The boundary of language is the boundary of the world.
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Editor’s note: When it comes to learning a foreign language, the most headache for many people is to memorize words. There is a question on Zhihu, “Is there any way to memorize words when we meet each other late”. This question received 1772 answers. The author of this article, Diana Bernardo, is also a language beginner. She once thought it was easy to learn a language (because her mother tongue Portuguese and Spanish are very similar, and even have similar vocabulary with English and French), but when she has to learn a subject When the new language was new, she caught her blind. However, she still tried to learn Hungarian and opened more doors for herself. In this article How to Learn Vocabulary in a New Language Quickly, she summarized the three methods she used to recite Hungarian words. They are all simple, but they all require persistence.
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“Jó éjszakát.”IMy friend said. (Translator’s note: “Good night” in Hungarian.)
Stop, I don’t seem to know this Hungarian word yet in my head.
“You say it again.” I said to her.
“Jó éjszakát.” She repeated.
“You is a cat?” I continued, trying to imitate her pronunciation. (Translator’s Note: The pronunciation of this sentence in English is similar to the Hungarian “JóThe pronunciation of “éjszakát” is exactly the same.)
She laughed, and I laughed: I seem to have discovered a little trick that I will never forget to say “good night” in Hungarian.
There are too many words in a language
I am Portuguese and I have never learned Spanish, but I can understand 80% of Spanish. Portuguese “home” is “casa”, and Spanish “home” is also “casa”; Portuguese “why” is “porquê”, Spanish is “porque”; “cat” in Portuguese is ” “gato”, Spanish is “gato”. Many words in Portuguese and Spanish are really similar.
Portuguese and English have many words the same, so learning the vocabulary of a new language has never been difficult for me. Until one day…I moved to Hungary.
Two years ago, I moved to Hungary. You may know that the capital of this country is Budapest, but most people should have never heard or spoken Hungarian. The reason is simple: Hungarian is too difficult and the scope of use is very small. If you are outside Hungary, no one may speak Hungarian; and the relationship between Hungarian and other languages is not close. Learning Hungarian has no effect on learning other languages. What help.
What does the second half of the sentence mean? “Potato” is “batata” in Portuguese, “patata” in Spanish, and “patate” in French, but in Hungarian, “Potato” is “burgonya”. Most languages in the world call “football” “football”, but Hungarians are different. The Hungarian “football” is “labdarúgás”.
This is simply a nightmare. However, I have to learn this language, so I must have a quick and effective way to memorize new words. Here are my three favorite methods.
1. Make a glossary
You may have heard of this method before, and every article about language learning will have it. Do you know why not? Because this method is particularly effective.
But you have to pay attention to the method of making the glossary. What words are included in your vocabulary, and the tools you use to make the vocabulary are very important. Personally, my vocabulary includes words, translations, and pronunciation of words (sound helps us remember words better).
I prefer to make vocabularies based on topics, such as body parts vocabulary, fruit vocabulary, common verb vocabulary, etc. Once you have memorized the vocabulary of a topic, you can then try to participate in the conversation on the topic. This method is very beneficial. A few days ago, a Hungarian friend and I were chatting in English. When we talked about the weather, I immediately switched to Hungarian because I just rememberedMy weather vocabulary.
2. Homophony: connect new words with words you know
For example, “You is a cat” is the Hungarian way of saying “good night”. When I first started learning Hungarian, Hungarian words were strange syllables to me, and it was difficult to remember strange, even seemingly random words. The easiest way to overcome this problem is to associate these new words with words you already know in other languages.
I still remember how difficult it was to learn the Hungarian “mindig”: it means “always” and is a very common word, but I can’t remember it all the time. Until one day I suddenly discovered that it sounds very similar to “medingo”, which means “homeless” in my native Portuguese. What is the relationship between “always” and “homeless”? Nothing at all. But somehow, this is how I remember the word.
You can also use these associations to write a few interesting sentences, which makes it easier to Easy to remember ——Adding context to words is very helpful for maintaining memory.
3. Some words have higher priority
“Research shows that if you learn the 800 most commonly used words in English, you can understand 75% of English in daily life.”
The lemma is the basic form of a word. For example, in English, “sing”, “sings” and “singing” are different words, but their lemmas are all “sing”. So, before you plan to gnaw through every word in the dictionary, think about which words are more useful.
Fortunately, every language has a vocabulary called “high frequency vocabulary”. As the name suggests, it includes the most commonly used words in a language, and they are sorted by frequency of use. You can start learning a new language by learning it.
After mastering the basic vocabulary, you can continue to memorize other vocabulary. But remember, vocabulary is not equal: at first, you don’t need to know how to say “cup”, “mug” (big cup)), “beaker” (beaker) and “chalice” (Holy Grail), you only need to learn “glass” to refer to all the above items.
So, before you spend time and energy on learning new words, Take a moment to choose Words to learn. You can work smartly and efficiently, don’t just rely on brute force.
As time goes on, learning vocabulary will become easier
Learning the vocabulary of a foreign language may seem like a daunting task, but it is a key step to fluency in the foreign language.
Maybe your grammar is very good, but if you know too little vocabulary, how do you use this grammar in conversation and writing? What makes all language learners happy is that the more words you learn, the easier it is to learn new words. For example, in Hungarian, “leg” is “láb” and “head” is “fej”. Do you know how they mean “feet”? “Lábfej”, the head of the leg. If you know “legs” and “heads”, then guessing what “lábfej” means is not a problem for you. Every language conforms to this law.
In addition, the more vocabulary you have, the easier it is to infer the meaning of some words from the context. When I first started learning, most people understood the whole article, and felt that most of the words in it were almost random letters. However, once your study gets deeper, you can gradually understand the basic sentences. Through the context, it will become easier to understand the words you don’t know in these sentences and infer the meaning of the words.
Learning the vocabulary of a new language is more like running a marathon (rather than a sprint). There is only one thing you need to do-keep running, don’t stop. In the end, your brain has been trained for a long time and does not require much effort to perform at its best.
Additional words
The boundary of language is the boundary of the world.
——Wittgenstein
Language and culture are deeply connected. In the process of language learning, you can clearly understandThis connection was verified. Every now and then, you will come across some words, they will give you a new perspective on the world-these words may not exist in your mother tongue, but these words are extremely accurate to hit the feelings you have always felt.
Don’t think of learning vocabulary as a particularly hard task, try to think of learning vocabulary as a fun, exciting, and powerful thing. By learning new vocabulary, your world will be broader and you will find that you have your favorite word in the new language. My favorite Hungarian word is “pattogatott kukorica”, which means “popcorn”. The reason I like it is that the pronunciation of this word is fun, and I laugh every time I hear it or say it.
Translator: Hi Tang