andrewducker | Interesting Links for 16-12-2025

Above 97%. I thank Julian May and Katherine Kerr for some of it! I fluffed a word I thought I knew the meaning of but turns out I didn't. Maybe there were more. I do tend to be able to use words appropriately whilst often flailing to give an alternative, so it would not be surprising.

2 - Excellent article, thanks. This is how I learned too, and how I teach (nowadays we try to teach both colloquial and more formal English but academic English is still a thing too).

1 - C2 level \o/ but the test can be easier for French speakers since so many difficult words have the same origins.

2. Wow. Nice!

I was never really formally taught many rules or structures in English, so I'm always in awe of those who can wield them well. I write ridiculously long sentences sometimes, with big words, multiple clauses and a random (and no doubt often technically faulty) mix of punctuation.

I WAS taught German structures, but you have to learn that as it's far less free-form-tolerant than English, especially as regards usage of commas - those have formal grammatical function, rather than the 'pause for breath' that we can (or perhaps just do) use in English. Long multi-clause sentences that occupy half a page are, however, absolutely normal in German, with the structure keeping you on the straight and narrow as you wend your way towards the final verb! :-)

Oops, the test was hard, my results are pathetic (16800). What helps is some French knowledge.

24,200 / 98th percentile. More interestingly, the fact that measured vocabulary increases in normal aging was important in being able to say that dementias are not normal - they are diseases, not the normal consequence of age. So a very important impact on gerontology and elder care once society learned that (not that it is new, been known for maybe 60 years or more now).

Above 98%. I credit Jack Vance.

They got the definition for inchoate wrong.

I wasn't expecting that some of the words were made up.

https://www.metafilter.com/211443/A-perfectly-cromulent-research-project#8793690

It's a good way of checking that people aren't making false claims

One of the definitions given for inchoate was like "just begun", which matches the first definition here (I chose that and got it right). I think the other definitions weren't listed, so that wasn't really fair since the test said you only had to know one definition.

I got 21500, 90%, missed the definition of vituperative.

For German:
Ihr rezeptiver Wortschatz umfasst 80000 Wörter. Ihr Aufmerksamkeitsindex beträgt 100%.
Vergleich mit Muttersprachlern: Ihr Ergebnis ist besser als 17% Testteilnehmer.
Vergleich mit Deutschlernern: Ihr Ergebnis ist besser als 65% Testteilnehmer

Edited (Wrote the wrong score, it was 21500, not 25100. I didn't write it down right away, but know it was less than Andrew's score.) 2025-12-17 09:39 (UTC)

I got 92% above native speakers as well with C2 level and 99.9% above non-native speakers. Since I learned English properly at age 13 when I moved to US, I am very pleased with that. I did the Russian test for fun as well, and I expected it to be much lower since I don't use it as much above regular conversation - no fancy words for me. I got 64% there, which is not surprising. I did know a lot of words because of their English origins, interestingly.

I managed 24000. Kicking myself at not being able to remember what "agnate" meant!

Not a word I'd ever heard before!

It's interesting in that there doesn't seem to be a feminine equivalent but then mabe there aren't any succession rules that would require one.

The American Heritage Dictionary says:
Related or akin by the father's side; also, sprung from the same male ancestor; ; in this sense it is a correlative of uterine.

The OED has uterine Obsolete. rare. plural. Children or offspring of the same mother.
No suggestion as to what replaces it.

I wasn't presented with that word; don't know it either. So they must not use the same set of words in each test.

"After each response, the system updates the respondent’s estimated vocabulary size and selects the next word so that its difficulty is close to the respondent’s current ability level."

https://www.myvocab.info/en/howitworks

I got 23,900, for whatever that's worth!

24,700, greater than 98% with 8 out of 8 challenges for definition and caught two fake words. That's what spending your childhood with your head in books will do for you.

4. I am surprised that Victor Orban's Hungary is so into solar.
I do see that Hungary has removed lots of solar incentives since 2023, so they may not hold their first place for long.

1. Gosh, 24,800. I want them to tell me what I missed. I did avoid all the fake words and passed the definition challenges.

98% above native speakers and 99.9% above non native speakers

I got all the fakes and all the definitions.

Well, I s'pose I am an eng lit graduate! :o)

Shame they don't do French or Italian as I'd have been interested to see how I got on with my second and third languages!

Those are very British words!
You scored above 78% of native speakers.

Interesting Links for 16-12-2025

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