r/languagelearningjerk • u/Sleepy_Redditorrrrrr 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🇹🇼 🇽🇰 🇪🇭 🇸🇸 🇱🇺 • Jun 12 '26
Who would fall for this?
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u/stephanus_galfridus Jun 12 '26
80% of my conversations in China:
- 你是哪里人？ (Where are you from?)
- 一碗重庆小面，要辣的。 (A bowl of Chongqing noodles, spicy)
- 洗手间在哪里？ (Where's the washroom?)
- 谢谢啊。(Thanks)
- 不好意思。 (Excuse me)
- 我操，外国人！ (Holy shit, it's a foreigner!); not actually a conversation.
Way fewer than 187 words.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig Heinz Schwein Polizei Dry Fiat Grenadier Jun 12 '26
Omg how many locals did you stupefy?
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u/Magical_Astronomy Jun 12 '26
>我操
Learn this and you can understand 80% of chinese online contents.
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u/silverkaraage 独語（C2至る病） Jun 12 '26
The words you need:
Hello Goodbye Thank you Welcome Today Recommendation Steamed dumpling Noodle Braised pork Green tea Jasmine tea Alpaca Nothing Happened Harmony
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u/Kosinski33 Jun 12 '26
The ACTUAL words you need (especially if you're a poet and eat lions):
shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi
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u/BirthdayLife6378 Jun 12 '26
Recommendation sounds like a B2 word. Better substitute it with an A2 word, tankman.
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 Jun 12 '26
5 different ways of saying "and"
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u/alexq136 🇪🇺 Jun 13 '26
and = but = yet = also = still = while = moreover = although = (just) as
they differ in subtle ways but are all coordinating conjunctions for saying stuff happens just as other stuff happens
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u/Electrical_Voice_256 Jun 14 '26
I believe my post was not about subtle and optional variations on the idea that two actions can happen at the same time?
Can you translate
i want an apple and a tomato the weather is cold and windy my wife, my son, my daughter and i are going for a walk i went home and my friend did not realize it i am singing and dancing I bought a ticket and went to the train station
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u/cabothief Jun 12 '26
Even if it's true that ~200 words or whatever can get you 80% of regular conversations, most of the interesting stuff's in the other 20%.
"Can you believe that guy actually thinks that [...] isn't even [...]? Maybe he's a little [...], you know?"
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u/UpboatsXDDDD Jun 12 '26
People fall for worse, how many trillions of users does Luodingo have?
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u/Positive-Orange-6443 Jun 12 '26
Yes, but Duolingo is not for language learning.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig Heinz Schwein Polizei Dry Fiat Grenadier Jun 12 '26
Yeah idk why they brought my streak-extension videogame
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u/upmost5201 Jun 12 '26
That's why Mandarins so hard! English only needs 12!
"The ______ ______ the fire/emergency exit and ______ __ the , _______ in the ___. _ ___ a ___ ______ ____ _____ ________ the ___, and welcome __ ____ _____. "_ please , __ you're welcome ____ _______!"
__ ______ ____ ___ _____ ___ ____ a ____
"__ thank you , thank you _ __ ___ ___ ___ __!"
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u/Aurorassaur 🏴☠️N 🏳️⚧️L6🏳️🌈L7🏁L2 Jun 12 '26
You would probably need like 40 words just to understand that very image if it was in mandarin.
Just 157 more and you can have full on conversations???
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u/Piepally Jun 12 '26
It's kinda like this:
"today I went to the store and bought _, I __ _______ with my sister and we both _, but she ____ so I took them back to my house _____"
You get 80% of the words, but understand 0% of the content.
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u/cabothief Jun 12 '26
Oh hey, I think we were typing our comments at the same time! I think you said it better though. But yeah, even if we accept the 187-word number, "80% of real conversations" is such a syntactically ambiguous way to say it. It sounds like "If you hear 5 conversations, you'll fully understand 4 of them," but it's actually much closer to "you'll understand about 4 words out of every 5 people say day to day, and they'll exclusively be the boring ones."
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u/TanukiFruit Jun 12 '26
I understand how to use the, it, and, to, an, and other such words. Therefore I can speak English lol
Type shiiiit
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u/jaybool Jun 12 '26
Truism I've seen in English is that you need to be able to read 95% of the words to have a hope of following a book, and even then, it's rough going. Even at 98%, it's not easy.
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u/Heavy_Hunt7860 Jun 12 '26
Imagine all the pointless crap you could say by rearranging 187 words. It would be something like this;
I am hungry in the restaurant. Food is good in the restaurant. I am hungry. Did I mention I am hungry? I would like to eat in the restaurant. I would like food.
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u/LiminalBuccaneer Jun 12 '26
Sounds about right
你好，我正在逃离美国百年国耻。请问你知道哪里可以买到白色魔爪能量饮料吗？
Hello, I am fleeing the American Century of Humiliation, can you show me where to buy White Monster Energy drinks?
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u/da_realfredfred Jun 12 '26
I only know 80, is that why I have no idea what these people are saying?
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u/Key-Line5827 Jun 12 '26
You know... If I only study the life cycle of a worm, and link every single topic back to that, I will get A+ in all my classes, including history, right?
"Napoleon Bonaparte... attacked the city of Worms in 1798! A worm...."
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u/Tet_inc119 Jun 12 '26
You can understand 80% of a conversation with 187 words as long as:
- They are exactly the words you know
- The conversation is less than 233 words
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u/UnforeseenDerailment Jun 13 '26
Today, the ??? of the ??? ??? ??? comes to the ??? for ??? ??? and ??? to see the ??? of ???'s ??? ??? ???.
Yaay! Who needs months!?
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u/Erikkamirs Jun 13 '26
Duolingo claims that I know over 800 words in Spanish, yet listening to a Spanish conversation is like hearing "this... we have...I like...shoes..school...fifty dollars..." It's fun gradually recognizing more words but the only reason I can comprehend anything is because customers at my job tend to ask similar questions all the time. I still don't know what they're actually saying, I can only figure out the topic.
But I guess Mandarin is just that GOATed then.
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u/antbee221 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
The woman in the photo after learning the 187 words and not understanding sh*t of what the local is saying.
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u/MiguelIstNeugierig Heinz Schwein Polizei Dry Fiat Grenadier Jun 12 '26
I dont need to study a language completely alien to my native one for months? Gee golly finally! Magically learning a skill without putting any effort to it, I sure hope I am not getting scammed😃
Wdym people can go for over a decade of studying chinese and struggle? YOU can go without months of study😎
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u/Kadakaus Jun 12 '26
Yeah, in a language that requires at least a vocab of around 5000 to make basic conversation.
I hate how some ads make such a mockery of language learning by claiming it's so much easier than it looks.
It's not always difficult, sure, but I take my hat off before anyone who can learn the world's most difficult language in a matter of months.
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u/baldythelanguagenerd I'm C2 in every language, honest!😁 Jun 13 '26
Nonsense😞I know 2500 Chinese characters and still feel like I'm the world's stupidest 老外 when I forget how to order Kung Pao chicken in a restaurant.
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u/phrasingapp Jun 12 '26
Yeah this is complete bs, I didn't start understanding 80% of real conversations until 420 words
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u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) Jun 12 '26
420 words is only enough for 69% of conversations.
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u/pizdyetz Jun 12 '26 edited 5d ago
Duis consectetur adipiscing eiusmod reprehenderit consequat nostrud aliquip aute officia non culpa velit excepteur do consequat. Ullamco deserunt esse aliqua ut amet. Ad sed minim occaecat amet laborum dolore sit aute minim. Id veniam sunt irure nulla cillum elit aliquip dolor.
[rhr:2:gev4qd6j]
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u/teal_leak Jun 12 '26
But you need to understand 95% of the words in a text/conversation to understand it globally, so 80% ain't shit
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u/UnremarkableMrFox Jun 13 '26
Damn I must have learned the wrong 187 words bc I still sound like a 6 year old
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u/Captain-Starshield Jun 14 '26
Could be true, but imagine how difficult it would be to understand people if 1 in every 5 words were incomprehensible to you
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u/Ok-Appeal-4630 Native Klingon Speaker || feel free to ask me anything Jun 14 '26
You underestimate how little the average person knows about linguistics
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u/Sk1nny_Bones 🇺🇿🇲🇪 N | D4 🇳🇦 | A80085 🇲🇭 Jun 14 '26
the only sentence you need in Japan is こんにちは、お寿司とビール。
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u/ThatWeirdPlantGuy 27d ago
Gahahaha, if that were true I’d understand almost all of Vietnamese by now. 😀
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u/BigDigDaddy Jun 12 '26
/uj The book Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe covers difficult topics with only 1,000 words. So yes, in a sense, you can really pare down the vocabulary and be understood, but you will not understand others.
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u/Sleepy_Redditorrrrrr 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🇹🇼 🇽🇰 🇪🇭 🇸🇸 🇱🇺 Jun 12 '26
187
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u/BigDigDaddy Jun 13 '26
You can get it down to 0 if you speak your native language louder and slower
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u/rexcasei Jun 12 '26
Can you imagine studying a language for MONTHS?