Is it good? (Questions About Your Target Languages) Language Learning Forum

Is it good?
Tags: Learning Technique/Method \| Vocabulary learning \| Grammar \| English
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages

11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

TDC
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6931 days ago
261 posts - 291 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French
Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian

Message 9 of 11

20 September 2008 at 6:52am | IP Logged

I don't think you can simply take a dictionary and then learn it. Learning vocabulary isolated from context like this you then start to speak English (or whatever language you're studying) as if it is your native language with new words thrown in.

For example, if a Russian looks up the word "udobno" then the most common definition they'll see is: comfortable. However, this word is used in Russian to also mean convenient. Which leads to people saying something like: "I'm flying because it's more comfortable for me," instead of "I'm flying because it's more convenient for me," as these two words are complete and distinct entities the finer shades of meaning are completely lost. Also, in Russian "shade" and "shadow" have only one translation. This leads to a sentence like "I want to sit in the shadow".

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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6282 days ago
1936 posts - 2333 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

Message 10 of 11

20 September 2008 at 8:40am | IP Logged

Up to a point you can learn from vocabulary lists, especially at the start when it is likely the words you learn are very common ones, but as time goes on and you go deeper into an L2, learning in context becomes more important.
1 person has voted this message useful

Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 5145 days ago
762 posts - 664 votes

Speaks: Indonesian*

Message 11 of 11

30 August 2017 at 4:29pm | IP Logged

TDC wrote:

For example, if a Russian looks up the word "udobno" then the most common definition they'll see is: comfortable. However, this word is used in Russian to also mean convenient. Which leads to people saying something like: "I'm flying because it's more comfortable for me," instead of "I'm flying because it's more convenient for me," as these two words are complete and distinct entities the finer shades of meaning are completely lost. Also, in Russian "shade" and "shadow" have only one translation. This leads to a sentence like "I want to sit in the shadow".

In this regard, Indonesian is similar to Russian. In Indonesian, the wprd "nyaman" means bpth "comfortable" and "convenient". The word "bayangan" also means both "shadow" and "shade".

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