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Basic Vocabulary (De Mauro) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 17 of 19 22 September 2011 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A great thread, how could I have missed it before!
The idea of highly available words is a very useful concept. Firstly, textbooks often miss them. Yes, they focus on topics like shopping but there is a too narrow selection of vocabulary. For exemple how many textbooks of various languages teach you a word for sanitary towels or tampons? When speaking of personal hygiene they will teach you a tootbrush, a hair comb, a hairdryer but not a sanitary towel. It is really not a word of everyday conversation, it is not used in literature (unless it concerns women's health issues or is written by someone crazy) but when you need to ask for these in a shop, how would you expain what you need without the word (and in some cases without blushing)? Thank God at least a tampon is quite an international word. Secondly, I don't think you would learn such words for a B1 exam. The exams claim to focus on everyday topics but there is still a lot of "popular textbook topics" like sorting the waste properly to prevent global warming. And again, if you get to a more practical topic, you still don't need many of these words because most of them are considered unimportant and not of the everyday use range because of the frequency of use. Thirdly, I miss list of such words for my target languages. I think this is where thematic dictionaries are of great help but nothing is perfect. Fourthly (is it correct in English?) I never thought Italian was such a complicated language from the vocabulary point of view. It is often said to be easy (I don't know why) and it is known a lot of dialects are well alive in Italy but I never heard of different correct words depending on region. Thanks. edit: I hope my exemple at point one didn't seem inappropriate (if so, I apologize). It was meant just as an exemple of areas where textbooks are not a huge help. Edited by Cavesa on 22 September 2011 at 2:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5348 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 18 of 19 29 September 2011 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry for the delayed response, but I was away and had no access to internet.
I couldn't have said it better myself. That’s exactly what I thought reading the De Mauro book. The big mystery now is understanding why the idea of “highly available words” has not been discussed more widely either in the language learning community or in academia. As I said earlier in the thread, this was the point in the book that really struck me for its relevance and novelty.
True, but I’ve probably been spoilt studying English as my first foreign language. The range of available materials for ESL is so wide that one can actually find good textbooks to expand one’s vocabulary at all levels of proficiency. I’m thinking, for instance (but it’s just an example among many), of the Cambridge Vocabulary in Use series. I know that unfortunately there don’t exist similar books for most languages, but they would certainly be helpful! If one thumbs through the Vocabulary in Use books, one notices that many of the “highly available words” are actually taught at the intermediate level. At the elementary level one encounters words that are genuinely high frequency words and as such one has plenty of opportunities to meet them and learn them in context. Moreover, most textbooks in the beginner to pre-intermediate bracket cover them anyway. Finally, at the advanced level one is presented with more sophisticated words that I think are beyond the reach of “highly available words” in that they don’t denote common objects, concepts, and ideas that are “very present to the mind” as they are either very specific and refer to peculiar things (unusual tools, or items of clothing etc.), or they belong to higher, more formal registers and are generally necessary to more educated people only on particular occasions (writing reports for school or work, for instance). This is my reason to suppose that working through a good intermediate textbook might be the step I need to fill the gaps in my vocabulary that seem to be ruining my relationship with German. Edited by Emme on 30 September 2011 at 1:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 19 30 September 2011 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you want to get thematic lists of ordinary objects or actions then language guides may be more useful than textbooks. They are typically focussed on the needs of travellers, and travellers also need to buy things which could make some buyers blush. However this is just a special case of the rule: get specialty vocabulary from sources written for people with specialty inteests. If I want to learn the names of birds then a dictionary isn't the obvious place to go - I would want a field guide. Or if you want to get the names for gardening tools then try to find a catalogue from somebody who sells that stuff (if you are outside the area of your target language then use the internet). Or if you want to learn about medieval weapons then read museum catalogues... or even novels about that period (though then you may not get the definitions straight away).
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