10: The Pareto Principle, or the Economically Efficient Way to Learn Vocabulary

Easy Languages: Stories of Language Learning

In the first part of this episode, we tell the story of Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian economist who discovered a distribution law that changed economics, and how we can all apply this principle to language learning, especially acquiring vocabulary.

In the second part, we go into more detail and spill the beans on how we go about learning new words in the first stages of studying a language, and why it’s a bad idea to learn from lists of words.

Show Notes

• Pareto Principle
  • Pareto principle (Wikipedia)
  • Vilredo Pareto (Wikipedia)
  • 8 Ways To Apply The 80/20 Rule To Language Learning (Storylearning)
  • The Pareto Principle (80-20 Rule): Minimize the Effort, Maximize the Results (Fluent in 3 Months)
  • 80/20 Rule: How to Learn Languages with the Pareto Principle (The Intrepid Guide)
  • How to Master the ‘Magical 2,5%’ (Language Boost)
• Simple English Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia Article about it (Wikipedia)
  • The free online encyclopedia in Basic English and Learning English (Simple English Wikipedia)
• Japanese
  • Kanji (Wikipedia)
  • Kanji Frequency List (Aichi University of Education)
• Mandarin Chinese
  • Chinese characters (Wikipedia)
  • Pareto Principle & the Chinese Language (Mandarin Blueprint)
• Easy Languages Videos on the World Cup 2022
  • Foreigners Trying to Pronounce the Names of Polish Football Players | Easy Polish 192
  • Brazilians Predict the 2022 World Cup Winners | Easy Portuguese 73