That threshold might be higher than you realize. I could read a Chinese news article reasonably well -- except for all the words that actually relate to the topic.
Each language essentially has a collection of mostly separate vocabularies that only apply in certain situations, but to avoid communication problems, you need to handle any situation you might encounter. If you have a somewhat diverse set of interests, that can be quite a lot.
Each language essentially has a collection of mostly separate vocabularies that only apply in certain situations, but to avoid communication problems, you need to handle any situation you might encounter. If you have a somewhat diverse set of interests, that can be quite a lot.