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Lacking vocabulary in certain areas? | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6460 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 9 of 20 28 November 2011 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kitchen utensils, though I’ll probably have to learn some in German since the exchange student is German, she
speaks Swedish — but a lot of her friends do not. Man, colander is one of these words you don’t even remember exists before you have to talk about them. Also, that everything that you put stuff in can be referred to as a pot always surprises me: in Swedish we have a lot of words for cookery stuff… Kastrull, gryta, burk, ungsform… Linguistics and vocabulary of languages that I’ve studied in English I lack the words for in Swedish. My notes from Akkadian class are a miss-mash of Swedish, English, Akkadian and reconstructed protoAkkadian roots. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5629 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 10 of 20 28 November 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm still at an intermediate level of Japanese so I'm still missing a lot of basic vocabulary, but there are definitely
some areas that stick out. Science and medicine related words, for example, and nature related words. The latter I've been working on by exploring wikipedia articles and nature documentaries. I hope to be able to join a birding club when I go to Japan. ;) I experienced the same sudden realization that I had no words for kitchen things a while back in esperanto though. I think it's very common to overlook words like "frying pan" and "spatula" until you suddenly need them! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6398 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 11 of 20 29 November 2011 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
i've decided i don't need the word if i have no clue how what it describes is different from other similar objects. however not knowing them at all feels wrong, i need to know at least passively that "this word is a tree", even if the translation doesn't matter because if i know the word in my native russian i have no clue what the tree looks like. this also means that if i do know what the tree/plant/animal is like, i gotta know the word in foreign languages (but it's a lower priority than the vocabulary related to football and medicine :D) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6421 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 12 of 20 29 November 2011 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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It's not an unusual problem. My vocabulary in physics is very good in English, but I've never talked about it in Norwegian, so I don't know a lot of those words in Norwegian.
With economics, it goes the other way. I know it in Norwegian, but not English. I've had to try to learn a bit in English because I often get called on to translate at work, but that leads me into something I saw on another thread -- not believing your source. A lot of English words in this area sound so silly to me. An example is "tax loss carry forward." It sounds rather childish, so I couldn't believe it was really called that. In Norwegian, it is "framførbart underskudd," which just sounds so much more professional and sophisticated to me. I think we must accept that there will always be gaps in our vocabulary both in our native languages and in our foreign languages. Sometimes the gaps will be in the same areas, and sometimes in different areas. If you discover a gap in some area that is important to you, you can rectify it fairly quickly by reading some articles on that topic. If it isn't so important or interesting, why bother? For me car parts will probably always be thingamajigs and whatchamacallits in any language. Rugby is just a game involving a ball and a bunch of men running around yelling and behaving violently. Vegetables will probably always be important to me, as will cooking utensils, but that's just me. I eat almost every day. I have never yet watched a rugby match. Speaking of kitchen utensils, I remember a story I heard once about an Italian woman with very little English who moved to the US. She wanted to buy a colander and couldn't find one in the store, so she had to ask the clerk. She didn't know the word, so she just described it, "Water go. Spaghetti stop." If you learn a language fairly well, but find there is a word you need and don't know, you can usually get around it. I often find myself uncertain of words, but I just say things in a slightly different way, and nobody notices. Of course, this works better with slightly less important words rather than a central noun. If you want to buy a colander, it's very hard to ask about it without using the word or describing the thing. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6073 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 20 30 November 2011 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes. I am not interested in most sports, and so I tend to lack sporting vocabulary in my L2s.
More generally, there are always some words you should know but don't. Foreign language vocabulary is like Swiss cheese - there are always some holes in it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5906 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 14 of 20 30 November 2011 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I'm not careful, I tend to collect too many synonyms and then confuse myself as to which
is the best one to use. It may stem from an insecure need to know every variation 'just in case'. And also because I sometimes rely on acquiring vocabulary with little reference to it's common usage and context. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| birthdaysuit Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4618 days ago 48 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 15 of 20 03 December 2011 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Hahaha! That had me in tears! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fortwenster Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4786 days ago 24 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1 Studies: Arabic (Written) | Message 16 of 20 03 December 2011 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know a lot of economics vocabulary in French.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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