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What’s a good use for a phrasebook? | ||
Tags: Phrasebook | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6577 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 6 13 July 2015 at 8:18pm | IP Logged |
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I found a Dutch phrasebook around the house. Which reminds me that I've had a few of these in the
past, for different languages. And never seemed to have gotten much out of them. If I look at this one right here I think to myself "there are no doubt some phrases in here that would benefit me". But if I start reading it cover to cover I know that: a) it's so monotonous that my brain will tune out very quickly - I won't retain much, and b) most of the content will be known, and that lowers my concentration ability even more. I guess I could mine it for sentences and shove it into anki, in fact I'm pretty sure I've done that before. But cramming sentences out of context is not that much fun and thus again I tend to tune out quick. It feels like "this is a thing I ought to know" rather than "I want to know this!". Any ideas? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6703 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 14 July 2015 at 12:54am | IP Logged |
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You can read each sentence aloud which is a way to practice the sentences and exercise the muscles. This is the point of the Glossika Mass Sentence method.
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| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4432 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 3 of 6 14 July 2015 at 5:33am | IP Logged |
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If you haven't actively used the language much, and then travel to an L2 country you can
find yourself stumbling over introductory phrases. A phrase book helps you get the introductory bits just right. What happens otherwise is that the first thing native speakers hear out of your mouth is stuttering, making egregious grammar mistakes and awkwardly wording very common phrases. They'll assume you're a silly tourist with no ability in the language. In fact you may well have a large vocabulary and advanced reading/listening skills, but to most natives if you can't get simple, common phrases out fluently it means you must be a very early beginner. And then they'll switch to English. Or, God forbid, the dreaded Spanglish, Franglish, Chinglish etc arrrrg! So use a phrasebook to make sure you get the common introductory phrases perfect when you travel to an L2 country. In terms of how to actually memorise the phrases you think might be useful, I would just wait until a situation comes up where they're going to be immediately useful. Or where a situation just occurred where you needed them and (God dang it!) you didn't know them yet. Then they become much more interesting and much more memorable. Edited by AlexTG on 14 July 2015 at 6:06am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4924 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 6 14 July 2015 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
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I've always looked at phrase books as a good resource for
a) creating my own drills and b) creating my own dialogs. Yes, there's lots of silly tourist stuff in them, but you can come up with a lot of good, useful combinations from that silly tourist stuff. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4960 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 6 16 July 2015 at 10:15pm | IP Logged |
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You can use a phrasebook for studying other than just looking words up. I did so, and I plan to do it again, but that requires some conditions.
When I was studying Papiamento, for which there is litlle material, I read an enhanced phrasebook with side grammar explanations twice. I already had a trip planned to the Papiamento-speaking Dutch Antilles islands Curaçao and Aruba. But a phrasebook wasn't my first contact with the language. I studied from some textbooks and when I already had a good background on the language I decided to go for the phrasebooks: one page or one chapter a day. No pressure for memorizing anything. I was mostly getting used to the most idiomatic way of putting together a string of really common words I was already familiarized with. It worked. Now I plan to do the same with Russian, but this is more related to the path my Russian took when compared tomy other languages. I've been using texts, funny stories and longer dialogues involving study and work situations in the reading part, and in the film/TV part I've been watching mostly videos with English subtitles. So, I'm not really familiar with a series of quite common Russian sentences. That's why reading a phrasebook would be useful at this very stage I see myself now: I'd become familiar with the most common way of putting together and pointing to expressions and objects related to daily life. Other people would just gather all the words in a Phrasebook and make a SRS deck out of it. I actually did it for Papiamento, btw. If you go to Anki you will find a deck there. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3783 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 6 16 July 2015 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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Little phrasebooks like that are perfect for keeping in the car. I throw one in my purse when I think I'm going to be waiting somewhere. I don't know if I'm really learning from them, but it's a better use of time than staring off into space.
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