A theoretical note on learning languages
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What do we do if we don’t understand the meaning of a word? While most people I pose this question to greet me with a stunned silence assuming I’ve asked them a trick question, it turns out this question has more to it than first meets the eye, without introducing any tricks. The most logical answer is of course that we consult a dictionary. But, if you’re like me, then you’re familiar with the disappointment of reading the definition, only to find it contains other words you also don’t understand, which you now have to also look up. Thus, the process is recursive. Furthermore, it reveals that one needs to know something to learn something - much like money, it takes some to make some. After one such scenic tour of the dictionary, I was brought to consider the end point of this recursion. More precisely, what is the minimum number of words in the English language one needs to already understand, so that the meaning of every other word could (theoretically) be understood with the aid of a dictionary? The remainder of this essay is devoted to answering this question.