Like most kids age six, Maya understood about 5,000 words, used about 2,500, and held basic conversations. Her brain had picked up more than one word a day since she was born and will continue to do so until late adulthood. From the day she began her quest, it took her another 12 years of casual conversation and deliberate practice to learn the more nuanced aspects of the language like sarcasm and irony. During that time, her receptive vocabulary grew to 20,000 words and she expressed herself with about 10,000. On her 18th birthday, she decided to visit the newly retired teacher to give him a demo of her linguistic skills. When the man opened the door, she told him that she had mastered the English language, but he just smiled, said nothing, and then disappeared into the darkness of his house. Soon after, he returned with the 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, asking Maya to read them all, adding that only then would she be able to master English. Maya accepted the challenge and started the same night. For the next two decades, she was excited to read up on ideas and meanings behind the 170,000 words that are in current use and studied approximately 430,000 old-fashioned terms.
和大多數六歲的孩子一樣,瑪雅能理解約 5000 個單詞,使用約 2500 個單詞,並能進行基本對話。從她出生起,她的大腦每天都會拾起一個以上的單詞,並且會一直持續到成年晚期。從她開始探索的那天起,她又花了 12 年的時間,通過閒聊和刻意練習,才學會了語言中更細微的部分,如諷刺和挖苦。在此期間,她的接受詞彙量增加到了 20,000 個單詞,而表達詞彙量約為 10,000 個。18 歲生日那天,她決定去拜訪剛退休的老師,向他展示自己的語言技能。當那人打開門時,她告訴他她已經掌握了英語,但他只是笑了笑,什麼也沒