Glossary

Language Acquisition

Acquisition — The subconscious process of internalizing a language through exposure and interaction, as opposed to deliberate study. How children learn their first language.

Comprehensible input — Language exposure at a level slightly above the learner's current ability. The learner understands most of it but is stretched by new elements. Considered the most important factor in language acquisition.

Fossilization — When language errors become permanent habits because they were practiced repeatedly without correction.

Immersion — Learning a language by being surrounded by it — living in a country where it's spoken, or creating an immersive environment through media and practice.

Input — Any language you receive through listening or reading. Contrast with output (speaking and writing).

Interlanguage — The evolving linguistic system a learner develops between their native language and the target language. It has its own patterns and rules that change as proficiency increases.

L1 — Your first language (native language).

L2 — Your second language (the language you're learning).

Output — Language you produce through speaking or writing. Output practice forces active recall and production of language structures.

Target language — The language you're learning.

Transfer — When patterns from your native language influence your target language, either helpfully (positive transfer) or harmfully (negative transfer/interference).

Proficiency Levels (CEFR)

A1 (Beginner) — Can handle basic greetings, simple questions about personal details, and very simple interactions when the other person speaks slowly.

A2 (Elementary) — Can handle routine tasks, describe immediate environment, and communicate in simple everyday situations.

B1 (Intermediate) — Can handle most travel situations, describe experiences, give opinions, and understand main points of clear standard speech.

B2 (Upper-Intermediate) — Can interact fluently with native speakers, understand complex texts on familiar topics, and produce detailed text.

C1 (Advanced) — Can use language flexibly for social, academic, and professional purposes. Can understand demanding texts and express ideas fluently.

C2 (Mastery) — Can understand virtually everything and express meaning precisely in complex situations.

Study Methods

Active recall — Testing yourself by trying to produce an answer before seeing it. More effective for long-term retention than passive review.

Chunking — Learning fixed phrases as single units rather than individual words. "How are you?" is more useful learned as a chunk than as three separate words.

Extensive reading — Reading large amounts of easy material for pleasure, without stopping to look up every word. Builds vocabulary and grammar intuition through volume.

Goldlist method — A vocabulary learning technique where you write words without memorizing, then test after two weeks, keeping only the words you've naturally forgotten.

Intensive reading — Reading shorter, more difficult texts carefully, looking up words and analyzing grammar. Builds precise knowledge.

Minimal pair — Two words that differ by only one sound (e.g., "ship" vs. "sheep"). Used to train perception and production of difficult sounds.

Sentence mining — Collecting natural sentences from input sources that contain one unknown element. These sentences become personalized flashcards.

Shadowing — Listening to native speech and repeating it simultaneously, mimicking pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation.

Spaced repetition — A learning technique where review intervals increase over time. Items you know well are reviewed less frequently; items you struggle with are reviewed more often.

Tools and Systems

Anki — A free, open-source spaced repetition flashcard application. The most widely used SRS tool among language learners.

CEFR — Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The international standard for describing language proficiency levels (A1 through C2).

Forvo — An online pronunciation dictionary with recordings from native speakers of words in hundreds of languages.

FSI (Foreign Service Institute) — A US government institution that trains diplomats in foreign languages. Known for its language difficulty categories and course hours estimates.

Language Reactor — A browser extension that adds dual subtitles, word lookup, and learning features to Netflix and YouTube content.

LingQ — A platform that turns any content into a language learning tool with word tracking, lookup, and spaced repetition.

SRS (Spaced Repetition System) — Any software or method that uses spaced repetition algorithms to optimize review timing. Anki is the most common SRS.

Linguistic Terms

Cognate — A word that looks or sounds similar in two languages because they share a common origin. Spanish "familia" and English "family" are cognates.

Collocation — Words that naturally appear together. "Make a decision" (not "do a decision"). Learning collocations produces more natural speech.

Conjugation — Changing a verb's form to indicate tense, person, number, or mood. "I go, you go, he goes, we went."

Declension — Changing a noun, adjective, or pronoun's form to indicate case, number, or gender. Common in German, Russian, and Latin-based languages.

Grammatical gender — A system where nouns are classified into categories (masculine, feminine, sometimes neuter) that affect articles, adjectives, and pronouns. Not related to biological sex.

Idiom — A phrase whose meaning can't be understood from the individual words. "Break a leg" means "good luck," not physical injury.

Register — The level of formality in language. Most languages distinguish between formal and informal speech more explicitly than English does.

Tonal language — A language where the pitch pattern of a word changes its meaning. Mandarin Chinese has four tones; Thai has five. The same syllable with different tones means completely different things.