Unconscious mastering of a word

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Obogrew
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Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby Obogrew » Sat Feb 27, 2016 12:49 am

I would like to share the insights that came to me during SRSing.

It looks like that our memorization of each word has different levels. For example: I get from Anki the word "padecer". I can't translate it, do not remember it's meaning. Nevertheless I can always say that it is something negative, and being kinesthetic it causes in my body exatly same feeling like "suffer" when I pronounce it. I don't remember what it means consciously, but unconscious mind clearly knows what it means.

In contrary there are some words, especially when translating from source language to target. I don't know what is "albedrío" consciously, the word is not known to me. However when I see "will" I don't know how the "albedría" comes out, since it is feminine in my language. I really wonder when I press "show" and get "albedrío"

It reminds me more stimulus-response reaction, however knowing a word in that way is a perfect foundation and in 2-3 iterations the word will be memorized forever.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby yong321 » Sat Feb 27, 2016 3:12 am

Here's my note about padecer.

padecer to suffer. This word has cognates in all major Romance
languages. It’s said to be related to passion, patient, patience.
Use a mnemonic that is not completely deprived of etymological
information, “The patient suffers.” Imagine t in patient is pronounced
like t, not sh.

My approach is using etymology first and mnemonics if that's insufficient.

As to albedrío, which is not in my study notes, etymology says it's cognate with English arbiter and arbitrator. Sense development is probably: to arbitrate is to make a decision; a (free) will involves making a decision.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby outcast » Sat Feb 27, 2016 3:16 am

I am a native Spanish (learned in Argentina) speaker, right now it is the first time I ever heard of the word "albedrío".

This just reminds us not to get too hung up if some words don't stick. Sometimes even natives don't know them.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby reineke » Sat Feb 27, 2016 7:36 am

I can also feel physical pain if I think about Anki and learning what "padecer" means this way. Maybe my French and Italian have gone mute but I am not feeling any cognate love with padecer. Now if the Spanish word or expression I was to encounter were sufrir, or sentir dolor...

Interestingly, albedrío has 365,000 hits on the "Web" but 1.3 million hits in "books".

¿Controla Dios nuestro destino, o tenemos libre albedrío?

I think "albedrío"is fairly easy to figure out here with beginner's Spanish unless you're from a real exotic place.

I also wanted to check if this was purely a theological affair.

"Añadamos ahora que cuando Cervantes se está refiriendo en estos textos al "libre albedrío" está entendiendo..."

Apparently not. The word is contained in many book titles.

All the signs point to the fact that this may be an important word if one is to ever grow out of everyday spoken Spanish.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby anamsc » Sat Feb 27, 2016 8:33 am

This is probably too off-topic, so sorry! But this joke is how I first learned the word "padecer" :lol: :

Había un señor que estaba asustado, porque tenía pelos por todas partes de una forma descomunal. Entonces va donde una doctora y le dice:
- Doctora, doctora, ¿Qué padezco doctora, qué padezco?
Y la doctora le dice:

¡Puez padece uzted un ozito!


(Credit: http://www.todohumor.com/humor/chistes/quepadezcodoctorquepadezco/)

I'm a bit perplexed to hear that a native speaker has never heard the phrase "libre albedrío", because I think it's quite common. Maybe there's another way of saying "free will" that is used regionally?

Back to the topic at hand, I definitely feel that there are words that I master on different levels. I, too, remember a lot of words as "positive" or "negative" without remembering what they mean. And sometimes when I hear a word (in my native language or in another language) a translation pops into my head in some language, but I can't necessarily access that translation when it comes time to use it in normal speech! But I don't use Anki, and I would have thought this issue would be more common among people who don't study vocabulary actively (like me).
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby Obogrew » Sat Feb 27, 2016 9:21 am

[off topic]
Thank you for the comments, especially about those two words. It is a bit off-topic but what I did is I just download some decks from Anki site. When I learned very first ones I took those without stars. And they have many words that I can't find in the dictionary - slovari.yandex.ru
Unfortunately I cannot judge is "albedrío" a good word or not. Stumbled upon some words, now I am trying to check them in dictionary. And if the word is not there I delete the card.
Today I could not find words "la tetina", "la trona", "la silleta", "la friegaplatos", below is the screenshot where I took them.

I was always crazy about foreign languages and 30 years ago in closed Soviet Union I got a Spanish-Russian Phrasebook. I could remember only 4-5 phrases out of that. 10 years ago I came to Peru and could not understand why all taxi drivers laughed when I said "Hasta la vista"
After 1 week one of them who has been able to speak English explained me that it was only in Terminator and I had to say "Adios". But in my soviet phrase book it was "good bye."="hasta la vista"

As for mnemonics vs Anki. I used to be in state learning 4 languages last 10 years without being able to speak, I was familiar with mnemotecs. Now I discovered Anki HTLAL & community and during 2 month reached A2 in Spanish. So I could say that Anki and Goldlist is exactly that what is intended for me.

[/off topic]

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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby urdubyoddballs » Sat Feb 27, 2016 11:09 am

Obogrew wrote:Stumbled upon some words, now I am trying to check them in dictionary. And if the word is not there I delete the card.
Today I could not find words "la tetina", "la trona", "la silleta", "la friegaplatos", below is the screenshot where I took them.

This is THE dictionary: Diccionario de la lengua española. You'll find all five of your words there.

On the original topic, I often find hand gestures useful for retrieving reluctant words from memory - miming the action of tying a tie will summon up the word for "tie", for example.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby William Camden » Sat Feb 27, 2016 11:31 am

Sometimes words I have learned come into my mind later unbidden. Other words I have real problems getting to stick in my memory.
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby reineke » Sat Feb 27, 2016 4:25 pm

Obogrew wrote:[off topic]
Thank you for the comments, especially about those two words. It is a bit off-topic but what I did is I just download some decks from Anki site. When I learned very first ones I took those without stars. And they have many words that I can't find in the dictionary - slovari.yandex.ru
Unfortunately I cannot judge is "albedrío" a good word or not. Stumbled upon some words, now I am trying to check them in dictionary. And if the word is not there I delete the card...

I was always crazy about foreign languages and 30 years ago in closed Soviet Union I got a Spanish-Russian Phrasebook. I could remember only 4-5 phrases out of that. 10 years ago I came to Peru and could not understand why all taxi drivers laughed when I said "Hasta la vista"
After 1 week one of them who has been able to speak English explained me that it was only in Terminator and I had to say "Adios". But in my soviet phrase book it was "good bye."="hasta la vista"

As for mnemonics vs Anki. I used to be in state learning 4 languages last 10 years without being able to speak, I was familiar with mnemotecs. Now I discovered Anki HTLAL & community and during 2 month reached A2 in Spanish. So I could say that Anki and Goldlist is exactly that what is intended for me.



This forum is a testament to the fact that native speakers will often talk nonsense about their native tongues. A native speaker should be emulated, not interrogated.

No speaker of a European language should need an Anki deck with more than 1200 entries for Spanish. You don't need one at all, but if you insist on indulging in this hobby, keep it reasonable. The Goldlist Method mentions "a variety of materials that present the content in a different way".

Given that you're Russian, I am surprised you're not already reading your way into proficiency. Maybe that's just positive stereotyping.

http://www.franklang.ru/
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Re: Unconscious mastering of a word

Postby yong321 » Sat Feb 27, 2016 7:02 pm

RAE (Real Academia Española)'s corpus (http://corpus.rae.es/frec/CREA_total.zip) of 737799 words lists albedrío in position 24352. So it's not really a rare word. This is one of the best Spanish word frequency lists I know.
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