High level list of concepts to address vocabulary building

[Uncle Roger]

Hello, I'm new here!

In the last couple of years I have been dabbling with the frequency lists of a few European languages, mostly using Wiktionary but at times managing to put my hands on more refined material such as the Swedish Kelly List

https://spraakbanken.gu.se/resource/kelly

I was however wondering if anybody tried to compile a more generic and, dare I say it, non-language specific list of "concepts" (for lack for a better word!) that a language can or rather needs to express. I'm thinking functional living in a foreign country: shopping, relationships, job hunting, student life, work life, some banter. Say, I'd consider things such as "beef, pork, chicken, eggs and fish" for food of animal origin (but specifying what type of fish might be too much already?), the ten most used colours, obvious words that have an opposite (happy and sad, good and bad, to stand and to sit) etc.
Stuff like this to the point of building up at least some 2000 "words".

Is there such a thing (presumably in English?) against which one could then attach more specific words and synonyms?

I've read of some "thematic dictionaries" organised by topics, situations and such. I wonder if the words in these are just in alphabetical order or there is an attempt to put them in frequency order (something I am quite keen on). And what kidn of categorisation one can expect from these...

Thanks for any pointers!

[DangerDave2010]

there u go:

https://wordnet.princeton.edu/
http://compling.hss.ntu.edu.sg/omw/

http://wntw.sourceforge.net/

[Uncle Roger]

Thanks, I didn't know about this, seems very useful. They have a Norwegian version too, that's what I was after. Is there a way to have it as a data table rather than a browser you query?

[leosmith]

Thanks for any pointers!

Welcome! As for pointers, I'd say avoid learning vocabulary out of context.

[reineke]

What deliberate learning should you do? You need to organize your own deliberate learning. The most important deliberate learning activity is using word cards. You need to take control of this very effective activity and keep using it to learn new vocabulary and even more importantly to keep revising previously met vocabulary. You may find that some teachers advise against using this strategy largely because of the belief that all vocabulary learning needs to occur in context. They are wrong. It is important that there is vocabulary learning in context through meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, and fluency development, but it is also important that there is deliberate decontextualised learning through the use of word cards, because such learning is very efficient and effective."

"Is it good to learn related words together?
Although it seems like a good idea to learn related words at the same time, whether it is helpful or not depends on the relationship between them. Words like near synonyms (embarrass-humiliate, prevent-protect), opposites (hot-cold, long-short), and members of a lexical set (days of the week, colours, the names of fruit, articles of clothing, parts of the body) are best not learned together. The effect of learning them together is so strong that it can make learning 50% to 100% more difficult. Being 100% more difficult means that it would take twice as many repetitions to learn these words compared to learning unrelated words. It has been suggested that where the related words are nouns, objects which are nearer to each other in shape, apple-orange, are more likely to interfere than objects which are different in shape, banana-orange.

The relationship that helps learning is where the words are related as if in a story (frog, pond, green, slimy, hop, croak). So, it is a good idea to note words from your reading onto word cards as these words are unlikely to be members of the same lexical set.

When learning items that are similar to each other there is not only the difficulty of learning the items but also the difficulty of not mixing them up with each other. If the words also have some formal similarities this can make interference even more likely. We are more likely to confuse Tuesday and Thursday than Tuesday and Sunday because Tuesday and Thursday begin with the same letter and both contain s and day. The way to reduce the effects of interference is to learn possibly interfering items at different times, not together."

Paul Nation
What you need to know to learn a foreign language
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/st ... e_1125.pdf

Patterns first – why you should ‘ditch’ word lists, traditional grammar rules and…your textbook

"Learning single words, from word lists, e.g. the ones found in textbooks or that many teachers upload to Quizlet or Memrise is a clumsy and inefficient way of learning a language. "

"Masses of research indicate clearly that extensive" exposure to phonological, collocational, morphological and syntactic patterns does sensitise learners to them. Unlike it is common practice in many modern language classrooms these days, students should process the target chunks/patterns as extensively as possible before having a go at deploying them in oral or written production."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gianfranco ... rules/amp/

[rdearman]

@reineke - That is basically two opposite views. What is your view?

[Uncle Roger]

Hi thanks for all the advice. At the risk of going slightly off topic, I'd say I'm fairly happy with my language learning tactics and possibly even skills/talents.
For the language I am targeting most (Norwegian), 95% of the work has come down to vocabulary as of late. I'd rate myself at B2 pushing C1, I've had job interviews in Norwegian and they weren't for students jobs. The grammar is so similar to English that a lot of the learning that I see Norwegian courses/material propose is basically obvious or even a drag. But I understand they have to take the longer, more complete path for the sake of all the non-English speakers.
I'm a firm believer that if one is aiming at B1/B2 in 6 months (totally doable for a language like Swedish or Norwegian if you are an educated English speaker), studying Monday to Friday, and you don't have a solid plan (SRS in my experience) to get those 10-15 words a day, say 75 words a week memorised in an effective way, you are simply going nowhere.
Sure, that alone won't do it, but to me it does help a lot with the big show-stopper of not understanding (or, to a lesser extent, not being able to make yourself understood) because you just don't know a word's meaning.

Concerning vocabulary building, I am an avid Anki user and quite happy to create my own material. Norwegian pronunciation is quite strictly tied to the writing, so no major ambiguities. I'm of the idea that words should be memorised in isolation, it's too easy to recollect them right if you have context. I've been fooling myself about my understanding of (written) Norwegian for a while and I was frustrated with the gap I had between that and my understanding of spoken Norwegian. The truth was, I had become excellent at educated guessing words I didn't know, and reading gave me all the time in the world to do so. Listening is very different (and it's my weakness in general), I'd dare say you (I?) can really only understand something that is part of my active vocabulary. Passive vocabulary and, especially, anything I would guess right thanks to written context, would just be gibberish to me in a listening situation.

Hence my desire to just go big on vocabulary, especially words in isolation. This said, I make a point of learning verbs, nouns and adjectives with their most obvious preposition, if they have a specific one. The moment you learn "to wait", you might as well learn "to wait for".

Through the forum I have discovered the Subs2srs thing and I can't wait to try it. I might search topics about practicing listening, because that's still my weakness.

Thanks for the advice.

[DangerDave2010]

Thanks, I didn't know about this, seems very useful. They have a Norwegian version too, that's what I was after. Is there a way to have it as a data table rather than a browser you query?

Sorry I can't be much helpful, although I had these bookmarked for ages, I have never really used it.

I just tried wordnet for windows right now, it was very easy to get a list of related concepts, for example I searched for "feline", then selected Noun > Hyponyms (is a kind of feline) full, I got:

Code: Select all

1 sense of feline                                                       

Sense 1
feline, felid -- (any of various lithe-bodied roundheaded fissiped mammals many with retractile claws)
       => cat, true cat -- (feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and no ability to roar: domestic cats; wildcats)
           => domestic cat, house cat, Felis domesticus, Felis catus -- (any domesticated member of the genus Felis)
               => kitty, kitty-cat, puss, pussy, pussycat -- (informal terms referring to a domestic cat)
               => mouser -- (a cat proficient at mousing)
               => alley cat, stray -- (homeless cat)
               => tom, tomcat -- (male cat)
                   => gib -- (a castrated tomcat)
               => tabby, queen -- (female cat)
               => tabby, tabby cat -- (a cat with a grey or tawny coat mottled with black)
               => tiger cat -- (a cat having a striped coat)
               => tortoiseshell, tortoiseshell-cat, calico cat -- (a cat having black and cream and yellowish markings)
               => Persian cat -- (a long-haired breed of cat)
               => Angora, Angora cat -- (a long-haired breed of cat similar to the Persian cat)
               => Siamese cat, Siamese -- (a slender short-haired blue-eyed breed of cat having a pale coat with dark ears paws face and tail tip)
                   => blue point Siamese -- (Siamese cat having a bluish cream body and dark grey points)
               => Burmese cat -- (a short-haired breed with body similar to the Siamese cat but having a solid dark brown or grey coat)
               => Egyptian cat -- (a domestic cat of Egypt)
               => Maltese cat -- (a short-haired bluish-grey cat breed)
               => Abyssinian, Abyssinian cat -- (a small slender short-haired breed of African origin having brownish fur with a reddish undercoat)
               => Manx cat -- (a short-haired tailless breed of cat believed to originate on the Isle of Man)
           => wildcat -- (any small or medium-sized cat resembling the domestic cat and living in the wild)
               => sand cat -- (a desert wildcat)
               => European wildcat, catamountain, Felis silvestris -- (bushy-tailed wildcat of Europe that resembles the domestic cat and is regarded as the ancestor of the domestic cat)
               => cougar, puma, catamount, mountain lion, painter, panther, Felis concolor -- (large American feline resembling a lion)
               => ocelot, panther cat, Felis pardalis -- (nocturnal wildcat of Central America and South America having a dark-spotted buff-brown coat)
               => jaguarundi, jaguarundi cat, jaguarondi, eyra, Felis yagouaroundi -- (long-bodied long-tailed tropical American wildcat)
               => kaffir cat, caffer cat, Felis ocreata -- (widely distributed wildcat of Africa and Asia Minor)
               => jungle cat, Felis chaus -- (small Asiatic wildcat)
               => serval, Felis serval -- (slender long-legged African wildcat having large untufted ears and tawny black-spotted coat)
               => leopard cat, Felis bengalensis -- (small spotted wildcat of southern Asia and Malaysia)
               => tiger cat, Felis tigrina -- (medium-sized wildcat of Central America and South America having a dark-striped coat)
               => margay, margay cat, Felis wiedi -- (small spotted wildcat found from Texas to Brazil)
               => manul, Pallas's cat, Felis manul -- (small wildcat of the mountains of Siberia and Tibet and Mongolia)
               => lynx, catamount -- (short-tailed wildcats with usually tufted ears; valued for their fur)
                   => common lynx, Lynx lynx -- (of northern Eurasia)
                   => Canada lynx, Lynx canadensis -- (of northern North America)
                   => bobcat, bay lynx, Lynx rufus -- (small lynx of North America)
                   => spotted lynx, Lynx pardina -- (of southern Europe)
                   => caracal, desert lynx, Lynx caracal -- (of deserts of northern Africa and southern Asia)
       => big cat, cat -- (any of several large cats typically able to roar and living in the wild)
           => leopard, Panthera pardus -- (large feline of African and Asian forests usually having a tawny coat with black spots)
               => leopardess -- (female leopard)
               => panther -- (a leopard in the black color phase)
           => snow leopard, ounce, Panthera uncia -- (large feline of upland central Asia having long thick whitish fur)
           => jaguar, panther, Panthera onca, Felis onca -- (a large spotted feline of tropical America similar to the leopard; in some classifications considered a member of the genus Felis)
           => lion, king of beasts, Panthera leo -- (large gregarious predatory feline of Africa and India having a tawny coat with a shaggy mane in the male)
               => lion cub -- (a young lion)
               => lioness -- (a female lion)
               => lionet -- (a small or young lion)
           => tiger, Panthera tigris -- (large feline of forests in most of Asia having a tawny coat with black stripes; endangered)
               => tiger cub -- (a young tiger)
               => Bengal tiger -- (southern short-haired tiger)
               => tigress -- (a female tiger)
           => liger -- (offspring of a male lion and a female tiger)
           => tiglon, tigon -- (offspring of a male tiger and a female lion)
           => cheetah, chetah, Acinonyx jubatus -- (long-legged spotted cat of Africa and southwestern Asia having nonretractile claws; the swiftest mammal; can be trained to run down game)
           => saber-toothed tiger, sabertooth -- (any of many extinct cats of the Old and New Worlds having long swordlike upper canine teeth; from the Oligocene through the Pleistocene)
               => Smiledon californicus -- (North American sabertooth; culmination of sabertooth development)
               => false saber-toothed tiger -- (North American cat of the Miocene and Pliocene; much earlier and less specialized than members of the genus Smiledon)



The multilingual wordnets I posted, relate the foreign words the the corresponding synset in (not the latest version of) Princeton Wordnet, but oh, there seem to be no application to use them with. Anyway the wordnet for the language I would be interested in seems too small to be useful, so I am done playing with it.


I've been getting thematic lists of vocabulary from visual/picture dictionaries, and from wikipedia Category listings.

[reineke]

If you want a list of words that a language can express, get yourself a dictionary. If you want a shorter list, get yourself a mini dictionary. If you want your vocabulary organized thematically, get a vocabulary builder. You can of course come up with something yourself. A DIY list that includes "fatty animal meats" as a category will have an awful lot of categories. If you limit yourself to 2,000 words, you may not be able to include more than one or two words per category.

Word frequencies in the Norwegian original texts, fiction, non-fiction
Word frequencies in the Norwegian translations, fiction, non-fiction
http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/services/omc/enpc/

The Norwegian Newspaper Corpus (NNC) "is a large monitor corpus representing contemporary Norwegian language in both its written varieties, Bokmål and Nynorsk. The corpus is compiled through daily harvesting and processing of published texts from the web edition of Norwegian newspapers.

As of April 2011, the NNC is a little short of 1 billion words, which makes it the largest searchable corpus of Norwegian." You'll need to figure out how to get a frequency list from their data:
http://avis.uib.no/avis/om-aviskorpuset/english

[Uncle Roger]

Thanks a lot reineke, that helps. I'm always a bit cautious about frequency lists as they tend to have a bias due to their source so I'm always trying to strike a balance between those and the type of words a standard language course would throw at you.
But those will have to do.