My gigantic Japanese / English scholarly dictionary of course. Or the technical manual X for Dummies. Either one...
If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
51–60 of 75 posts
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#52So I decided to go on dictionary.com. Here's what I see on the front page:
-We asked "What is the state of the USA in five words? The responses are not what we imagined."
-Can you translate these famous quotes from emoji?
- How is pansexuality different from bisexuality?
- Epic Fail. (seriously, the article is titled this.)
- When a cat is so cute you want to bite its face? (sic) There's a word for that!
Those are some of the articles on the front page. Clickbait, on a dictionary. Then you start to wonder why you are trusting it when it needs to monetize with clickbait.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#53Amazon boxes filled with disused smartphones.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not going to loose a large part of my functional literacy, just because the power/internet goes out. Is your functional literacy really so dictionary-bound that a temporary outage makes you lose a large part of it? (Maybe it is! But I think that, for most people, referring to a dictionary, online or in print, is an occasional act.)
I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I wouldn't called that bound. I would just call it putting in your best effort. I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should.
>I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should.
I do sometimes check spelling when my word processor hasn't figured it out for me. But I can't say that I'm normally particularly uncertain about the meaning of the vast majority of words I use.
Ever so often I check a word to verify that it really does have the precise meaning I think it does. But I can't say doing so is at all common. I'm exposed to a lot of bad writing but the problems are more around structure and logic. Incorrect vocabulary usually isn't a big problem in my experience.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#55I have a certain nostalgia for dictionaries as well. That is, until I actually end up having to use one nowadays. It one of these problems that modern technology has completely and utterly superseded. You can find people arguing for the superiority of analog audio or film cameras (if only for purely subjective or emotional reasons) but I wonder if you'll find many people who still go out of their ways to use a paper…
A paper dictionary is nice when reading a paper book. I seem to have two "flows" in my brain, one for reading on paper and one for interacting with a computer screen. Looking up a word on the computer seems to break up one flow with the other, whereas I don't have the same problem flipping through a book.
This is also the case, at least for me, whenever I sit down to do some serious writing - a thesaurus/dictionary set is easy to glance into momentarily, while looking up a word on my phone completely disrupts my concentration and mindset.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#56I recently tackled a book that was rather above my French reading level. It only took about half an hour spent fumbling with my Larousse before I plunked down $6 on their iOS app so that I could get back to reading my book. That weekend, my trusty old dictionary and I paid a visit to the used bookstore. It's hard for me to imagine an information technology that's been more thoroughly superseded than the print diction…
I've had the reverse impression over recent years: dictionary sites have become so bloated and unusable, between ads, comment systems, inefficient JS, and abysmal "mobile-friendly" pages I've gone back to my old hardcover whenever convenient. I imagine part of this is use-case, however: I tend to use a dictionary infrequently, mainly when I'm reading with the shelf within reach, so the overhead of launching an app or…
I use Wiktionary — no ads, comments, and it's fast.
My father had an "Official Scrabble Word List" book, which was just a list of words without definitions. An app would be even better for this: you could take a photo of the word, and it could give a simple yes/no without any chance of "accidentally" seeing other words.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#57I recently tackled a book that was rather above my French reading level. It only took about half an hour spent fumbling with my Larousse before I plunked down $6 on their iOS app so that I could get back to reading my book. That weekend, my trusty old dictionary and I paid a visit to the used bookstore. It's hard for me to imagine an information technology that's been more thoroughly superseded than the print diction…
I've had the reverse impression over recent years: dictionary sites have become so bloated and unusable, between ads, comment systems, inefficient JS, and abysmal "mobile-friendly" pages I've gone back to my old hardcover whenever convenient. I imagine part of this is use-case, however: I tend to use a dictionary infrequently, mainly when I'm reading with the shelf within reach, so the overhead of launching an app or…
Free dictionary sites are pretty appalling. Paid dictionary apps are great.
I've never actually used the online OED, but I imagine it's great.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#58I have a certain nostalgia for dictionaries as well. That is, until I actually end up having to use one nowadays. It one of these problems that modern technology has completely and utterly superseded. You can find people arguing for the superiority of analog audio or film cameras (if only for purely subjective or emotional reasons) but I wonder if you'll find many people who still go out of their ways to use a paper…
I found the app "Pleco" invaluable when I was learning Mandarin. It does handwriting recognition (even with a beginner's scribbles), character "assembly" (put the bits together), transliteration, and an impressive OCR.
Once you have a character, "word" or sentence, it will give an English definition, male and female pronunciation, show the correct way to write the character in simplified (PRC) or traditional (HK, TW, SG etc) script, link to the component characters, and link to the characters to which it itself is a component. And give example sentences (with pronunciation).
The basic version is free, but it's one of the few Android apps I paid for.
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#59So I decided to go on dictionary.com. Here's what I see on the front page: -We asked "What is the state of the USA in five words? The responses are not what we imagined." -Can you translate these famous quotes from emoji? - How is pansexuality different from bisexuality? - Epic Fail. (seriously, the article is titled this.) - When a cat is so cute you want to bite its face? (sic) There's a word for that! Those are so…
- "What is the word for the smell after it rains?"
I'm interested in that, but certainly not interested enough to watch a video.
Fortunately, a quick search tells me the word is "petrichor", and has the etymology [1].
I can't find a word for the cute biting. All the sites have maximum-GDPR all-the-tracking boxes, which is my new cue to hit "back".
Re: If Printed Dictionaries Are History, What'll Children Sit on to Reach the Table?
#60Am I the only one here that still makes my kids look up words in dictionary? We have all the e-devices but I think there's something worthwhile about re-enforcing alphabet order in words, learning by wandering or happens upon words nearby in paper dictionary. The kids also have to sound out the words to try to find it so they learn different word-sound patterns. All this skills are practiced each time they do a quick…
It's useful to learn things the hard way, but then move on at some point once internalized. I remember as a teen avoiding the drudgery of the dictionary and it affected my vocabulary for a decade+, until I got onto the internet.