The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

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Sprachprofi
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Sprachprofi » Wed Jul 20, 2022 8:24 pm

Beli Tsar wrote:There's no question that a good grasp of word-building can help build vocabulary. But, as Le Baron says, isn't it actually pretty intuitive? While it's true textbooks could often give a little more attention to this, it often comes naturally.

I decided to give this a quick test: I'm working on Latin at the moment, haven't given any explicit attention to this, and am still a beginner really, and looked up some decent lists of Latin suffixes. While Latin might be too easy (lots are reused in English/Romance languages, after all) there were virtually no unknown suffixes... I've just absorbed them naturally through reading and vocab study.

How much better would explicit study leverage this?


I cannot say with confidence how much it would help when learning languages from a language family that you already know, because I only studied languages from other language families after I learned this trick. And I must say that it was a lifesaver for me in Indonesian, Hebrew, Arabic, Swahili, Croatian and even Modern Greek (which has more cognates). If you want to learn 1000+ words in a language that is not related to a language you already know, and you have to learn each letter salad word individually rather than being told about the interrelations, you're in for a world of pain. I have not reached B2 in all of these languages yet and waiting till then would have definitely been too late. In Arabic and Hebrew especially, I went crazy with the way all words sounded basically the same at the A1 level already. In Indonesian it was also difficult to distinguish belajar, mengajar, pelajaran, pengajar etc. and remember which means which. In Swahili I kept confusing kufunga/kufungua, kutaka/kutakua etc. until I intuited the mechanism - which was NOT explained when these words were introduced. I think textbooks do students a great disservice in not pointing out logical affix systems as soon as they are encountered, making it unnecessarily difficult to memorise vocabulary that differs only by a couple letters and completely preventing the early acquisition of dozens of words that use the same affix.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:08 am

Beli Tsar wrote:There's no question that a good grasp of word-building can help build vocabulary. But, as Le Baron says, isn't it actually pretty intuitive? While it's true textbooks could often give a little more attention to this, it often comes naturally.

It comes naturally to successful learners -- as I always say, the important thing for any discussions should be to make explicit what we naturally do and naturally notice that the average learner doesn't, and try to give advice on how to do it.

I'm currently working at a centre preparing foreign students for entry into university. My main role is teaching introductory computing courses, and when teaching new subject terminology, I tend to break things down into roots and affixes -- comparing "rectification" with "correct", for example -- because my students don't seem to do this automatically. We're talking about people who're above the global average on their mastery of a foreign language, although most still require a lot of language work to get to the level required for standard university study.

If they're not doing it, most learners won't be.

That said, the problem with the article is that there's no talk of when or how.

I remember having a discussion on the Michel Thomas forums with Ginny Catmur, Hodder's editor for the MT courses, about the MT Japanese introducing dore, sore, are at the same time. I pointed out that Thomas only taught one thing at a time, and she responded by saying it was one thing -- one pattern. But Thomas himself taught a word as one thing, then only taught the pattern by replacing one morpheme of the word once it had started to be learned.
This wasn't a huge delay -- it may only have been a matter of ten minutes -- but the separation seems to be important to avoid the confusion.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby agabara » Mon Jul 25, 2022 4:04 am

This is definitely covered in Michel Thomas courses. Not necessarily comprehensively all the time, but to give some specific examples: in the Spanish Vocabulary course it is taught that you can add des- or in- to the beginning of adjectives to form the opposite (e.g. olvidable (forgettable) -> inolvidable (unforgettable)). In one of the Russian courses, it is taught that you can add -тель to verbs to form nouns, e.g. ‎писать (to write) -> писатель (writer). These are just a few examples off the top of my head; there are many more.

Language Transfer also covers this (conversación (noun) -> conversar (verb), to give just one example).

I only briefly studied Malay - I definitely knew the importance of affixes, but I forget exactly where I picked that up. Anyway, just today I happened to come across a short video about Malay, and it was mentioned even there (https://youtu.be/v5PU83mAZJQ?t=441 starting around 7:21). So I'm surprised if it isn't covered in any courses.

Similarly for Arabic - I've never actually studied it but I know that many words are formed from 3-letter roots. Language Transfer has Arabic vocabulary cards that show this, so presumably this is covered in their main course as well (I've never taken it though, so I can't be sure). https://www.dropbox.com/s/btbh7iizg5qwo ... F.pdf?dl=0

The best general resource I've seen for this is Wiktionary, specifically the Etymology, Derived terms, and Related terms sections (e.g. here's an entry that has all three sections populated, for reference: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D ... B4#Russian). I always consult this when I'm learning new words.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby s_allard » Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:19 pm

Sprachprofi wrote:...
I think textbooks do students a great disservice in not pointing out logical affix systems as soon as they are encountered, making it unnecessarily difficult to memorise vocabulary that differs only by a couple letters and completely preventing the early acquisition of dozens of words that use the same affix.


When I read the article linked to by the OP, things got off to a rocky start. First of all, after stating the many people struggle to grow their vocabulary in their target language, the author states that the usual advice is to use mnemonics and a spaced-recognition system such as Anki.

I strongly doubt that this is the usual advice for growing vocabulary. The only way to grow your vocabulary is to be exposed to new material and then study the new words as they come up, usually with the help of a dictionary. Mnemonics and SRS are useful tools, among others, for committing the new words to memory.

Then speaking about a hidden and universal system for growing vocabulary the author writes :

You will discover this system in German and Chinese, in Hebrew, Russian and Indonesian, in Greek and Swahili, and I'm sure in most other languages. Why am I so confident? Because humans are lazy.

We are too lazy to invent completely new word roots for each new concept.


I imagine this was probably tongue-in-cheek but to me it sounded rather trite and frankly off-putting. Derivational structures in language have evolved not because of human laziness but rather because of a combination of human creativity and internal forces of languages evolution.

For example, one factor of change, especially in vocabulary, is contact with other languages. Speakers take words from other languages simply because the words are already there. Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply adapt the so-called borrowings into your native system ? And voilà, you expand the expressive possibilities of your language.

After that rocky start, the article goes on to discuss the multiplier effect of using the derivational structures based on some universal categories such as opposites, people, places, abstract concepts, adverbs, actions, ability.

For example, in French the ending –erie is often, but not always, associated with the place where things are made or sold. So we have possonnerie (fish monger), boulangerie (bakery), pâtisserie (pastry stop), friperie (used clothing shop), épicerie (grocery store), etc. So knowing how the –erie ending works here helps to quickly expand one’s vocabulary.

I think this idea is basically sound. Yes, there is a pattern here that we can see throughout the language. But, there are some complications. Not all the words that end in –erie refer to places (e.g. niaiserie (a little thing), poterie (pottery), ânerie (stupidity)). And then there are many places that have names that do not end in –erie ( e.g. pharmacie (pharmacy), magasin (shop), école (school), atelier (workshop), etc.).

The big problem in all this is that despite the existence of structural patterns that give useful cues, one has to actually learn how to use and not use the individual words in real contexts. For example, in English we can say well and unwell are opposites but good and •ungood are not (at least in my dialect).

I should point out that to this day former US president Donald Trump is mocked for his use of the adverb bigly derived very correctly I should point out from the adjective big.

Finally, to take an example that is not some universal category, I would like to look at phrasal verbs in English. As everybody here knows, English has this really interesting way of creating new verbs by adding one, two or even three prepositions to an existing verb. So you can instantly expand your vocabulary by simply adding a small list of prepositions to whatever verbs. For example, take the verb come and you can make come on, come in, come across, come over, come down, come down with, come up, come up with, come by, come for, etc.

Does this mean that instead of one verb come, you now have expanded your vocabulary to 10 new verbs ? Yes and no. Yes, It’s true they are all variants of come but, no, because many of the meanings are totally different and you therefore have to learn how to use each verb individually. In fact you have to be a rather advanced speaker of English to be able to use all these derived verbs accurately.

There are a few other points I could make but I’ll stop here by saying that derivational patterns are of course important for simplifying the learning of vocabulary but it’s not as simple as it looks.
Last edited by s_allard on Tue Jul 26, 2022 5:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jul 26, 2022 2:10 pm

s_allard wrote:I should point out that to this day former US president Donald Trump is mocked for his use of the adverb bigly derived very correctly I should point out from the adjective big.

It is however his own derivation. The adverb for big is....big. It's down to habit and English's notorious lack of consistency.

E.g: 'He acts big, but he's a scaredy-cat really.' Not bigly.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Dragon27 » Tue Jul 26, 2022 4:36 pm

I heard that he was (and maybe still is) actually saying "big league", which was misinterpreted as "bigly".
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Tue Jul 26, 2022 4:45 pm

Dragon27 wrote:I heard that he was (and maybe still is) actually saying "big league", which was misinterpreted as "bigly".

Yes. That makes more sense. Though 'sense' on that topic is likely a misused word.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby s_allard » Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:29 am

Le Baron wrote:
s_allard wrote:I should point out that to this day former US president Donald Trump is mocked for his use of the adverb bigly derived very correctly I should point out from the adjective big.

It is however his own derivation. The adverb for big is....big. It's down to habit and English's notorious lack of consistency.

E.g: 'He acts big, but he's a scaredy-cat really.' Not bigly.


You are of course right. My wording was a bit ambiguous. What I clumsily attempted to say was that bigly followed the pattern of adjective+ly for adverb creation in English but is not considered proper English by most native speakers.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Le Baron » Wed Jul 27, 2022 9:55 am

s_allard wrote:You are of course right. My wording was a bit ambiguous. What I clumsily attempted to say was that bigly followed the pattern of adjective+ly for adverb creation in English but is not considered proper English by most native speakers.

Yes I see your point now. If a pattern was being followed it would be a logical conclusion.
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Re: The Hidden Universal System that can Multiply Your Vocabulary

Postby Cainntear » Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:42 pm

Dragon27 wrote:I heard that he was (and maybe still is) actually saying "big league", which was misinterpreted as "bigly".

That's absolutely how I heard it the first time I listened to the infamous clip. Given all the stupid things he's actually said, I thought it was a bit unhelpful for people to place so much emphasis on something he didn't actually say.
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