Why would I need a dictionary when I know all the words?
July 20, 2011 9:03 AM Subscribe
Recently some German friends claimed that owning a dictionary of your native language was a very English-language thing. i.e. that its very unusual in Germany to have a German-German Dictionary in the home / or to own one growing up.
Is this true for other native language speakers? Is this even true of Germany at all?
They further claimed that this is because English has a lot more 'words' than other languages (They claimed that German has lots of compound words but a limited number of stems).
What about French? or say Asiatic Languages?
They further claimed that this is because English has a lot more 'words' than other languages (They claimed that German has lots of compound words but a limited number of stems).
What about French? or say Asiatic Languages?
Are Germans born knowing how to spell every word? Do they just not care if words are spelled correctly when they write? If someone didn't know how to spell a word, would they have traveled to the library? On the face of it this seems very unlikely, at least in the pre-Internet age.
posted by dhalgren at 9:19 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by dhalgren at 9:19 AM on July 20, 2011
Response by poster: Spelling in German is much much more consistent than in English. That is one of the other reasons English speakers grow up with a Dictionary I believe - as English spelling is notoriously random.
posted by mary8nne at 9:23 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by mary8nne at 9:23 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
A former girlfriend who lived in Hungary said she'd heard the same thing. A Hungarian couldn't believe that she'd consider herself literate in English if there were so many words she didn't know. English does have a lot more words--no need for scare quotes--well over half a million by conservative standards, verses 120,000 in Hungarian.
Another reason English speakers use dictionaries is that the spelling is so inconsistent. A fluent speaker of Italian should be able to spell every word they hear.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:23 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Another reason English speakers use dictionaries is that the spelling is so inconsistent. A fluent speaker of Italian should be able to spell every word they hear.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:23 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
"Are Germans born knowing how to spell every word?"
Many languages have phonetic spelling, unlike English. I don't know about German, don't speak it, but in many languages a dictionary is not particularly necessary for spelling uses. If you can say the word, you can spell it. None of this "enough" and "phonics" and "island" and "phlegm."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:25 AM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]
Many languages have phonetic spelling, unlike English. I don't know about German, don't speak it, but in many languages a dictionary is not particularly necessary for spelling uses. If you can say the word, you can spell it. None of this "enough" and "phonics" and "island" and "phlegm."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:25 AM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]
A fluent speaker of Italian should be able to spell every word they hear.
This is definitely not true for French. In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
posted by goethean at 9:26 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
This is definitely not true for French. In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
posted by goethean at 9:26 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
Every single Polish family I know - and I live in Poland - has a good Polish-Polish dictionary, at the very least - and often an etymological dictionary and thesaurus as well, in addition to at least one bilingual one if they're studying a different language. They are, asking the Polish person next to me, reasonably priced and often used as gifts for students who win competitions at school or for students moving up to high school or university.
This may be because Polish has a number of case-changed forms for many, many words, so there are more forms to memorize for uncommon words, I guess. The plural forms of "beer" ("piwo"), for example - a word I use all the time - include: piwo, piwa, piwu, piwo, piwem, piwie, piwo for the singular form in all the cases, and in plural forms I've got to contend with piwa, piw, piwom, piwa, piwami, piwach, piwa. Some are the same form - but are used in a different case. Polish-Polish dictionaries are vital for me, a learner of Polish, for even the simplest of writing, as well - my level is too high to get away with using whatever form comes to mind right away and I am constantly scrambling to not sound like an utter fool. It's something that comes naturally to people here, but there's even disagreement among people over whether one should say "szedłem" or "szłem" for something as simple as "I went".
The older, more erudite Poles I know also pride themselves on not speaking in a way which "slangifies" things - an older person would NEVER use "na ra!" for "na razie" ("see you later") the way These Kids Today™ do.
Granted, I'm a teacher, so I may have a self-selecting group of especially literate people around. But to answer your question: yes, dictionaries sell well in Poland and are very common.
posted by mdonley at 9:26 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
This may be because Polish has a number of case-changed forms for many, many words, so there are more forms to memorize for uncommon words, I guess. The plural forms of "beer" ("piwo"), for example - a word I use all the time - include: piwo, piwa, piwu, piwo, piwem, piwie, piwo for the singular form in all the cases, and in plural forms I've got to contend with piwa, piw, piwom, piwa, piwami, piwach, piwa. Some are the same form - but are used in a different case. Polish-Polish dictionaries are vital for me, a learner of Polish, for even the simplest of writing, as well - my level is too high to get away with using whatever form comes to mind right away and I am constantly scrambling to not sound like an utter fool. It's something that comes naturally to people here, but there's even disagreement among people over whether one should say "szedłem" or "szłem" for something as simple as "I went".
The older, more erudite Poles I know also pride themselves on not speaking in a way which "slangifies" things - an older person would NEVER use "na ra!" for "na razie" ("see you later") the way These Kids Today™ do.
Granted, I'm a teacher, so I may have a self-selecting group of especially literate people around. But to answer your question: yes, dictionaries sell well in Poland and are very common.
posted by mdonley at 9:26 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
In my experience, that's not true in French households. I think I've seen a Larousse on just about every bookshelf in the homes of friends and family. When my grand-mere packed her life into a steamer trunk in 1945, her Larousse came with her.
posted by annaramma at 9:27 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by annaramma at 9:27 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
I may be biased because I only hung out with college students while I was in China, and college students are not a large subsegment of the population there... but, yeah, everyone had a dictionary. This is because there is almost no correlation between how a word sounds and how it is pronounced in Chinese, so you can't 'sound something out' in order to write it. I think there was a study in which some ridiculously huge percentage of the population had NO idea how to write 'sneeze,' because it just almost never comes up. So you need a dictionary handy just to remember how to write simple but rarely-used characters. (Most dictionaries these days have the words organized by their romanized spellings, making them easier to look up.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:29 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:29 AM on July 20, 2011
between how a word sounds and how it is pronounced
I mean 'how a word sounds and how it is written,' ARGH
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:30 AM on July 20, 2011
I mean 'how a word sounds and how it is written,' ARGH
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:30 AM on July 20, 2011
Response by poster: More anecdotal evidence a friend native Mandarin speaker says she did have a Mandarin-Mandarin dictionary growing up.
I may be more related to how phonetically regular the spelling is; French and English are very irregular. German is quite regular.
posted by mary8nne at 9:31 AM on July 20, 2011
I may be more related to how phonetically regular the spelling is; French and English are very irregular. German is quite regular.
posted by mary8nne at 9:31 AM on July 20, 2011
How common is it for a US or British family to own a dictionary? I'd bet it's common, but not universal, especially these days.
My own experience is with Russian, where a dictionary (словарь) is more or less assumed to be a foreign language dictionary, unless it's specifically an encyclopedic dictionary (толковый словарь). It's certainly more common to own encyclopedias, since encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake is considered a positive thing.
One thing dictionaries probably aren't used for is looking up spelling. Russian language culture (i.e., how people feel and talk about their language) is extremely prone to elitism and chauvinism, so being able to spell and pronounce shibboleths in sanctioned ways is a source of social cachet.
posted by Nomyte at 9:31 AM on July 20, 2011
My own experience is with Russian, where a dictionary (словарь) is more or less assumed to be a foreign language dictionary, unless it's specifically an encyclopedic dictionary (толковый словарь). It's certainly more common to own encyclopedias, since encyclopedic knowledge for its own sake is considered a positive thing.
One thing dictionaries probably aren't used for is looking up spelling. Russian language culture (i.e., how people feel and talk about their language) is extremely prone to elitism and chauvinism, so being able to spell and pronounce shibboleths in sanctioned ways is a source of social cachet.
posted by Nomyte at 9:31 AM on July 20, 2011
goethean: You're thinking of this old thread, which is somewhat relevant to the current question. The challenge isn't that the spelling is hard (although, in French I guess it could be), but that the story is somewhat ambiguous at first. As in, you need to go back and correct the gender-specific suffixes of words when you didn't know the gender of the person at the beginning.
posted by anaelith at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by anaelith at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2011
Response by poster: In Australia when i was in school pretty much everyone had a little Collins English-English dictionary in their bag.
Russian has very regular spelling though, does it not ?
posted by mary8nne at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2011
Russian has very regular spelling though, does it not ?
posted by mary8nne at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2011
How do they settle scrabble arguments? ;)
Our english teacher used to say that we should always have a dictionary with us when we read and if we didn't have to look up at least 4 words then the material wasn't challenging enough.
I suck at languages but German was definitely my favourite, aside from the backwards numbers, I found it a very straight forward language.
posted by missmagenta at 9:38 AM on July 20, 2011
Our english teacher used to say that we should always have a dictionary with us when we read and if we didn't have to look up at least 4 words then the material wasn't challenging enough.
I suck at languages but German was definitely my favourite, aside from the backwards numbers, I found it a very straight forward language.
posted by missmagenta at 9:38 AM on July 20, 2011
"How common is it for a US or British family to own a dictionary? I'd bet it's common, but not universal, especially these days."
No, but considered important enough that my little city in the US Midwest has MULTIPLE local charities devoted to ensuring every fourth-grader receives a dictionary of their own to keep so they can advance their academics. THOUSANDS of students a year (all immediately looking up words like "poop" and "naked"). I don't know that there's any evidence that this works, but it highlights the cultural importance still placed on dictionaries, that there are groups that want to ensure it's as universal as possible.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011
No, but considered important enough that my little city in the US Midwest has MULTIPLE local charities devoted to ensuring every fourth-grader receives a dictionary of their own to keep so they can advance their academics. THOUSANDS of students a year (all immediately looking up words like "poop" and "naked"). I don't know that there's any evidence that this works, but it highlights the cultural importance still placed on dictionaries, that there are groups that want to ensure it's as universal as possible.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011
I have no idea what your friends are speaking of. The traditional German-German dictionary is the Duden. It is for Germans what the Dikke van Dale is for the Dutch. People of the generation of my grandparents constantly used it for Scrabble and crosswords. There's an online version of it. I only don't use it because most of my writing goes in English, or is about translation from, not to, German.
posted by Namlit at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by Namlit at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]
Russian has very regular spelling though, does it not ?
Ahmm...nyet.
posted by spicynuts at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011
When I was in Japan, my host family had a Japanese dictionary. They said they used it to look up characters they didn't know. However, that's perhaps not the same as needing to look up the meaning of a word one hears....
posted by acoutu at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by acoutu at 9:44 AM on July 20, 2011
Russian has very regular spelling though, does it not?
Superficially — yes. In practice — no. There are two main "features" that make spelling tricky: vowel gradation and morphologically-motivated silent consonants.
Vowel gradation means (in a very small nutshell) that the set of vowels that appear in stressed syllables is larger than the set of vowels that appear in unstressed syllables. Since syllable stress in Russian is basically free-roaming, declined forms of the same word will get stressed on different syllables, leading to various sorts of vowel reduction and mutation. But the spelling remains the same, and has to be memorized. There is a strategy schoolchildren learn that involves checking vowel quality by looking for stressed forms: река, /ri'ka/, "river," has a stress on the second syllable, so the first vowel is ambiguous; the plural, реки, /'reki/, is stressed on the first syllable and has the unreduced vowel.
Silent consonants are also common in words. Russian has undergone several periods of vowel deletion in its history, so some derived forms have now-unpronounceable clusters that get simplified in speech but not spelling. One checks for silent consonants by, again, looking for derived forms that resolve the cluster. An example is солнце, /'sonce/, "sun," where the l becomes exposed in forms like солнечный, /'solnečnyj/, "sunny."
posted by Nomyte at 9:50 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
Superficially — yes. In practice — no. There are two main "features" that make spelling tricky: vowel gradation and morphologically-motivated silent consonants.
Vowel gradation means (in a very small nutshell) that the set of vowels that appear in stressed syllables is larger than the set of vowels that appear in unstressed syllables. Since syllable stress in Russian is basically free-roaming, declined forms of the same word will get stressed on different syllables, leading to various sorts of vowel reduction and mutation. But the spelling remains the same, and has to be memorized. There is a strategy schoolchildren learn that involves checking vowel quality by looking for stressed forms: река, /ri'ka/, "river," has a stress on the second syllable, so the first vowel is ambiguous; the plural, реки, /'reki/, is stressed on the first syllable and has the unreduced vowel.
Silent consonants are also common in words. Russian has undergone several periods of vowel deletion in its history, so some derived forms have now-unpronounceable clusters that get simplified in speech but not spelling. One checks for silent consonants by, again, looking for derived forms that resolve the cluster. An example is солнце, /'sonce/, "sun," where the l becomes exposed in forms like солнечный, /'solnečnyj/, "sunny."
posted by Nomyte at 9:50 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]
Icelandic is quite regular, and everybody I know has a dictionary.
May I suggest that there is rather a correlation with being unwashed and unschooled and being dictionaryless? :)
posted by krilli at 10:03 AM on July 20, 2011
May I suggest that there is rather a correlation with being unwashed and unschooled and being dictionaryless? :)
posted by krilli at 10:03 AM on July 20, 2011
People in Japan are very big on dictionaries. Long before PDAs, let alone smartphones, were the norm, people often carried around electronic dictionaries (such as the "Wordtank") about the size of a checkbook. There's even an optical disc format that was developed in Japan, mostly for reference works: EPWING. Sony made a gadget called the Data Discman that used a different disc format, but served basically the same function.
These days, even some dumbphones come with built-in Japanese and English-Japanese dictionaries. People will often have a copy of Kojien (a big print dictionary that has something like the authority of the OED and the ubiquity of Webster's) at home—I've even seen a cheesy Japanese game show that had a "Kojien Quiz" where the presenter would read a definition and the contestant would try to guess the word being defined. So that's a part of the public consciousness. Chinese-character dictionaries are also common.
posted by adamrice at 10:11 AM on July 20, 2011
These days, even some dumbphones come with built-in Japanese and English-Japanese dictionaries. People will often have a copy of Kojien (a big print dictionary that has something like the authority of the OED and the ubiquity of Webster's) at home—I've even seen a cheesy Japanese game show that had a "Kojien Quiz" where the presenter would read a definition and the contestant would try to guess the word being defined. So that's a part of the public consciousness. Chinese-character dictionaries are also common.
posted by adamrice at 10:11 AM on July 20, 2011
omarlittle: did you have a dictionary in your home when you were a kid?
German husband: Yeah. Why?
omarlittle: some CHURmuhns were saying that it's an american thing to have dictionaries in the house. i thought that sounded odd.
German husband: Uh
German husband: That's weird. I think everyone I know has one.
Could it be an age thing? I mean, if these Germans are young, they might not have had a dictionary in their homes because they had the internet.
posted by omarlittle at 10:25 AM on July 20, 2011
German husband: Yeah. Why?
omarlittle: some CHURmuhns were saying that it's an american thing to have dictionaries in the house. i thought that sounded odd.
German husband: Uh
German husband: That's weird. I think everyone I know has one.
Could it be an age thing? I mean, if these Germans are young, they might not have had a dictionary in their homes because they had the internet.
posted by omarlittle at 10:25 AM on July 20, 2011
When we moved house a few years back I reluctantly boxed up my Larrousse, van Dale and so on to store in the attic since I'm rarely more than a few feet away from the instant dictionary that is the internet so I wonder how old your friends are? Are they of an age/disposition to equate spellchecks with computers rather than print dictionaries?
posted by humph at 10:26 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by humph at 10:26 AM on July 20, 2011
Why is everyone assuming dictionaries are for looking up spelling? That's one of the things they're used for in English-speaking countries, because English spelling is such a mess, but dictionaries are primarily for looking up the meanings of unfamiliar words. That's how they developed historically, and that's how they're used in most languages.
> Recently some German friends claimed that owning a dictionary of your native language was a very English-language thing. i.e. that its very unusual in Germany to have a German-German Dictionary in the home
I think your friends are simply wrong, and are extrapolating from their own experience.
posted by languagehat at 10:28 AM on July 20, 2011 [11 favorites]
> Recently some German friends claimed that owning a dictionary of your native language was a very English-language thing. i.e. that its very unusual in Germany to have a German-German Dictionary in the home
I think your friends are simply wrong, and are extrapolating from their own experience.
posted by languagehat at 10:28 AM on July 20, 2011 [11 favorites]
I grew up in a (literate, university-educated) Russian household and we did not have any Russian-Russian dictionaries. We did, however, have some ancient English-Russian ones.
posted by griphus at 10:33 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by griphus at 10:33 AM on July 20, 2011
goethean: This is definitely not true for French. In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
Plausible, but conversely: if a French-speaker reads a word, they can perfectly pronounce it. This is because the written language is phonetic ("eu" is always pronounced one way, "ph" has only one pronunciation...), but there is not a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and spellings ("o_e", "au", and "eau" all represent very similar or identical sounds).
English, of course, is far worse (more variable) in both directions.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2011
Plausible, but conversely: if a French-speaker reads a word, they can perfectly pronounce it. This is because the written language is phonetic ("eu" is always pronounced one way, "ph" has only one pronunciation...), but there is not a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and spellings ("o_e", "au", and "eau" all represent very similar or identical sounds).
English, of course, is far worse (more variable) in both directions.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2011
Response by poster: Hmm interesting.
The German friends in question are all Mid-30s and University types so they grew up pre-internet and are quite an arty / well cultured bunch.
A first I thought they were kidding around but after my incredulous disbeleif they repeated assured ne it was true.
and by the way omarlittle I didn't say 'American'.
posted by mary8nne at 10:48 AM on July 20, 2011
The German friends in question are all Mid-30s and University types so they grew up pre-internet and are quite an arty / well cultured bunch.
A first I thought they were kidding around but after my incredulous disbeleif they repeated assured ne it was true.
and by the way omarlittle I didn't say 'American'.
posted by mary8nne at 10:48 AM on July 20, 2011
Response by poster: Hey mdonley Most dictionaries I've encountered don't actually list all the noun cases for a particular word. Unless they are massive tomes.
posted by mary8nne at 10:51 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by mary8nne at 10:51 AM on July 20, 2011
I don't think this is true. I've never seen a reasonable sized bookshop in Germany that didn't stock Duden. Quite often they'll even have a large display. Kids will learn from their textbooks in school and friends in Germany all seem to have at least one Universalwörterbuch.
I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't found the Duden name so strange when I first saw it.
posted by Olli at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2011
I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't found the Duden name so strange when I first saw it.
posted by Olli at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2011
I think there was a study in which some ridiculously huge percentage of the population had NO idea how to write 'sneeze,' because it just almost never comes up.
I just asked the (well educated) Cantonese guy in the next cube and it took him a few minutes to come up with the Cantonese for "sneeze" and he said that he could only remember how to write the first character.
I'll bug the Mandarin speaker when he gets in.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:13 AM on July 20, 2011
I just asked the (well educated) Cantonese guy in the next cube and it took him a few minutes to come up with the Cantonese for "sneeze" and he said that he could only remember how to write the first character.
I'll bug the Mandarin speaker when he gets in.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:13 AM on July 20, 2011
goethean: This is definitely not true for French. In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
IAmBroom: Plausible, [...]
It's not just plausible, it's understating actual reality: la dictée is a staple of French education.
if a French-speaker reads a word, they can perfectly pronounce it.
No. There is no such thing as "perfect pronunciation" in French. And because of that, there are different ways to pronounce things. Take "pneu" as an example. A Parisian raised in Paris would say "pneu". A Marseillais raised in Marseille would say "peuneuh." Another example: "Brens", the name of a village. You're thinking, "breh" basically, right (don't have time to do proper phonetics, sorry). Nope. It's "Brins". Now take "gône". Non-Lyonnais would likely say "gone" similar to the long "o" in our English "bone". But it's "gone", closer to the English verb. I could go on for a while.
Answering the question a bit closer to intention: in France, printed dictionaries are still huge. I was gifted a different type of dictionary every Christmas by my ex-grandparents-in-law, for five years straight (they'd been musicians in their youths, then took over the family printing house later in life, so they had excellent taste and I loved it, still use them often). We have French dictionaries at our offices, even. Printed.
posted by fraula at 11:36 AM on July 20, 2011
IAmBroom: Plausible, [...]
It's not just plausible, it's understating actual reality: la dictée is a staple of French education.
if a French-speaker reads a word, they can perfectly pronounce it.
No. There is no such thing as "perfect pronunciation" in French. And because of that, there are different ways to pronounce things. Take "pneu" as an example. A Parisian raised in Paris would say "pneu". A Marseillais raised in Marseille would say "peuneuh." Another example: "Brens", the name of a village. You're thinking, "breh" basically, right (don't have time to do proper phonetics, sorry). Nope. It's "Brins". Now take "gône". Non-Lyonnais would likely say "gone" similar to the long "o" in our English "bone". But it's "gone", closer to the English verb. I could go on for a while.
Answering the question a bit closer to intention: in France, printed dictionaries are still huge. I was gifted a different type of dictionary every Christmas by my ex-grandparents-in-law, for five years straight (they'd been musicians in their youths, then took over the family printing house later in life, so they had excellent taste and I loved it, still use them often). We have French dictionaries at our offices, even. Printed.
posted by fraula at 11:36 AM on July 20, 2011
Native speaker of German here - we had both a Duden and a Universalwörterbuch. In fact I still do have a Duden.
posted by koahiatamadl at 11:43 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by koahiatamadl at 11:43 AM on July 20, 2011
another vote for dictionaries for a French speaker (Quebec)! Having a dictionary was even mandatory in school (elementary and high school) and every household I know of has one. I also second that we use it mostly for the meaning of rare words, and, when I was studying theater, we would also refer to the phonetics in there. There are just too many grammar rules/weird spellings in French too to afford not having a dictionary if you want to write well. Plus, we also play games with it (choosing a rare word and inventing definitions, etc.). I have also fond memories, as a kid, of wanting to go through all of our Petit Larousse to know every french word possible. That obviously did not last long. :P
posted by kitsuloukos at 11:49 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by kitsuloukos at 11:49 AM on July 20, 2011
Here in my office, not only do I have a dictionary I have a little something called "The Word Book" which simply lists words, without definitions. It's perfect for those situations when you know what the word means but you're not sure how it's spelled. I suspect I use it 5x to 10x as often as the dictionary.
posted by tommasz at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2011
posted by tommasz at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2011
Another vote for French(-speakers) loving their dictionaries, especially the quintessential Petit Robert.
In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
This is more than just a game; in French it's called "dictée" and it forms a big part of schooling for French-speaking children, as well as in some (old-fashioned) French as Second Language training.
Here in my office, not only do I have a dictionary I have a little something called "The Word Book" which simply lists words, without definitions.
Dutch has that too, the "Woordenlijst," which is free:
http://woordenlijst.org/
It's great because it lists the gender and plural form(s) for each noun. Technically Dutch still has three genders, but only two definite articles: de for masculine and feminine (together called the "common gender"), and het for neutral. The Woordenlijst tells you if it's de[m] (masculine) or de[v] (feminine).
posted by dhens at 12:27 PM on July 20, 2011
In fact, I've heard that they play a game in which they listen to someone speaking French, and try to transcribe it, and they are highly unlikely to get 100%.
This is more than just a game; in French it's called "dictée" and it forms a big part of schooling for French-speaking children, as well as in some (old-fashioned) French as Second Language training.
Here in my office, not only do I have a dictionary I have a little something called "The Word Book" which simply lists words, without definitions.
Dutch has that too, the "Woordenlijst," which is free:
http://woordenlijst.org/
It's great because it lists the gender and plural form(s) for each noun. Technically Dutch still has three genders, but only two definite articles: de for masculine and feminine (together called the "common gender"), and het for neutral. The Woordenlijst tells you if it's de[m] (masculine) or de[v] (feminine).
posted by dhens at 12:27 PM on July 20, 2011
I've never seen a reasonable sized bookshop in Germany that didn't stock Duden.
In my admittedly somewhat limited experience, I'd expect to be able to find all 12 volumes of the Duden relatively easily. I've had almost the opposite conversation many times: 'Why doesn't English have a Stilwörterbuch?' It's sort of like a dictionary, but backwards. It has very brief definitions (just long enough for you to know what sense of the word it means) and then a bunch of usage examples.
posted by hoyland at 12:28 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
In my admittedly somewhat limited experience, I'd expect to be able to find all 12 volumes of the Duden relatively easily. I've had almost the opposite conversation many times: 'Why doesn't English have a Stilwörterbuch?' It's sort of like a dictionary, but backwards. It has very brief definitions (just long enough for you to know what sense of the word it means) and then a bunch of usage examples.
posted by hoyland at 12:28 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yes, it is somewhat more unusual for Germans to have a German dictionary than it is for English speakers to have an English dictionary. Many of us do use the Duden books, though. As mentioned upthread, they are more about spelling conventions, less about definitions. I work as a copy editor and have a Duden on my PC to look up spelling rules; it would never occur to me to use it for looking up definitions though. There are fewer words in German, educated adults are basically expected to know the meanings of all of them (except technical terms).
Oh and one related thing: There are no "German vocabulary" tests in German schools (at least not above elementary school level), whereas English vocabulary seems to be commonly tested in the US in college entrance exams etc.
posted by The Toad at 1:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Oh and one related thing: There are no "German vocabulary" tests in German schools (at least not above elementary school level), whereas English vocabulary seems to be commonly tested in the US in college entrance exams etc.
posted by The Toad at 1:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Anecdatally, I am an American and I have seen dictionaries in several German homes. The family I lived with for a while certainly had one. It pretty much only came out for Scrabble games, though. In fact, it was stored in a drawer with the board games, not put on a convenient shelf for everyday use. Make of that what you will.
posted by mandanza at 1:26 PM on July 20, 2011
posted by mandanza at 1:26 PM on July 20, 2011
@fraula. Aren't you describing more regional and dialectical variation, though? It's akin to arguing that Spanish isn't highly phonetic or lacks a highly regular word-to-speech correspondence because Castilians would pronounce hacer as "ah-THEHR" while Mexicans would say "ah-SEHR," or because Colombians say "vahs" for vas but Puerto Ricans drop the "s." If you speak a particular variety of Spanish (or French), there are particular, regular rules on how you extrapolate pronunciation from the orthography: they just vary based on what accent you speak, but it's regularly consistent within.
As for the original question, this seems highly unlikely to me. Native Chinese speakers have dictionaries. Indeed, looking up characters in a traditional radical-stroke Chinese dictionary is an involved task taught to elementary school children, and I believe there are competitions on how fast one can look up a character in these dictionaries. One of the first electronic gadgets my mom got was an electronic Chinese dictionary, which with its stylus cut out much of the laborious work of looking up a character that you didn't know and guessing its radical.
posted by andrewesque at 2:15 PM on July 20, 2011
As for the original question, this seems highly unlikely to me. Native Chinese speakers have dictionaries. Indeed, looking up characters in a traditional radical-stroke Chinese dictionary is an involved task taught to elementary school children, and I believe there are competitions on how fast one can look up a character in these dictionaries. One of the first electronic gadgets my mom got was an electronic Chinese dictionary, which with its stylus cut out much of the laborious work of looking up a character that you didn't know and guessing its radical.
posted by andrewesque at 2:15 PM on July 20, 2011
> It's akin to arguing that Spanish isn't highly phonetic or lacks a highly regular word-to-speech correspondence because Castilians would pronounce hacer as "ah-THEHR" while Mexicans would say "ah-SEHR," or because Colombians say "vahs" for vas but Puerto Ricans drop the "s."
Spanish isn't "highly phonetic," in the sense that you can't tell how to write a word just by knowing how to say it. As I wrote here: "To take a couple of obvious cases, it is impossible to tell from the pronunciation whether to write b or v and whether to write c (before front vowels) or z or (outside of Castille) s, as a look at any bathroom wall in a Spanish-speaking country will make clear. It is, of course, true that the correspondence between speech and writing is much closer than in English."
posted by languagehat at 3:35 PM on July 20, 2011
Spanish isn't "highly phonetic," in the sense that you can't tell how to write a word just by knowing how to say it. As I wrote here: "To take a couple of obvious cases, it is impossible to tell from the pronunciation whether to write b or v and whether to write c (before front vowels) or z or (outside of Castille) s, as a look at any bathroom wall in a Spanish-speaking country will make clear. It is, of course, true that the correspondence between speech and writing is much closer than in English."
posted by languagehat at 3:35 PM on July 20, 2011
I find your friends assertion to be nonsense. German people, like all people, lookup words they don't know, or aren't sure of, in a dictionary. Every german has or had at some point of its school years (mandatory) access to a dictionary, be it in book form or nowadays in the internet. I myself was once asked to buy a Deutsche Wörterbuch for a german family member ;-)
posted by dfreire at 4:34 PM on July 20, 2011
posted by dfreire at 4:34 PM on July 20, 2011
Quatsch! I grew up in a former Soviet Republic. We had several Romanian-Romanian and English-English dictionaries, at least one Russian-Russian dictionary, as well as the general Larousse. By the time I was 14 and declared that I wanted to learn German, our household made a few acquisitions of German woerterbueche. I'm not even going to attempt counting the bilingual dictionaries...
posted by Flotte Biene at 5:31 PM on July 20, 2011
posted by Flotte Biene at 5:31 PM on July 20, 2011
My German husband's parent bought a new Duden for him to bring to Medical School in Ireland, as well as an English-German dictionary, so they could keep the old Duden at home. None of the other households in his family, (3 married uncles) had a Duden, I guessed because none of them had children. Now that his friends are all having kids, they all have a Duden in the house.
While living in Spain, I only ever saw Spanish dictionaries, again where there were kids of school-going age or in what you might term middle-class houses.
posted by Wilder at 1:39 AM on July 21, 2011
While living in Spain, I only ever saw Spanish dictionaries, again where there were kids of school-going age or in what you might term middle-class houses.
posted by Wilder at 1:39 AM on July 21, 2011
Not true for Chinese as far as I'm concerned. Schools even teach you how to use a dictionary at an early age because that's the only way to learn new words and how to write/use them correctly. I assume Japanese and Koreans too.
posted by easilyconfused at 10:02 PM on July 23, 2011
posted by easilyconfused at 10:02 PM on July 23, 2011
And forgot to mention that French too. On top of la petit robert, la bescherelle is also common in households.
posted by easilyconfused at 10:05 PM on July 23, 2011
posted by easilyconfused at 10:05 PM on July 23, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
(The Dutch love crossword puzzles - I think there's a correlation.)
posted by likeso at 9:15 AM on July 20, 2011