Min. Av. Max. vocab building

ayprof
April 26, 2010 at 11:21 PM posted in General Discussion

Hello, lurking for a long time, thought I'd pop my head up and add something.

So, I was a reading of a pretty interesting technique to help build understanding of different "families" of words using degrees of distinctions.  Using a dictionary to do this is pretty tedious (and probably not accurate as far as actual usage), so I thought I'd throw a post up and see if people wanted to contribute (I say this not yet having a contribution...yes, I know, lame).

The idea is to add words in an array of degrees of intensity, approval, disapproval, weight, or any other characteristic using the "minimum," "average," and "maximum" of that group or family.  A few examples might be (in English):

creek, stream, river

pebble, rock, boulder

big, huge, gargantuan

dislike, hate, detest

pink, red, scarlet,

etc.

I'll try to add some some more later (in Chinese, of course).

What about it?  Know any?

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hamshank
April 29, 2010 at 02:18 PM

1) 石 - Shí = Rock/Stone

2) 岩 - Yán = Cliff

3) 山 - Shān = Mountain

Also note what the Hanzi have in common. :)

 

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m8r7egy501
April 29, 2010 at 12:55 PM

It's one of the (wrong) myths of vocab learning: Words learned in semantic sets are retained better. But that's not true: read more... http://bit.ly/d0dHYv

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seanpadraig
April 29, 2010 at 09:40 AM

An important technique in building fluency quickly

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xialifeidao
April 29, 2010 at 06:34 AM

biggest

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richardcombes
April 28, 2010 at 03:43 PM

你犯错了, 不是 ‘镇大’. ‘真大’才对了。

镇有‘城市’的意思。

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clairez
April 29, 2010 at 03:49 PM

the last one is so funny:)

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suansuanru
April 29, 2010 at 03:07 PM

巨大

超级大

超级无敌巨无霸! hehe this one is joking

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ansanjodon
April 29, 2010 at 01:46 AM

请问最最最大应该怎么说?

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xiao_liang
April 28, 2010 at 07:25 PM

oops. 对了。谢谢你更正。

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xiao_liang
April 27, 2010 at 08:16 AM

It's an interesting thought. I've found in chinese, descriptors tend to be simpler, but you modify them more regularly. E.g.:

大 - big

很大 - very big

镇大 - really big

最大 - the biggest!