Only knowing words in certain contexts (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Only knowing words in certain contexts
Tags: Meaning of words
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15 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

YnEoS
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Message 9 of 15

01 July 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged

Just to be clear, I'm not strictly speaking about words that are difficult to translate or might have different meanings in new context from their English usage.

What I mean is if you quickly work through a course passively, and in the course there's only 1 word that starts with a G sound and 6 syllables, your brain will probably not remember every syllable unless you force it, just during the course everytime you run into a 6 syllable G word, your brain says "oh that's the word that means ____". Then you might think you know the word and move on to reading and find that your book has several 6 syllable G words, and suddenly you realize you understand much fewer words than you thought you learned.

Or for a Chinese example since the visual is what made me realize this. If I'm only testing myself on the meaning and sound of a character and the first day I get 2 characters, 日 and 木. I can easily tell them apart and I get them both correct and say I "learned" these characters. Then the next I day I get 2 more characters and now my deck consists of 日, 木, 本, and 禾. Suddenly I get 木 wrong even though I thought I knew it, and now I realize I have to pay closer attention to tell it apart from the similar characters.

This example is simple, but I find that since I'm only learning to recognize characters in Anki, every time new characters are added it means "re-learning" some older ones in greater detail.

So passive learners who limit themselves too much to 1 course or 1 anki deck may risk thinking they know more words than they do, and when they move onto more difficult materials, part of the process may involve re-learning familiar words in greater detail.

Edited by YnEoS on 01 July 2014 at 7:49pm
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Serpent
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Message 10 of 15

01 July 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged

I don't think this is limited to "passive" learners. I've experienced this when learning single words L1->L2, in Finnish. Sometimes I'd fail to understand the same words in an actual text! I knew that I had them in Mnemosyne but I couldn't remember the meaning :D

Also, imo the whole purpose of passive learning is starting to consume native materials asap. If you don't do that, you basically use coursebooks in a slow way. Something has to make up for this slowness.
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luhmann
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Message 11 of 15

02 July 2014 at 4:45am | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

luhmann, were you using audio cards?

No, text only.
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YnEoS
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Message 12 of 15

02 July 2014 at 4:46am | IP Logged

[Deleted previous post to clarify my thoughts again.]

Yeah in general I think that overall the stages of learning a word are roughly the same regardless if you focus on a few at a time, or go for massive exposure. And I don't think gradually learning a word is problematic as long as your knowledge keeps improving. For example I find the way I'm studying Chinese characters to be very efficient and relaxing, even though new characters cause me to pay closer attention to details of familiar words.

Just previously I thought learning words and moving them into active use, was more about the number of times you encountered a word, and that once you completed a certain learning resource, you had learned those words and then you moved onto something with more words. And I thought using multiple resources was just a way to making reviewing words interesting and get you used to hearing words from different voices and different speeds. Now I'm thinking that multiple types of resources/contexts/learning methods is almost necessary for efficient learning to prevent your brain from taking shortcuts and only learning as much of a word as it needs to distinguish it from others.
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luhmann
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Message 13 of 15

02 July 2014 at 4:49am | IP Logged

As for the OP, everything will fix itself with enough reading and listening.
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Jeffers
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Message 14 of 15

02 July 2014 at 8:14am | IP Logged

shk00design wrote:

The other day came across a phrase in French: "Transmettez-leur mon meilleur souvenir". If you try to
translate into English directly you'd get something like: "Transmit to them my best memories" but the
English equivalent is actually: "Give them my best regards". The word "tansmettez" looks like "transmit"
bit in this case it is use as the English equivalent "Give" and "souvenir" normally means "memory" in this
case refers to "regards".

Another example in French is the use of "c'est" for "it is" in English. In English we have "he" & "she" for
people and "it" for animals or objects. In French there isn't the English equivalent of "it". They just use
"il" (the same as the masculine person "he") when it is referring to an animal unless you know the sex of
a dog is female then you may use "elle".
When you are referring to a place such as a restaurant, you might say something like "it is close to
here". In French you'd say "c'est prè d'ici". You'd use the pronoun "it" for "it is a good restaurant" but in
French you wouldn't say "il est un bon restaurant" but instead you'd use "c'est un bon restaurant".

There is a word 状元 in Chinese often translated as "scholar" in English. Before China became a republic
in 1911, 状元 refers to people who successfully passed the state exam in Beijing and destined for
lifetime employment as a government official. Today 狀元 refers to those who got top scores in the 高考
(university entrance exam taken in high school), the Chinese equivalent of the SAT in the US. The word
in Chinese for scholar is 讀書人 which literally translate to a person who is well-read. In English both
terms is translated to scholar. However, 讀書人 is a more general term while 狀元 is a more specific term
associated with a specific exam.

The other day came across across a TV show where a singer from Africa used an incorrect classifier. In
English we use "a pair of shoes" and "a pair of pants". In Chinese the same rule doesn't apply. We'd say
"一對鞋“ but we wouldn't say "一對褲“ but instead we'd use "一條褲". 褲 uses the same classifier for long
things such as "river" 河 which is "一條河".

This is a very long-winded way of saying that French is not English and Chinese is not English.
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s_allard
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Message 15 of 15

02 July 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged

Jeffers wrote:

shk00design wrote:

The other day came across a phrase in French: "Transmettez-leur mon
meilleur souvenir". If you try to
translate into English directly you'd get something like: "Transmit to them my best memories" but the
English equivalent is actually: "Give them my best regards". The word "tansmettez" looks like "transmit"
bit in this case it is use as the English equivalent "Give" and "souvenir" normally means "memory" in this
case refers to "regards".

Another example in French is the use of "c'est" for "it is" in English. In English we have "he" & "she" for
people and "it" for animals or objects. In French there isn't the English equivalent of "it". They just use
"il" (the same as the masculine person "he") when it is referring to an animal unless you know the sex of
a dog is female then you may use "elle".
When you are referring to a place such as a restaurant, you might say something like "it is close to
here". In French you'd say "c'est prè d'ici". You'd use the pronoun "it" for "it is a good restaurant" but in
French you wouldn't say "il est un bon restaurant" but instead you'd use "c'est un bon restaurant".

There is a word 状元 in Chinese often translated as "scholar" in English. Before China became a republic
in 1911, 状元 refers to people who successfully passed the state exam in Beijing and destined for
lifetime employment as a government official. Today 狀元 refers to those who got top scores in the 高考
(university entrance exam taken in high school), the Chinese equivalent of the SAT in the US. The word
in Chinese for scholar is 讀書人 which literally translate to a person who is well-read. In English both
terms is translated to scholar. However, 讀書人 is a more general term while 狀元 is a more specific term
associated with a specific exam.

The other day came across across a TV show where a singer from Africa used an incorrect classifier. In
English we use "a pair of shoes" and "a pair of pants". In Chinese the same rule doesn't apply. We'd say
"一對鞋“ but we wouldn't say "一對褲“ but instead we'd use "一條褲". 褲 uses the same classifier for long
things such as "river" 河 which is "一條河".

This is a very long-winded way of saying that French is not English and Chinese is not English.

Let's be a bit more generous here. What the author is really saying, or discovering, is that a) words often have
different meanings according to context and b) these different meanings do not correspond to the different
meanings of an equivalent word in another language.

This, of course, is nothing really new for most of us. The problem is compounded when we have cognates or
loanwords which sometimes take on very different meanings in another language.

What I think is the more central issue here is do we as learners go about go about acquiring all these differences
of meaning.

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