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How to learn the specialized vocabulary? | ||
Tags: Advanced Level | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4180 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 1 of 7 30 May 2013 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the aspects that shows somebody is quite advanced in a language is when they can read, listen to, or talk about subjects not in their immediate field, and that within their field, they can understand and use highly specialized language. A lot of people will also say that the knowledge of "technical" vocabulary is one of the things that distinguishes between say a B2 speaker and a C1 speaker.
I've come to the point in my German where I realize there is a lot of vocabulary I don't have. I can read a contract and understand it, but I don't understand it as well as I would an English one, and I certainly wouldn't be able to draft one myself. Similarly, I can recognize the main ideas of different areas of law, and the main issues, but I wouldn't be able to explain it the same way I could in English; I would really need to simplify my language. There really is no such thing as B2-legalese! For those of you on this forum who consider yourselves to be at that level, how did you go about learning the specialized language? Was it something you deliberately tried to learn, or did you gradually absorb it, or something else? Also, what are the possible advantages and disadvantages to learning both ways? My apologies if this is posted in the wrong forum or if it's already been posted on before! Edited by Fuenf_Katzen on 30 May 2013 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5896 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 7 30 May 2013 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I pick up a lot of technical words because I do translations for someone who's a toolmaker. I do exchanges (e-mail and spoken) with people who are waaay more technically advanced than I. They describe the process to me and I associate the new word with the process. I already have over 10 years experience using the language so I can draw on that whenever I want to learn new things. I guess it doesn't get more "gradual" than that ;)
Deliberately trying to learn specialized language without being advanced (C1-C2) is sometimes necessary, especially if you have a job that requires that you learn a foreign language very quickly. Unfortunately, the disadvantage to that is that learners learn specialized language without knowing enough about how to express themselves with just basic words -- in other words they lack communication experience. For those that want to learn specialized language (like jura) I would keep a steady stream of everything else (podcasts and TV, reading) to make sure that everyday speech is not neglected. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 3 of 7 31 May 2013 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not a doctor but I love the "__________ for doctors" kind of textbooks :)
Also, for many languages GLOSS is a fantastic resource for that sort of thing... they also have some German lessons, but not many. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6783 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 4 of 7 31 May 2013 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||
I think this is a tough one because there is a big difference between understanding legalese and being able to draft it. I'm an attorney as well, but I don't specialize in transactional work, and I would be very careful and hesitant drafting a contract even in English (my native language and the language in which I practice law), given how subtle nuances in language such as word choice, comma use, or even the order of words in a list can change meaning. But then again, I am a litigator, so we spend all of our time fighting over what particular phrases in contracts mean. I imagine that the only way you could really get to that level of comfort is if you immerse yourself in that type of technical language with lots of exposure, either through reading lots and lots of contracts in German to figure out how they phrase things and what jargon they use and/or you do an LLM or similar legal study in German. Just learning the vocabulary isn't going to be enough. Edited by mike245 on 31 May 2013 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 7 31 May 2013 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||
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What I use:
Half popular half technical sources, such as wikipedia or magazines Textbooks of the language for the field. Textbooks for natives studying what I do. Texts aimed at the specialists. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 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 6 of 7 31 May 2013 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't vouch for juridical language because I try to avoid it like the plague, but my preferred reading in all my languages is popular science magazines, and on the internet I constantly read the same kind of stuff, for example in Wikipedia which has got some articles even in languages where there is very little genuine stuff about interesting subjects. If I really wanted to delve into the vocabulary of a specific field I would go for books in the specific field, but it can be a problem to get them. Similarly I prefer to watch documentaries, but on my TV I rarely get documentaries in the languages I want. But again the internet comes to my assistance. For instance there are very few quality programs on my only Italian TV channel, Raiuno (SuperQuark, Passaggio a Nord Oveste..), but on Youtube there is a whole series of popular physics programs labeled GeoScienza. However I learn much better through written sources so the oral/visual sources are mostly for reinforcing my knowledge ... and for entertainment.
So for my more advanced languages I learn most of my technical vocabulary directly from genuine texts in the field, not from dictionaries, and the simple reason for that is that dictionaries and even most lexica don't give me the background information which I need to really make the correct associations to a word (or even understand it). There isn't much point in learning the name of an exotic bird or antique civilization or garden flower if I don't know anything about them excpet the name. With less developed it is less futile because there I still don't know the words for even the most common things, but I still prefer culling such words from real texts and then use wordlists to memorize them. Thematic vocabularies should only be used to identify lacunes in your vocabulary. Edited by Iversen on 31 May 2013 at 9:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 7 of 7 31 May 2013 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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We've had a class at uni where we write formal documents. In Russian. It's surprisingly hard, ugh. But basically it simply requires practice.
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