Good way to look up how a word is used in context

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språker
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Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby språker » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:06 pm

When I study, I often google for words I am trying to get the grip on in my target language, hoping to get search results of genuine text with the word surrounded by other words in some usage. Sometimes I don't get that very good suggestions by google though, and I have to modify my search, or scroll quite among the results.

I am just throwing away a question: are you using some other, potentially more efficient, method for getting context examples? Sometimes there might exist text corpus databases, e.g. containing a backlog of newspaper content, that can be used for this, and also for research on frequency. By the way, I remember that google reported the number of "hits" for a search, but not anymore?
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby luke » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:13 pm

I use wordreference for example usages.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby CaroleR » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:34 pm

språker wrote:When I study, I often google for words I am trying to get the grip on in my target language, hoping to get search results of genuine text with the word surrounded by other words in some usage. Sometimes I don't get that very good suggestions by google though, and I have to modify my search, or scroll quite among the results.

I am just throwing away a question: are you using some other, potentially more efficient, method for getting context examples? Sometimes there might exist text corpus databases, e.g. containing a backlog of newspaper content, that can be used for this, and also for research on frequency. By the way, I remember that google reported the number of "hits" for a search, but not anymore?

I like Linguee, although I don't know how good it is for languages other than English and French. They use very simple sentences but they also have real-life examples if the simple ones aren't adequate.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby tastyonions » Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:53 pm

One tip for Google is to limit the top-level domains in your search to ones associated to the specific countries speaking the language you're learning, e.g. if you are learning French try using "site:*.fr" as part of your search terms, or you can try limiting it even more specifically to a big news site or somewhere else with a whole lot of articles.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby språker » Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:41 pm

CaroleR wrote:I like Linguee, although I don't know how good it is for languages other than English and French. They use very simple sentences but they also have real-life examples if the simple ones aren't adequate.
This one looks really good! Seems to be based on EU legal texts, with good translations being available in all EU languages. Thanks!
tastyonions wrote:One tip for Google is to limit the top-level domains in your search to ones associated to the specific countries speaking the language you're learning, e.g. if you are learning French try using "site:*.fr" as part of your search terms, or you can try limiting it even more specifically to a big news site or somewhere else with a whole lot of articles.
I sometimes use this one, at least for the top-domains. Probably there are more googe-fu tricks that can be used. Anyone know where the "number of hits" went? I remember searching for two different spellings of a word, to see which one is more popular, or more popular together with some other word.
luke wrote:I use wordreference for example usages.
Looks really good for the languages supported. I'll save it for when I return to French.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby tungemål » Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:51 pm

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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby Kraut » Tue Mar 07, 2023 10:56 pm

This is a very fast, very comfortable and very efficient set-up. Only possible in Firefox.
You need the following combination.

1. Simple Translate, pop-up dictionary (can use Google or DeepL Translate)
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/a ... translate/
2. and 3. are used together as one single app
2. https://www.perplexity.ai/, a new AI search engine that sums up what it finds and links to its sources for further study
3. https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/a ... ictionary/
Leung's pop-up-dictionary

USE PERPLEXITY SEARCH IN THE POP-UP-DICTIONARY
How to add dictionary to popupdict
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDCCVYuLLFM


I analysed this Lithuanian sentence:
Gaukite naujausią situacijos Vokietijoje apžvalgą ir bendrą informaciją apie atvykimą ir viešnagę.
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Last edited by Kraut on Tue Mar 07, 2023 11:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby Kraut » Tue Mar 07, 2023 11:13 pm

example sentences
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby coldrainwater » Thu Mar 09, 2023 9:52 pm

As posted by @tungemål, I primarily use context.reverso.net. For spoken examples, I have also used youglish.com. AI like perplexity seems like a getting better over time alternative.
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Re: Good way to look up how a word is used in context

Postby leosmith » Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:53 am

språker wrote:are you using some other, potentially more efficient, method for getting context examples?
I use Language Crush, which shows sample sentences when you select a word.
Untitled.jpg

If that isn't enough, I just click on the dictionary button, where I have contexto-reverso waiting.
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