|
 |
Not learning certain vocabulary groups? | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5112 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 9 of 19 27 January 2015 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||
I learn every word I encounter, and I actively seek still more words to learn, because with SRS it's so easy. I never have to give up any word. In fact I run out of words too fast. But I do skip words that I can't understand at all even after googling. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6507 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 10 of 19 27 January 2015 at 9:36am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Chiara-Sai wouldn't learn words that she didn't even know in her native language, such as most vegetables. She doesn't feel any less fluent in English just because she doesn't know what an aubergine is. I agree with this, but the trouble is that I already know what an aubergine (or eggplant) is in both English and Danish. But there are vegetables for sale in Denmark whose name I don't know, and then it can't be important to learn their names in Polish or Greek.
I would make an exception to this, namely the words I learn during my travels because I need them (cfr. point 1 on the preceding page). If I don't want aubergines in my food it is highly relevant to learn the word for the thing. And as for animal names (including those of birds and other dinosaurs) I probably know more in English than in Danish because I have the habit of buying field guides in English during my travels. In some cases I also have field guides in other languages (including some in Spanish from South America and one in Afrikaans from South Africa), but generally the best and most comprehensive field guides are in English. And safari guides in Africa mostly speak English to their customers. As for the aubergine I might learn its name in any language the hard way if I hit upon it on a pizza, but otherwise that vegetable is on the relevancy level where I wouldn't deplore not knowing its name in twenty plus languages. On the other hand I might include it in a 'mopping up campaign' like the one I have going in Spanish for the moment. In this campaign I use a small dictionary with around 12.500 words, and I have so far skimmed P to mid T (so "berenjena" has not been included yet). The simple and brutal goal is that I want to know all words in that dictionary after the campaign, and according to my estimates that will mean that I add around 2-3.000 words to my vocabulary - but most of those will be never be used actively. Edited by Iversen on 27 January 2015 at 9:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5011 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 19 27 January 2015 at 10:14am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I tend to just learn things as I encounter them, so while I don't exclude any groups in particular I also don't focus on any groups in particular. This makes for some interesting differences between my French, which I first studied at school, and my self-taught Italian: my knowledge of fruits and vegetables, household objects, stationery, animals, and the other typical vocabulary "themes" is far stronger in French. In Italian I've sort of done things the other way round, establishing a solid conversational base before learning specialised words, and now I'm mostly learning these words as they come up in books.
4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4469 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 19 28 January 2015 at 1:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Just so long as you realise that in Italian, food words fall into the "solid conversational base" category (at least amongst my relations!) :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6401 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 13 of 19 28 January 2015 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I used to be bored by all the random physical objects but now I love using the game Criminal Case for learning their names.
Also, I remember being bored by the fish names in Finnish textbooks (I hate fish :P) but then I was in Finland with my vegetarian/pescarian dad and it was so relieving to be able to find stuff without meat easily. I think I also tend to avoid the colour names that don't match my perception/that I have no associations for. I don't mean obscure ones* but also those like cyan, magenta, turquoise, crimson, ginger, indigo, eggplant too ;D (idk if it's common). I also find it silly how English has such a wide range of blue but then specifies light blue/sky blue/azure etc so often, and really uses blue only for the middle of the range (like Chelsea's "blue is the colour" :D). I'm inclined to blame classroom teaching at least for insisting early on that рыжий is either red or orange, and синий and голубой are both blue. I did have several great English teachers and I don't understand why none of them ever clarified that later, instead of teaching us more fancy ways to say things we could already express adequately. *in fact, obscure ones might be easier. coral, amber, raspberry, azure or terra cotta are less common, but they're much more meaningful to me. Edited by Serpent on 28 January 2015 at 3:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5011 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 19 28 January 2015 at 9:59am | IP Logged | |||||
That's a good point - I remember the first time I visited Italy over 4 years ago, when I spoke little Italian but had done a unit of Pimsleur and knew some French so I could understand the gist of it. I tried to listen in to some people's conversations on the street and in public transport to see how much I could pick up, and about 90% of them were about food and/or coffee. Luckily Italian food is widespread enough that we get a lot of the vocabulary for free in English: pizza, pasta, lasagne, risotto... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3903 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 15 of 19 28 January 2015 at 10:30am | IP Logged | |||||
Your fellow UK Italian, chiara-sai, appears to disagree given that "melanzana" isn't an important word for her. :) (Does that mean that after 40 days of Italian I know words that some natives with an interest in languages don't?) I would say that the same is true of (French) French, by the way. It's not that you'll be expected to be able to talk about food (or the current major strike) if you're a tourist, but it's a topic that crops up often. I've even tuned in to the music channel on the radio (basically, classical music, operas, musicals, etc. all day, interspersed with talk about composers and musical history) and found myself in the middle of a discussion about beans. Now, I'm a bit of a foodie so I realise not everyone will find food words as important as I do (I realise that, unfortunately, not every francophile who goes to France is going to want to go to the artichoke or mackerel festivals), but being fluent (in French French) without being able to talk about food in France would be a bit odd. Also, "strike" is a very important word. ;) Edited by eyðimörk on 28 January 2015 at 10:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gomorritis Tetraglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 4082 days ago 91 posts - 157 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French Studies: Greek, German, Dutch | Message 16 of 19 28 January 2015 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Some people don't seem to care about vegetables while I care about vegetables the most. I probably even know a few vegetable names in Greek that some natives don't even know. Of course I am very interested in cooking and food in general, and if I ever see a vegetable I don't know in a market, I always must know it's name at least in Spanish.
Since it's too much effort to become a super-polyglot, I will simply try to be a vegetable-super-polyglot. Edited by Gomorritis on 28 January 2015 at 10:32am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
