When you are learning a new language, what consists most of the vocabulary? Nouns, verbs or...

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When you are learning a new language, what consists most of the vocabulary?

Nouns, verbs or adjectives. I'd say noun.

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I guess nouns, when I've been in countries where I didn't know the language the first words I need to find are food, water, room with bathroom, learn to say "where is ...?" and how to say "thank you".

jarvis919 · 26-30, M

@reflectingmonkey me too. i have been to two foreign countries and had to do difficult things like use a post office. i could make myself understood with nouns, which i can learn quickly a week or two before travel, plus a few critical verbs, and some critical phrases of course. if i knew verbs without nouns, or more verbs than nouns, negotiating these things would have been much more difficult.

reflectingmonkey · 51-55, M

@jarvis919 I forgot an important one " please". with nouns and please you can always manage. bathroom please, food please, room please, water please 🤣😂 and then "thank you" that way the limited language sounds less rude than just "food" or "room".

jarvis919 · 26-30, M

@reflectingmonkey yes, that's very smart. nouns without verbs can produce many meaningful phrases, not so much so verbs without nouns. what you mentioned is how polyglots say to learn language. from those simple childlike expressions, you can accomplish real tasks in a foreign country and then learn to add more words to make complete sentences as you go along. it's fun. we can laugh at ourselves as we learn.

royalblue1193 · 31-35, M

Greetings

Nanori · F

@royalblue1193 AHAHAHA 😂

SW-User

Yeah. Nouns are often the easiest to learn bc they're the most fixed compared to verbs that get conjugated. Also to adjectives which are gender/number specific in many languages.

jarvis919 · 26-30, M

@SW-User yes. there is no linguistic dispute about this. it's not a mysterious question. nouns are less abstract, verbs are more abstract. nouns are necessary first in order to use verbs. children use nouns first, and the General Service List has more nouns than verbs. this has been known and documented for decades, and polyglots and linguists learning languages that have never been studied before always begin with nouns. it's something well understood and universal.

article in journal of language: "Verbs express relations among nouns, and which relation a particular speaker has in mind is rarely accessible from observation alone. Hence, verbs are learned in the context of a vocabulary of known nouns". nouns come first.

in a way it doesn't matter because a person should learn a lot of vocabulary quickly in the beginning. the first 2000 as quickly as possible. nouns, verbs, adjectives, everything. but if a person was learning more slowly, or has to use the langauge immediately, the answer is nouns.