's proficient in the language) selecting vocabulary when creating real input for study (that is - audio, texts etc). I've never met anyone who managed to learn anything useful about a language by studying lists of words.

[@szabados1980]

I thought these lists would be about the frequency of certain linguistic junctures. Such as in British English "where" is usually used without "at" and only in 1.5% with it, whereas in American English "where" comes with "at" in 90% of the cases and only in 10% without it. E.g.: Where are you moving (at)?

[@iberius9937]

Fequency of TIME and input dedicated to languages is more useful than frequency of words listed on a chart or vocabulary list.

[@Sutatu]

I disagree that "x000 word list are useless". I study Japanese and I use all sorts of sites. One of them is a "1000 most common Japanese words", and I use it simply as another method to expose myself to the language. I don't try to memorize every single word and I make sure to check context or deeper meaning of a vague/peculiar word(s). I often find myself hearing/reading a word from the list in another medium and vice versa so that's a good enough proof to me that these lists help not only to expose yourself more to the language, but also they actually increase your vocabulary (albeit slightly).

[@unarealtaragionevole]

I used to buy these types of things at the bookstore. I am a flashcard person, but I hate making my own flashcards, I would buy these core vocabulary decks....and it never failed...100 of the 250 cards were always numbers 0-100 grrrrrrrrrrr

[@changingme1412]

Yes... I like the lists, but I use them at a level where I know what I need. I have started to reclaim German after 30 years (yes!), and what I use the frequency list for, is a quick look through. I have lists with translations, so it is more helpful, to a degree. At this point it is not for concentrating on learning stuff, just waking up my vocabulary. The second thing I use it for is to pick up the verbes most used up to 700 words or so. That gives me a hint of what I can concentrate on when I want to learn how to make use of verbes. Since I could a lot of German at the time, this is just a help to guide me somewhat and remind me. If something isn't interesting, I just move on. When I start the same process for French, I will probably make use of that list in a similar way. For Spanish... a new language for me, not helpful at all.

[@christopherellis2663]

Administration is not a word that is peculiar to English. It's spelled exactly the same in French. Administración, administrazione, and so forth. Why do they bother?

[@thexenoist3493]

If the person learning English doesn't know French then it's still a word useful to learn for English.

[@gabriellawrence6598]

Raf, can you make vids on learning Japanese pitch accent?

[@LuxisAlukard]

OK, if you want to read the daily news - I think those lists would be useful (if they're translated, and if you have basic grammar rules). And I think that that list you read at the begining - those are newspapers words =)

[@freckleKaren]

Those lists are extremely useful for self-organizing and self-orientation while you are also using more important methods. They help quiz yourself, serve as a reminder, help with synonyms. They are tools to be used in addition to your studying when you sometimes may feel overwhelmed with new info, need a specific topic covered or had a lap in education and are afraid you forgot too much. So don’t disregard them, just use them smarter. They helped me learn 3 foreign languages. Especially useful for quick learning of frequent irregular verbs and their form, which are a base of any language. basically, almost everyone in the comments are telling you the same thing: to claimthe uselessness of those lists is false, you need to learn how to use them supplementary.

[@ghriansaspeir2675]

I hate to break it to you but you couldn´t be more wrong about frequency lists. The publishing houses such as Oxford, Cambridge or Longman have developed their own lists of about 3000 basic words in English which coupled with their online dictionaries work like a charm for all English learners who wish to get somewhere as opposed to groping in the dark.

[@PC_Simo]

Yeah. ”N’t” (should really be: ”-n’t”) isn’t even a word; since it’s *_ALWAYS_* attached, directly (without a space), to the end of a word; and you can’t use it, independently. It’s a degenerate word made into a negative marker in a contraction. It’s like calling a grammatical suffix: ”a word”. ”Don’t”, ”Can’t”, ”Isn’t”, etc. are words; not ”n’t”. It’s as much of a word, as ”ing”. 😮🤯😅

[@Flugs0]

i think what you gotta keep in mind is that people are going to use this as a supplement. nobody is expecting to learn the grammar of a language through such a frequency list, sometimes it sounds like you're alluding to that. so i really think simply putting the infinitive of a verb in the list, for example, is perfectly fine. you just gotta learn the conjugation patterns separately. and i know, in every language there's words that can have tons of different meanings and can be used differently in tons of different contexts, but really, at least based on the languages that i've studied, those words are going to be in the minority. i think the vast majority of words in a foreign language can be explained to a sufficient degree with two or three equivalent words in your native language.

[@andreasneumann-pw1zw]

What if you force yourself by reading difficult literature to improve vocabulary?

[@cpnlsn88]

A properly compiled list made into Ani decks can be very helpful. For instance 1,500 words in New testament Greek give you 95% of the words used in the New Testament. If you have these then you can make a good start in reading the easier New Testament books. It's just a start of course but you need to start somewhere. This is for reading koine Greek and different processes are at work in different languages. The list itself is not helpful but an Anki deck for such will speed up your reading. That's just me though. Another use can be to go through the list and see if there any words you don't know and then you can look the up and learn them. This is potentially helpful because, if you are reading, you may encounter low frequency words that it is safe to ignore.

[@tohaason]

I fully agree that such lists are useless. In addition to the missing context, remembering lists of a thousand items is a totally different type of memorization than what's needed (and used) for understanding and speaking a language. I can't imagine how I would even manage to remember a list of a thousand items! I think I did pretty good with the few tens of digits of PI that I know.. I think it's even harmful. The vocabulary is in the wrong place. You can't, or at least shouldn't, construct sentences by looking up words in an internally memorized table of (presumably translated - or how would you use it?) words. Start to do that, and it's very hard to learn the stuff properly. Acquire the language by other means. I certainly didn't get my tens of thousands of English words through memorization, even trying that with only a fraction wouldn't work.

[@tohaason]

@@fabian-rutter I'm not sure what you're asking, but if it was how I got my vocabulary - I simply read a ton of books and the vocabulary ended up in my brain, eventually (no translations, no dictionaries, just understanding from context - that's a very different way of remembering vocabulary because the all-essential association is there right away, so it sticks just about instantly)

[@MsTranthihai71]

Thanks ❤

[@vostfrguys]

I started this video by thinking he was wrong, but actually he is right the list is not accurate; it doesn't take into account spoken speech enough, I agree with him it's not as good as it should be; BUT this is what made my english ok 15 years ago; without this wrong list I wouldn't be able to write this comment; I believe even if it's flawed it's a good way to start for begginers

[@dantreviso4753]

Bravo🙌

[@lugo_9969]

I disagree Metatron. The lists do work when used with a dozen hours per day of listening & practice. It's like vitamins.... useless and/or useful.....depending on who you speak to.

[@susanam.826]

As a language teacher, I agree with your view, Metatron. Rarely, you will find someone who uses such a list in a way that can be productive. And sometimes, you find a good list, with context, sentences,etc. However, the majority of learners like the idea of learning frequency lists because of the nice illusion they sell, but they end up memorizing words they can't use.

[@atrumluminarium]

Building on you of what you said, I think such lists would make more sense if they were "Top X most used nouns/verbs/adjectives" rather than just random words and are always displayed in order of occurrence. That way there is a clear context of the words and the order ensures that you have maximum attention span for the ACTUAL most common words.

[@shadowscott9910]

First I would want the list ordered on frequency, not alphabetically.

[@tohuvabohugbanshee3962]

I think frequency lists are only valuable when they're used with context, like in Kanshudo - you get vocabulary, grammar and kanji divided into usefulness group, but whenever you encounter any of them, it's in the cotext of the other two, and explained using sentences (and there's a whole system of games, reading material, flashcards, etc. built around those lists of course)

[@herse2l356]

-haAHAHAHAH I love the thumbnail

[@Bluebaggins]

You reading from a phone reminde me E - Identity has an english gematria of 666

[@ibRebecca]

N’T Am I fluent now?

[@burkhardschmorell3973]

For the top 500 words and for function words, I generally agree with you. But you cherry-picked your examples. Once you get past the first 500 words (which are mostly function words that have idiomatic and polysemic definitions/translations), about 95% of the remaining words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that have 1-4 definitions/translations and that absolutely up your game. Yes, you need to see those words in context eventually to fine-tune your usage, but--and this is a concept that a lot of linguists and educators have trouble wrapping their heads around--you have to break the skill (any skill, not just language) into its component elementary steps.

[@autentyk5735]

Those lists, done right, are tip-top for the most part, except for this idiotic, alphabetical (?!) English one that you randomly found somewhere.

[@phen-themoogle7651]

It would be cool if the lists were made into several stories with increasing difficulty levels with context so you can learn all the words in a more natural way, and they broke down the grammar. So it's a completely gradual process and the words are taught in a super logical order, well I guess it would be like a textbook then, haha

[@jaymylotto8134]

Who's a pretty girl?

[@petros_adamopoulos]

This is a strawman of frequency lists. They're great at the onset of learning a language. Of course it's better to learn them by example phrases and such, but a few hundred words go a long way as they represent most of the words you'll encounter. In any case, they're much more useful to begin with than learning greetings and travel phrases. Come on.

[@mlvluu9836]

n't

[@spaghettiking653]

Lol, how disappointing. Who do you think you're arguing with? Because you are pulling the most ridiculous strawman that I never saw coming - like, who's even arguing this nonsense? "Just study some words off a list and you'll be fluent, bro"? Anyone with a pulse can understand that a word list on its own isn't good for shit, and obviously there's more to using one than "just looking at it innit". If anything, a frequency list is objectively the best way to *choose what to learn*, because it maximizes at every instance the gain that you will net in exchange for your time, i.e. assuming ideal retention, you will progressively gain useful vocabulary coverage at the maximum rate possible for you. Obviously, learning random obscure words is no good; the important ones are the ones that you are actually gonna need to use. So, how should you use a frequency list? A frequency list should be nothing more than a sort key for your actual learning process, whatever that be - probably flashcards of some kind, and really it would make the most sense to learn words in this order - PROVIDED you ALREADY know something about the language. Clearly, as you identified, there is no benefit to be had if you just recite alphabetic drivel off a sheet and pray for progress. There is a concerted effort to be had, and if you put it in, this is almost certainly the most efficient way to put it in.

[@spaghettiking653]

Also, supplementary to my original comment, the most important thing in learning a language is to actually do the damn learning. Better to learn from a flawed method than spend too much time perfecting your study plan and methods, only to not employ them in the first place.

[@fhornet3123]

Frequency lists DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC. Not going to watch the video but by the title I can already tell this will be one of those cases where the creator basically strawmans some type of useful tool taking a purposefully obtuse understanding of how they are employed by the people that use them just so they could crap out some more content and keep the clicks going. I am two sentences in and already see where this is going. Nobody claims if you memorize a frequency list you will be able to understand 80% or 90% of what's being said. Come on bro.

[@Bruh-cg2fk]

lol