alt Hacker News> you need to understand almost all of the words that appear in that document
I didn't learn English by reading vocabulary lists or dictionaries. Pretty much all was learned by context.
> you need to understand almost all of the words that appear in that document
I didn't learn English by reading vocabulary lists or dictionaries. Pretty much all was learned by context.
Yes, but that was a process of over a year that involved being repeatedly presented with real-life scenarios accompanied by verbal descriptions.
If you were to just listen to all the same input, you would never have learned anything. The learning comes from deciphering the connection between the reality you see and the words you hear.
And if you want to understand a document, which is just a sequence of unsupported words, it is equally true that you must already understand almost all of those words.