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Bull you believed starting out | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4523 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 33 of 94 23 June 2015 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
A good monolingual dictionary would tell me that it's a Mimus (polyglottos?), wouldn't it? If I don't know what this is (I don't), I would be better off using an encyclopedia instead of a bilingual dictionary. Edited by daegga on 23 June 2015 at 1:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Improbably Diglot Newbie Norway Joined 4938 days ago 34 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English | Message 34 of 94 23 June 2015 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess the problem with bilingual dictionaries stems from expectations. If you expect to learn how to use a word, then a bilingual dictionary with only definitions and no examples of proper usage would be useless. But then, that's not what I perceive the purpose of such dictionaries to be. Presumably, when you look up a word, you've already encountered it in some context, and want to know what it means, and that context is usually all you need to tell, for example, whether 'yumi' means the kind of bow you shoot arrows with, or the bow of a ship. And when using a bilingual dictionary while doing some translation work, you generally use it to remind yourself of possible translations that you can't seem to recall at the moment, even though you know the meaning of the word you're trying to translate.
And with regards to learning words outside context, say I made a flashcard with 'yumi' on the front, and 'bow' on the back. I wouldn't know exactly what kind of 'bow' is meant, but still, I would memorize it verbatim. And when the chance comes when I encounter the word in context, I'll think 'that means bow, aha, this is the kind of bow that shoots arrows, because we're in the middle of a medieval battle scene', and I would've learned the proper meaning of the word without having to interrupt my reading to look it up. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 35 of 94 23 June 2015 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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A teacher was trying hard to make us believe the bull that monolingual dictionaries were the only and best ones and that the internet based bilingual ones were bad.
Bull because: -monolingual dictionary can be a good tool for an intermediate or advanced learner who likes to use it. -there are good and bad bilingual dictionaries and paper is not a guarantee of quality -you don't get enough context in either, you usually need to look for examples or look up things you can already see in context. My favourite bull: -classes in the country are a good way to learn a language. Hard to imagine I could have believed that, given all my childhood and teenage experience. Classes are classes, no matter where they take place. -You need to be in the country to learn the language to high level. Wrong. You can be in the country and learn very little or you can get to C2 without spending more than a few touristy weeks there in years. -You need to follow the levels, get A1 stuff first etc. Nope, you need a lot of "advanced" stuff quite early while some of the supposedly easy things are actually hard and less common until you get further in the learning. -Subjunctive (French) is hard and very advanced stuff. Nope, it is bread and butter and should be taught earlier with less panic -Listening is hard. Nope, it is not hard if you listen enough and start from easier things. And if you always listen to stuff you find enjoyable. Listening is hard if you believe your teacher it is hard and that the few listening exercise in class are the way to learn it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 36 of 94 23 June 2015 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd rather vaguely know that yumi is some kind of weapon (and arrow is a common word so it's easy to learn from the context which one) than know yumi=bow but not in which meaning I can use it.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 37 of 94 23 June 2015 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd google an image. (Funny fact: Last time I needed to google an image, it was a czech word. Such a weird word I don't know the exact meaning till today and there wasn't even a picture. All the definitions I found were even more vague than your yumi example)
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5061 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 38 of 94 23 June 2015 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, controversy about monolingual vs. bilingual dictionaries!
In my experience, yumi->bow type translations while reading are OK, because the text provides the context, so the dictionary doesn't need to. Assuming you are understanding most of what the text is saying, you should be able to figure out what the word means. Lookups in bilingual dictionaries are also faster, and many monolingual dictionaries can be as hard to understand as the text you're reading. But, they also supply more accurate information, and they keep you in the flow of using the target language as a native would. So both are useful. The bull I believed was that you should start using exclusively monolingual dictionaries as soon as you can, even if you don't understand all the definitions and it slows you down. Getting through the reading is much more important. Now I switch to monolingual dictionaries only when the definitions are effortlessly comprehensible to me, which is a pretty advanced level, although it also depends a lot on the dictionary. When it's a specific place/animal/thing/person, I usually use Wikipedia or sometimes Google Image search to translate it. Dictionaries aren't really good for that. Edited by robarb on 23 June 2015 at 7:16pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5347 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 39 of 94 23 June 2015 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dictionaries are a means for understanding the text you're reading fully.
Reading texts which you fully understand while gradually adding more complexity is the way you learn a language. Anything else is irrelevant. I use both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries according to availability and quality. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 40 of 94 23 June 2015 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd like to observe you interact with native speakers. Must be a pleasant sight. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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