I’m also unconvinced that etymology deepens comprehension much; usually, we want to understand someone, not somewords; this comes from understanding what that person intended to communicate, not from unlocking obscure arcana behind the words they happened to use.
Perhaps “etymology” was a misleading word choice. I didn’t mean to suggest that it would be useful for me to develop a deep historical understanding of how English words evolved. Instead, I was referring to the simpler task of learning to reliably see the parts making up English words. The goal wouldn’t be to deepen my comprehension of individual words; the point would be to make it easier to remember large swathes of esoteric vocabulary.
I certainly don’t think Paul Graham’s skill as an essayist has much to do with his English; if he knows a second language even marginally well, I’m sure he would write in it nearly as effectively. To wit, he eschews esoteric explication. Writing is a craft, not a lookup table.
Paul Graham is famous for having an extremely plain-spoken and easily comprehensible way of writing about complex subjects. While I appreciate that kind of style, making a life philosophy out of it seems far too limiting. There are plenty of occasions where having a knack for complex grammar and esoteric terminology is useful.
Spoken English and written English certainly have plenty in common, but they’re different tools. To see Paul Graham seeming almost incredulous that people don’t write the way they speak was pretty odd. Being able to look up any word you don’t know without interrupting the flow of discussion is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why written language is so divergent from spoken.
With all the above in mind, when it comes to Anki cards and vocabulary, I am convinced that a great example sentence is much more useful than a great denotative definition. Connotations matter, and a visualizable, narratable context goes far both in conveying the extra implications of a word and in providing hooks for one’s memory.
Certainly. I would never learn a word out of context, whether in a foreign language or in English.
My Anki deck is over 1 GB, as over 500 of my notes contain a 5-30 second video clip. Often when I encounter a new Japanese word in a show I’m watching, I grab the clip to act as a contextual definition.
Note that my example for how to enter the word “proselyte” into Anki also operated in terms of a contextual definition. It was a quote from Hume that made the meaning clear to me.
Still, you’re unlikely to absorb the deep flavor of the word—the full intent of one who wields it fluently—without encountering the word many times in varied contexts.
Very true, but it’s far easier to absorb all of that information if you have the word securely lodged in your mind. Picking up connotations efficiently calls for making sure every new word acquired is remembered as being form A with meaning B within context C, that is until a richer set of associations begins to take hold.
Most of what is known to help reading comprehension is language independent, as is most of what is known to help you write better.
Note that I have two main concerns.
First of all, I would like to delve more deeply into certain sciences which have a large memorization burden for terminology, such as medicine and physiology. Although most important is to understand the material, forgetting the words over and over would be a huge time waster. Just like learning how to type with proper mechanics optimizes writing efficiency, coming up with a good system for memorizing new words seems crucial. My time is limited.
Secondly, I want to level up my writing ability. Seeing as you invoked Paul Graham in an earlier passage as evidence, I suppose we may have deep disagreements here. I believe that knowing thousands of words similar in obscurity to “profligate” would be very useful. My solution for making sure these terms don’t make my writing inaccessible and opaque is to use common words which sort of do the job before repeating myself in uncommon words I feel are more fitting.
With that said, I don’t really understand your point. Certainly understanding itself is language independent, but using language isn’t. I tried to address the tendency to make a distinction between one’s native language and one’s target foreign language(s) in my original post, but I suppose I didn’t go into enough detail.
I’m sure you have no disagreements with my daily study of Japanese, as I’m still only halfway through the journey to sounding like a native speaker. What’s so different about English? There are plenty of words and grammatical devices I don’t use because I’m not familiar enough with them. You may say that I should simply read more and write more, but why neglect tools like Anki which could make for more disciplined and consistent improvement?
Your post seems appropriate as a response to someone who’s at risk of outstripping their conceptual understanding with their language usage. Such people exist in very large numbers. They grab words at random from a thesaurus or weave narratives using words their favorite scientists use without really knowing what they’re talking about. But I don’t believe I’m one of these people. There are plenty of thoughts I have which I find difficult to represent with English.
Perhaps “etymology” was a misleading word choice. I didn’t mean to suggest that it would be useful for me to develop a deep historical understanding of how English words evolved. Instead, I was referring to the simpler task of learning to reliably see the parts making up English words. The goal wouldn’t be to deepen my comprehension of individual words; the point would be to make it easier to remember large swathes of esoteric vocabulary.
For medical terminology, for instance, I imagine it would be efficient to learn the most commonly used Greek and Latin elements before trying to acquire a large jargon base.
Paul Graham is famous for having an extremely plain-spoken and easily comprehensible way of writing about complex subjects. While I appreciate that kind of style, making a life philosophy out of it seems far too limiting. There are plenty of occasions where having a knack for complex grammar and esoteric terminology is useful.
Spoken English and written English certainly have plenty in common, but they’re different tools. To see Paul Graham seeming almost incredulous that people don’t write the way they speak was pretty odd. Being able to look up any word you don’t know without interrupting the flow of discussion is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why written language is so divergent from spoken.
Certainly. I would never learn a word out of context, whether in a foreign language or in English.
My Anki deck is over 1 GB, as over 500 of my notes contain a 5-30 second video clip. Often when I encounter a new Japanese word in a show I’m watching, I grab the clip to act as a contextual definition.
Note that my example for how to enter the word “proselyte” into Anki also operated in terms of a contextual definition. It was a quote from Hume that made the meaning clear to me.
Very true, but it’s far easier to absorb all of that information if you have the word securely lodged in your mind. Picking up connotations efficiently calls for making sure every new word acquired is remembered as being form A with meaning B within context C, that is until a richer set of associations begins to take hold.
Note that I have two main concerns.
First of all, I would like to delve more deeply into certain sciences which have a large memorization burden for terminology, such as medicine and physiology. Although most important is to understand the material, forgetting the words over and over would be a huge time waster. Just like learning how to type with proper mechanics optimizes writing efficiency, coming up with a good system for memorizing new words seems crucial. My time is limited.
Secondly, I want to level up my writing ability. Seeing as you invoked Paul Graham in an earlier passage as evidence, I suppose we may have deep disagreements here. I believe that knowing thousands of words similar in obscurity to “profligate” would be very useful. My solution for making sure these terms don’t make my writing inaccessible and opaque is to use common words which sort of do the job before repeating myself in uncommon words I feel are more fitting.
With that said, I don’t really understand your point. Certainly understanding itself is language independent, but using language isn’t. I tried to address the tendency to make a distinction between one’s native language and one’s target foreign language(s) in my original post, but I suppose I didn’t go into enough detail.
I’m sure you have no disagreements with my daily study of Japanese, as I’m still only halfway through the journey to sounding like a native speaker. What’s so different about English? There are plenty of words and grammatical devices I don’t use because I’m not familiar enough with them. You may say that I should simply read more and write more, but why neglect tools like Anki which could make for more disciplined and consistent improvement?
Your post seems appropriate as a response to someone who’s at risk of outstripping their conceptual understanding with their language usage. Such people exist in very large numbers. They grab words at random from a thesaurus or weave narratives using words their favorite scientists use without really knowing what they’re talking about. But I don’t believe I’m one of these people. There are plenty of thoughts I have which I find difficult to represent with English.