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’Thematic’ lists | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jerrypettit Groupie United States Joined 6028 days ago 79 posts - 103 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 19 20 February 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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For making your own lists, you might want to be aware of Google Sets (http://labs.google.com/sets), which in conjunction with Google Translate could give you some worthwhile lists. For example, I just went to the site and input the following few words:
hammer vise wrench saw pliers and Google Sets came up with the following list: handles screws locks drill pulls bolts nuts knobs screwdriver outlet switch battery hooks washers hinges slides rods level nails tiles sander router deadbolt chisel charger stain rivets paint generator file flashlight planer screens many of which words might be helpful to know if that's the "theme" you're working in. Now cut and paste into Google Translate and voila... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 10 of 19 21 February 2010 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for this novel idea, Jerrypettit!
I do not trust Google Translate though, because most English words are ambiguous and the translation may give you verbs instead of nouns, or translations from a different word field (e. g. "paint" as a type of horse). That could really mess up your learning. However, you could use a dictionary... or you could enter your initial set of words in the target language! I just tried it with French, I entered tigre, lion, oiseau and singe and Google came up with 50 French animal names. I think books with thematic wordlists for the purpose of vocabulary improvement (e. g. "Thematischer Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz Französisch") are still better, because they also provide verbs, adjectives and expressions related to each word field, as well as usage information for the words, such as the gender of French nouns or the prepositions to use with verbs. However, for some languages these books don't exist yet, or maybe you're just looking for nouns anyway, and so this tool is good. EDIT: I just entered some French verbs, "aller", "arriver" and "rentrer". Apparently Google is able to find verbs, but imagine my surprise when the results included verbs like "mourir" and "devenir" instead of just verbs of motion. Turns out Google found me a list of French verbs that use être, probably because it's a common thing to list all those verbs that use être together. So another warning for you: don't assume Google groups verbs the same way you do! EDIT: Finally, for the Greek words for water, wine, bread and cheese it gave me fruit basket, but also slippers and beach towel... seems to get them from a hotel website? Edited by Sprachprofi on 21 February 2010 at 9:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5411 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 11 of 19 21 February 2010 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Read a thesaurus and edit its entries using HTML, then you can make your own listbook. How about this?
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| Tiberius Diglot Groupie Moldova lawinmoldova.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6290 days ago 70 posts - 85 votes Studies: Romanian, Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 12 of 19 21 February 2010 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some illustrated doctionaries can be really helpful. I recently found one in English
(contains some basic and essential vocabularu, and still I found a lot of unknown words). And then discovered a HUGE French (and in a while a smaller one) illustrated disctionary. The idea of all such dictionaries is almost the same in all cases. They contain words grouped under various topics (animals, house utensils, clothes, colours, actions, etc.) usually accompannied with pictures. So, don't think it's for children only. They are very helpful. My huge French dictionary contains even detailed anatomy, engineering terms, well... whatever you can imagine. UPD.Have just got a glimpse of what Amazon can offer. Here's a page of one of such French dictionaries: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B001R8BIYG/sr=1- 5/qid=1266758844/ref=dp_otherviews_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&img=4&q id=1266758844&sr=1-5 Edited by Tiberius on 21 February 2010 at 2:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5769 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 13 of 19 22 February 2010 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot, everyone ! However, there is some misunderstanding here. I did not mean the traditional 'thematic list', I now think I should refer to my 'search object' as 'semantically related' terms, having etymological and/or '(near-)synonymical' relations .
@Jerry: I tried lab google, and it can be quite useful, but it restricts itself to synonyms and near-synonyms, and adjectives therefore only lead to adjectives, not to related verbs... @Tiberius: I do value le petit Robert, and those old-fashioned illustrated explanatory dictionaries (which one would read for one's enjoyment indeed), and even the new ones, like the on-line visual dictionary (http://visual.merriam-webster.com), but those only refer to practical vocabulary. And my conviction is: that is a vocabulary to be learnt only when one is/ works with those objects/ lives in that context - and one will learn it quickly, almost spontaneously, because it is so necessary. @Sprachprofi: you seem to get closest to what I have in mind, indeed. And you point out - alas, indeed - that it does not exist yet. I do think the speech-act theory does provide a good start because it showed that expressing certainty for example can be done in many ways, with illocutionary verbs, but also in other ways, using adverbs, questions (syntax), etc. Google does help, I am sure, if one is able to provide enought words for a start: I have just entered "certain sure basically doubt", and that leads to texts discussing certainty and offers some interesting expressions, but it takes a lot of time to filter the words from it. So I'd want a book like that. What I am interested are 'basics' , not the traditional etymology, mostly referring to special words borrowed from other languages, but (1) the etymological references to underlying meanings, which may help to remember, and (2) the links between near-synonyms, ways of expressing speech acts or broad 'concepts', like certainty and doubt, like approval and disapproval, like judging (non-formal, not just court language, that would be narrowly thematic). By the way: is there a better term for what I am hinting at here ? Edited by JanKG on 22 February 2010 at 11:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5769 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 14 of 19 22 February 2010 at 9:36am | IP Logged | ||
You're right. I just tried thesaurus.reference.com and that yielded quite some interesting words, transcending (hm ?) categories indeed. Thanks, good start! I still remain interested in the book entitled "Using English vocabulary', made by a French professor. No one who can give me a hint? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5411 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 15 of 19 22 February 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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You seem to me aiming to boost up your vocabulary development by looking over tons of words in one sight from a bird's view, and as well, once you have a thematic wordlist for a language (English), it will be useful whenever you start learning any language. Isn't it?
The thesaurus on the refference in Yahoo! education will also be very useful. http://education.yahoo.com/reference/thesaurus/ This thsaurus provide a nice classification of words, see "Category index" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JanKG Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5769 days ago 245 posts - 280 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Finnish | Message 16 of 19 22 February 2010 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, not specifically mine, but indeed, I think lots of learners are looking for meaningful semantic networks of words, which are well presented (and maybe do not even need a lot of comment if put in the right contexts). There is one problem to me: here semantics touches upon language philosophy, because it seems necessary to clarify concepts as well in the end !!! Do you know any such books?
I just happened to discover http://nl.w3dictionary.org/, and that seems to be quite interesting and broad (lots of meanings, well explained, with a list fo words on the right-hand side somehow semantically connected with them). I had a look at the yahoo-site, but it seems to me that it is bound to the form of the word: it only refers to words containing 'certain' in my case. Am I mistaken? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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