Wikipedia and Language learning!

[Iversen]

Since my last contribution to this thread I have inherited my mother's house, and when I moved I decided to throw out both Lademann's lousy dictionary and Grove's excellent, but voluminous dictionary of music and musicians in something like 36 tomes. When I look something up in Wikipedia I get I not only some succinct information, but also keywords and to some extent links for further search on the internet. But my main use is still to get interesting articles in my target languages, and if it's one of the mediocre ones I can let Google translate them so that I can produce bilingual study texts. Without those links between different languages Wikipedia would be much less useful. However with the keywords I get from Wikipedia I can do a precise search for articles about a certain subject in a certain non-English language which then lead me to for instance homepages of sci mags or to channels on Youtube in those other languages.

In contrast Youtube is a lousy place for switching languages. If I have watched a video about for instance penguins in Spanish, then it may propose more videos about birds in Spanish, but not in French or Portuguese or German - only an unstoppable avalanche of Anglophone videos about not only penguins, but also paid shit about topics that don't interest me. And if I do watch one of those offers the thing acts as if English was the only language on the planet EXCEPT for the reference back to the one and only video in Spanish about penguins which I already have watched. That's why I love the well-organized smooth links between language versions which I get in Wikipedia - and hardly anywhere else. I can choose to read about penguins in Ukrainian or Afrikaans or Danish or Chinese for that matter if only somebody has written about that subject - but sometimes there is only a stub or a machine translated rant, which is sad. And in some languages there aren't many arfticles so maybe there isn't an article about penguins in Albanian, but there must be one about birds in general.

As for the big commercial dictionaries and encyclopedias I don't use them much: they are limited to one language, and there may be trouble with paywalls and other irritating restrictions. (encyclopedias added post hoc)

[jeffers]

As for the big commercial dictionaries I don't use them much: they are limited to one language, and there may be trouble with paywalls and other irritating restrictions.

I frequently use Collins online dictionaries, which has English-TL and TL-English for my three target languages. There's no paywall and no restriction to use, but some popup advertisements. To be fair, they do deserve to make some income for the work they do for us.

However, I more often just use Google Translate for quick lookups.

[Kraut]

I have built myself a popup tool ( with Leung's popup dictionary and "Iask.ai") that combines looking things up for information, but also integrating language learning (vocabulary, grammar and translation) into it.
All of it can be changed easily to new tasks.
So clicking on "Black Friday"in a Spanish text gives me this:

Black Friday
La expresión “Black Friday” se refiere al día que sigue al Día de Acción de Gracias en los Estados Unidos, que tradicionalmente marca el comienzo de la temporada de compras navideñas. Durante este día, muchas tiendas ofrecen grandes descuentos y promociones especiales para atraer a los consumidores. El término “Black Friday” se originó en Filadelfia en la década de 1960, donde se utilizaba para describir el intenso tráfico peatonal y vehicular que se producía el día después de Acción de Gracias.

La interpretación más común de “Black Friday” es que hace referencia al momento en que las tiendas pasan de estar en números rojos (pérdidas) a estar en números negros (ganancias) debido al aumento masivo de ventas durante este día. Sin embargo, también ha habido críticas sobre el impacto negativo que puede tener esta jornada en términos de consumo excesivo y comportamientos impulsivos.

En alemán:

Der Begriff “Black Friday” bezieht sich auf den Tag nach dem Erntedankfest in den Vereinigten Staaten, der traditionell den Beginn der Weihnachtseinkaufssaison markiert. An diesem Tag bieten viele Geschäfte große Rabatte und spezielle Aktionen an, um Verbraucher anzulocken. Der Begriff “Black Friday” entstand in den 1960er Jahren in Philadelphia, wo er verwendet wurde, um den intensiven Fußgänger- und Fahrzeugverkehr zu beschreiben, der am Tag nach dem Erntedankfest stattfand.

Die gängigste Interpretation von “Black Friday” ist, dass es sich auf den Zeitpunkt bezieht, an dem die Geschäfte aufgrund des massiven Umsatzanstiegs an diesem Tag von roten Zahlen (Verlusten) auf schwarze Zahlen (Gewinne) wechseln. Es gab jedoch auch Kritik am negativen Einfluss dieses Tages in Bezug auf übermäßigen Konsum und impulsive Verhaltensweisen.

Parafraseo: El viernes siguiente al Día de Acción de Gracias en Estados Unidos es conocido como “Black Friday”.

Ejemplos:

Durante el Black Friday, las tiendas ofrecen descuentos increíbles. (Während des Black Friday bieten die Geschäfte unglaubliche Rabatte an.)

Muchas personas esperan ansiosamente el Black Friday para hacer sus compras navideñas. (Viele Menschen warten gespannt auf den Black Friday, um ihre Weihnachtseinkäufe zu tätigen.)

El Black Friday ha ganado popularidad en varios países fuera de Estados Unidos. (Der Black Friday hat auch außerhalb der USA in verschiedenen Ländern an Popularität gewonnen.)

Espero que haya buenas ofertas durante el próximo Black Friday. (Ich hoffe, dass es während des nächsten Black Fridays gute Angebote gibt.)

Es posible que algunas tiendas no participen en el Black Friday este año. (Es ist möglich, dass einige Geschäfte dieses Jahr nicht am Black Friday teilnehmen.)

Oraciones con subjuntivo:

Quiero que todas las tiendas ofrezcan descuentos significativos durante el Black Friday.
Prefiero que la gente compre con moderación durante el Black Friday.
Es importante que los consumidores investiguen antes de realizar compras impulsivas durante el Black Friday.

Oraciones relativas:

La tienda en la que compré mi televisor durante el Black Friday estaba muy concurrida.
Los descuentos por los cuales esperé durante todo el año estaban disponibles solo en las tiendas online del Black Friday.
La multitud que invadió las calles durante el Black Friday era impresionante.
Las ofertas por las cuales me emocioné resultaron ser una decepción cuando llegó el Black Friday.
Los productos por los cuales había estado ahorrando todo el año estaban agotados antes del inicio del Black Friday.

(Credible References Used):

Smith, John A., et al. The History of Shopping Holidays. New York Times Books, 2010.(Print)
García López, María E., et al.El Impacto del Consumismo en la Sociedad Moderna. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Press, 2018.(Print)
Müller, Hans.Die Bedeutung des Schwarzen Freitags für den Einzelhandel. Berlin Verlag, 2019.(Print)
Encyclopedia Britannica Online.Black Friday Origins and Traditions. https://www.britannica.com/black-friday ... itions(Web)
Oxford Dictionary of English.Definition and Usage of the Term ‘Black Friday’. Oxford University Press, 2020.(Print)

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another popup tool is DEFINER which can access with a click Google search and translate, Wikipedia search, audio, BING ...
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together with the two above you could use the SIMPLE TRANSLATE popup, this popup translates automatically a L2 word to L1, and a L1 word to L2

[Lawyer&Mom]

I've quickly gotten bored with the random pages. Too many of them are obscure villages or other things that hold no interest for me. I've just changed the settings so Firefox opens the main page for each language, e.g.,
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite

.

Ha! Just tried with French and got a two sentence article about a Slovak village with a population of 659 people…

[Carl]

In contrast Youtube is a lousy place for switching languages. If I have watched a video about for instance penguins in Spanish, then it may propose more videos about birds in Spanish, but not in French or Portuguese or German - only an unstoppable avalanche of Anglophone videos about not only penguins, but also paid shit about topics that don't interest me.

Here's a trick for quickly switching languages (or switching from penguins to a different flightless bird) on YouTube: If you open a private window and then go to YouTube, it doesn't know your history. In the US, YouTube gives me the following message:
Try searching to get started
Start watching videos to help us build a feed of videos you'll love.

You can open up multiple private windows, each in a different language. In Firefox, I just opened one, went to YouTube, and typed "Schlafen." A whole bunch of German-language videos related to sleep appeared. Then I opened another private window, typed "comida picante," and a whole bunch of Spanish-language videos about spicy food appeared.

[Iversen]

@Carl: smart trick - I had not even thought about any other role of those private windows than to keep things hidden from nosy surroundings. And because I (as far as I know) am the only one that uses my computers I didn't even try that facility.

By the way: I share your disappointment with the random pages. The only excuse for reading about random Slovak villages would be to train your Slovak skills, and you could just as well do that on more interesting topics.