How to learn vocabulary

[djwebb2004]

I have just come across a wonderful book called Mastering French Vocabulary by Barron's. It contains 12000 organised by 24 subjects. These are divided into 122 sub-subjects, with more common and less common words listed separately and examples of usage shown! If only someone would do the same for Chinese. The HSK would be so much better if organised by subject. If anyone knows of any book like Barron's Mastering French for Chinese, I would like to know. If I ever get fluent in Chinese, I might one day copy the format and do my own "Mastering Chinese Vocabulary"! Alphabetical lists are just not as good.

[gato]

Like this list (Kingsoft's Power Word, 金山词霸)? It also has other categories, like law, economics, and so forth.

Fruits

apple 苹果

pear 梨

apricot 杏

peach 桃

grape 葡萄

banana 香蕉

pineapple 菠萝

plum 李子

watermelon 西瓜

orange 橙

lemon 柠檬

mango 芒果

strawberry 草莓

medlar 枇杷,欧查果

mulberry 桑椹

nectarine 油桃

cherry 樱桃

pomegranate 石榴

fig 无花果

tangerine 柑子

persimmon 柿子

walnut 胡桃

hazelnut 榛子

peanut 花生

date 枣

chestnut 粟

currant 醋粟

coconut, cocoanut 可可

bilberry 越桔

blackberry, blueberry 黑莓

avocado 鳄梨

black currant 红醋栗

blood orange 红橙

citron, grapefruit 香橼

damson 大马士革李

almond 巴旦杏

nutmeg 肉豆蔻

papaya, papaw 番木瓜

guava 番石榴

pistachio 阿月浑子

prickly pear 仙人掌果

raspberry 覆盆子

soursop 刺果番荔枝

[djwebb2004]

How extensive is Kingsoft? Does it contain 10,000 words in different categories? Or is it the usual basic vocabulary only?

[gato]

The main part of Power Word is an electronic Chinese-Chinese, Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary. I'm guessing that it would have hundreds of thousands of entries.

The vocab list is only a small part of the program for Chinese kids who want to memorize English vocabs. It just turns out that Chinese learners can use the same list. The list probably has about a couple of thousand words in thirty-some different categories. The words are mostly fairly technical, like in medicine, science, computer, etc. There are also a few more everyday categories like pets, movies, and sports.

A vocab list of 10,000 words would be overkill. You won't be learning words from a list when you get that advanced.

[Zingaro]

Kingsoft's Powerword 2005 has several hundred thousand entries comprised of basic vocabulary and specialized vocabularies such as scientific and other vocabularies. It also includes quite a few idioms and even some slang.

The nice thing about Powerword 2005 is that you can define both Chinese and English words with a mouse-over, get an audio pronunciation (sometimes a bit clumsy, but close enough to work with it) and look up the word in the dictionary with a single mouse click. Definitions are fairly extensive and give various usages. The mouse-over works within the dictionary as well as with all other on-screen type (word processing, spreadsheets, web browser, etc. etc.)

The mouse-over doesn't work with GIF image representations of Chinese characters, however.

It's not a translator - "only" a dictionary, but just about the best I've found. The 2005 version has both English and Chinese interface options. And you can turn the mouse-over on and off at will. I use it heavily when studying, writing email, etc.

[gato]

Kingsoft has an online dictionary available at

http://cb.kingsoft.com/search?lang=utf-8&s=%E9%9C%B8%E7%8E%8B&d=PWDCCAC

The above link gives the definition of "霸王".

The standalone Powerword is described at

http://www.kingsoft.com/product/131/ciba2005_01.shtml

I think the latest English edition of Powerword might still be Powerword 2002. They don't seem to think much of the non-Chinese market for some reason. They are selling Powerword 2005 in China for US$6 a copy, whereas Wenlin goes for US$200 a copy. Maybe it'd be worth their while in making another English edition.

They also have a product called 金山快译2005 (Fast Translation) that does automated Chinese<->English<->Japanese translations. The Chinese-to-English translation was barely usable, I thought, but you could kind of figure it out.

[carlo]

There's a book called 'Colloquial Cantonese and Putonghua Equivalents' that I picked up in Macau 3 years ago, which probably most closely resembles Barron's study guides. It introduces 8000+ frequently used words and expressions in Cantonese, Mandarin and English with transliterations in 30+ chapters from 'Food and Drink' to 'Idiomatic Phrases'. The selection of words is very well done IMHO, as it focuses on the spoken rather than the written language (IIRC 'salty' as in 'this dish is too salty' is 齁鹹 in Mandarin and 鹹死大癩 in Cantonese ). Some expressions may be slightly dated though, especially with Cantonese, as Cantonese slang decays faster than an unstable isotope. Published I think by 三聯.

[ti99er22]

First of all djwebb2004, do you have the ISBN number of the 'Mastering French Vocabulary by Barron's' book you have? I'd love to get a copy too!

As for Chinese vocabulary listed by category, you could try:

A Practical Talking e-Dictionary of Cantonese

ISBN 1-58070-502-2

The lists of Chinese vocab, in simplified & traditional Chinese text include:

Activities 娛樂

Airlines Companies 航空公司

Animals 動物

Chinese Cooking 中菜烹調法

Churches and Temples 教堂及廟宇

Color and Clothing 顏色和衣飾

Commercial Terms 商業名詞

Day, Month And Year 年月日

Snacks and Desserts 點心和甜點心

Educational Issues 教育問題

Family Relations 親戚關係

Food and Drinks 食品和飲品

Fruits, Grains and Nuts 水果，糧食和果類

Geography: Major Cities 地理: 主要城市

Goverment Department 政府部門

Hospitals 醫院

Hotels and Guest Houses 酒店，賓館

Household Objects 家庭用具

Mass Media 大眾媒體

Meals: Noodle and Rice 餐食: 麵和飯

Medical and Medical Care 醫藥及醫療服務

Menu, Tea and Cantonese Dishes 菜單，茶和廣東菜

Money, Banking and Banks 金融，銀行業及銀行

Numbers 數字

Parts of Body 人體各部

Description of People 人類及人類百態

Preposition and Conjunction 前置詞與連接詞

Professions 職業

Seafood and Meats 海鮮與肉類

Signs and Directions 告示與方向

Sports 體育

Stationery 文具

Stores and Services 商業及服務業

Time 時間

Tools 工具

Transportation 運輸

Vegetables 蔬菜

Hong Kong Vista 香港觀光

You can get it from here (The 2nd item on the page):

http://lp-group.com/store/cantonese.html

However, I'd have to warn you that there are some mistakes in there. But the Cantonese audio is superb and everything is in an adobe acrobat file.

I was interested to hear about the existence of 'Colloquial Cantonese and Putonghua Equivalents' as I didn't think there were any other Chinese vocab list book out there. However, after reading a review of it from here:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?1,1534,1534#msg-1534

...which reads "There are some flat out mistakes, like 搞得掂 being explained as "unable to do something." The English translations are terrible; at best they are merely a loose guide to the phrase's meaning, at worst they are incomprehensible. The romanization is some whack-ass system nobody uses anymore involving numbers and upside-down letters", it doesn't encourage me to get it.

If there is a better book, then please let me know. I am particulary interested in Chinese vocab listed by categories, with Yale Romanization. I am particularly interested in a book with few mistakes, as there does not seem to be one in the market at the moment that gives me full confidence in doing Cantonese vocab self-study.

[roddy]

I think I saw some Cantonese-Mandarin books last time I was in the BLCU bookstore. I'll have another look next time I'm in - should be at the weekend.

Roddy

[daydreamer]

Well, it's a Chinese language forum, but only want to get out of the topic for a little bit.

I saw this title " How to learn vocabulary" So think of that..

Today when we had an English spoken course. The teacher(from UK) figured out one's mistake. She said it was not correct to say " How to spell ..." but should be " How do you spell ...". But we used to say " how to" a lot. And I saw this title, I think this is also written by a native speaker, are you? (I'm not sure, hehe)

Well, so I want to ask if it's right to say " how to.." Or is it just because people put "do you" together and makes "to" because they sound alike?

[Quest]

"how to" is a fragment.

[gato]

Today when we had an English spoken course. The teacher(from UK) figured out one's mistake. She said it was not correct to say " How to spell ..." but should be " How do you spell ...".

A complete sentence needs a subject and a verb. In your example, your teacher is using "you" as the subject and "do" as the verb.

"How to spell" is a noun phrase, not a complete sentence. You can use it as a direct object of a verb, for example "I want to learn how to spell" with "how to spell" as the direct object of "learn."