Looking for Spoken Word Frequency List

[LaoZhang]

I just read an article by Tim Ferriss (author of Four Hour Work Week) who claims that you can become fluent in Chinese in 3 months. In his article, he makes a good point; written and spoken word frequencies are often very different. You have to be a purchaser of the book or ebook to know the secret password to access his articles (bonus material). So buy the book "first" got it?

Has anyone found any resources that have this? I have done quite a bit of searching for word frequency lists for Chinese and there's a lot out there, but they all are based on written materials.

A Google search comes up with a flashcard product with this in the description:

LIST OF MAJOR SOURCES CONSULTED

The following sources were consulted to compile this set of Chinese vocabulary cards:

TEXTBOOKS:

Beginning Chinese, John DeFrancis, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., Second Revised Edition. 1984. Intermediate Chinese, John DeFrancis, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1973. Speak Chinese, Gardner M. Tewksbury, Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1973. Spoken Standard Chinese, Volumes One and Two, Parker Po-fei Huang and Hugh M. Stimson, Far Eastern Publica?tions, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1978. Speak Mandarin, Henry C. Fenn and Gardner M. Tewksbury, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1967. Chinese Dialogues, Fred Fangyu Wang, Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1981.

WORD FREQUENCY STUDIES

Frequency Dictionary of Chinese Words, Eric Liu, Mouton, The Hague, 1973. IFEL Vocabulary of Spoken Chinese, Po-fei Huang, Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1973. WAIGUO REN SHIYONG HANYU CHANGYONG CIBIAO [A Listing of Common Words in Chinese Used by Foreigners], Beijing Yuyan Xueyuan, Beijing, 1981. XIAN_DAI HANYU PINLU CID_IAN [A Frequency Dictionary of Modern Chinese], Beijing Language Institute Publishing, 1986. CHANGYONGZI HE CHANGYONGCI [Most Com?mon Characters and Most Common Words] Beijing Language Institute Publishing, Beijing, 1985. Y_INGYU CHANGYONG CIHUI [A Vocabulary of Common English Words (in Chinese)], Shangwu Yin?shuguan, Beijing, 1972.

I'll do a search on each of these later on, but I just wanted to see if anyone has seen anything (ideally online) floating around.

Thanks!

[roddy]

I've read the book, didn't notice any secret password. I have the ebook version though. I'm generally wary of anyone who tells you you can learn Chinese in a fixed amount of time though. After all, they don't know how dense we are

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't recall ever seeing a frequency list of Chinese words that wasn't based on a written corpus - and usually a written news / formal corpus at that. I also note that all sources you quote are from the 1970s or at best 1980s - bet you 'comrade' and 'revolution' feature highly.

[imron]

I'm generally wary of anyone who tells you you can learn Chinese in a fixed amount of time though

And I'm even more wary when that time ends in "months" instead of "years" However nice it would be, I'm yet to see some sort of magical shortcut to learning Chinese, and the best method seems to be consistent effort over a number of years. Granted that doesn't sound nearly as sexy as "fluent in 3 months", however it's probably more in line with reality.

[LaoZhang]

I agree with you both. I don't think fluency can come in just a few months, but I do believe that people can become highly conversant in a couple of months. You just have to be creative in your application of language and not be hung up when you don't know exactly how to say what you want to say.

Regardless of his position on how long it takes to learn a language, a spoken word frequency would be a great tool for beginners, tutors, teachers, and developers of curriculum. I found some for English, but the Chinese one remains elusive...

Regarding the password, if you go to his website and then click on book-only resources, you'll see where you need to put in the magic word. Then you can read how you can learn Japanese in 6 months, Chinese in 3 months, and Italian in 1 month. as well as some other articles. The book IS pretty good, btw.

[Xiao Kui]

Japanese in 6 months, Chinese in 3 months

I've been studying Chinese for 10 yrs now, and recently began tackling Japanese. My first impression (please correct me if I'm wrong - I do have a head start with the kanji) is that Japanese is easier than Chinese - so why does it take twice as long to become "fluent" (looking for the coughing emoticon) in Japanese?!!

[atitarev]

I totally agree with you, Xiao Kui but some people don't - because of the more difficult grammar, politeness levels or styles and multiple Kanji readings. 3 - 6 months - still ridiculously short for either language.

[renzhe]

I just read an article by Tim Ferriss (author of Four Hour Work Week) who claims that you can become fluent in Chinese in 3 months.

Lol.

He must have a different definition than the rest of us.

To qualify as "fluent", you'd need to have internalised thousands of commonly used words, even if those words are different for spoken and written language. I cannot fathom any definition of "fluent" which isn't based on natural use of at least several thousand words.

And good luck learning that in 3 months.

I do have to admit that all this self-defeating talk of how Chinese is too difficult, takes 25 years, and all that, can be very counter-productive. It's just a language, even if it is a relatively difficult one, and it can be learned if you put in the required effort and have a good positive outlook. But this talk of three months is either a misunderstanding or a very dishonest marketing strategy.

[dermur]

Xiao Kui, perhaps you find it easier to learn Japanese becuase you already have learned Chinese and so already know quite a lot of Japanese characters since they were borrowed from Chinese?

Maybe they're assuming that someone who knows neither languages will take 3 months to learn Chinese and 6 months for Japanese?

Anyway, I'd definately agree, consistant effort is the key to learning any new language, Chinese included.

Here's a link to a list of frequency of Chinese characters...

http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000en.html

[roddy]

I guess you can make anyone fluent in anything within any time limits - the trick is to redefine fluent. Which happens every few months on here, when someone asks 'how long will it take me to be fluent if I do X, Y and Z'.

I'd like to see a course entitled "Fluency in Chinese in Just 17 Long, Difficult Years. Or Your Money Back!" I'd buy it.

[renzhe]

Coming back to frequency of words, the HSK corpus is supposedly selected by a statistical analysis of Chinese language. I think it includes both written and spoken sources, but I'm not sure.

If you're interested in the most commonly used words, the 10,000 HSK words (searchable here on the site at www.chinese-forums.com/vocabulary/), are a good place to start. You can export it, and there are plenty of flashcard databases built on top of it.

I have found that I find all those words appearing very often in spoken language (TV shows, movies), especially at lower levels.

[imron]

If you're interested in the most commonly used words, the 10,000 HSK words [ ] are a good place to start.

And by learning only 111.111 words a day, you too can become fluent in 3 months

[roddy]

It's not as bad as that - there are actually only 8,821 words in the lists I have, so you could actually learn at the same rate and be fluent in a mere . . 79 days.

The HSK lists are arranged into four levels, with the lower levers being the more frequent (or at least 'easier' and taught first) words. It's not a full frequency list, but has stuff you'll find in both written and spoken forms. It could do with updating though - it includes '刑场' and '手榴弹‘, but omits any reference to credit, debit, bank or recharge cards.

You're better off with a decent stand-alone course of course, and supplementing with the lists when you need . . .well, lists of words.

[renzhe]

Where did that list come from anyway? Is there an official list somewhere? Or was it from some reverse-engineered HSK study book?

[hoosdathu]

different lists depend on the different corpus used. only the first few are consistently the same

[roddy]

No, it was produced as part of the basis for the HSK exam. You'll find it in various HSK syllabus books published by BLCU. How closely they stick to it in the actual exam I don't know, but it's an official part of the HSK 'stable'.

[LaoZhang]

Here's a list someone sent to me. I checked it against the written frequency lists I already have and assuming that this list is in order, they look like they're not the same list.

Think this could be it? I this list came to me in an email without being cited, but I've asked my friend for the reference. I'll edit/post citation when I get it.

3500 characters.txt

[roddy]

That looks like a list of the most common 3500 characters, not words, and arranged by stroke order rather than by frequency. Useful for other purposes perhaps, but not if you are looking for word frequency information.

[LaoZhang]

I'm not giving up. I know it's out there somewhere!

There "difficulties" in amassing this info due to binoms/trinoms/etc. I'm not a statistician, but I'd think with computers, it wouldn't be that hard. From a friend:

言语频率的统计，固然能见出社会思想的变迁，但这“言语”单位要加以选择，使之能够负载思想。比如以“流行语”为统计单位，便较成功，因为短语已不仅是语言的材料，而且是思想的材料。假如选择“字”为单位，意义就不会很大（尽管可以有机器操作方面的意义）。据我国有关部门统计，目前人们使用最多的10个汉字是：的 一 是 在 了 不 和 有 大 这。

[character]

I'm not giving up. I know it's out there somewhere!

There are a lot of research papers on Chinese speech recognition (don't ask me for them; google is your friend). Perhaps their lists of references would be a good place to start looking.

[self-taught-mba]

Voice recognition in Chinese: 语音识别软件

Those sources don't disclose a lot though.

I am working on a project that should yield something though.

Nothing is getting done unitl my voice recog software gets fixed. How ironic.