Frequency Lists vs Frequency Dictionaries: Pro's and Con's

[Francis101]

I thought I would start a new thread about the pro's and con's of Frequency Lists and Frequency Dictionaries. I was wondering if anyone had any input as to which lists are good or bad or if I am better off just getting a frequency dictionary instead. I am interested in "filling" in the gaps in my Chinese and would like to start to utilize a frequency list or dictionary to do so. 

 

I have heard good things about the Routledge Frequency Dictionary and wondered if people had more experience with it than I do.

 

[Demonic_Duck]

I've never made much use of anything frequency-based myself, simply because the frequency of a word as I personally encounter and/or need to use it will inevitably differ from the frequency of that word derived from a given corpus. I learn words as I come across them and/or as I need. If a word has a high absolute frequency, I'll see it popping up all the time in different situations and make sure to learn it. If it has a high frequency for one specific context, (e.g. in a certain genre of films, in texts on a certain sublect etc.) I'll naturally encounter it if I expose myself enough to sources of that kind.

 

I guess I can see some utility in tools like this, particularly for the very highest frequency words, though even then I don't feel it's a particularly natural or intuitive approach, and once you get past the first few hundred (couple of thousand at a stretch) relative frequencies for even a very large corpus probably aren't going to be too accurate anyway.

[Gharial]

I was looking inside the Routledge Japanese frequency dictionary on Amazon, and was struck even moreso by the lack of alphabetical script (romaji in this case, rather than Pinyin) to aid learners. Sure, one can, if one knows enough Japanese already, read the example sentences easily enough, as most seem pretty short and basic, but the beginner would be better served by a dictionary that offered more than one example per item, and obviously that had romaji to assist the reading. There are plenty of such dictionaries around, and some offer some sort of frequency indications already. All that being said, I do have their Chinese frequency dictionary and it's interesting to at least browse.

[Demonic_Duck]

Why does Japanese need romaji glosses for stuff when it's already got kana for that purpose? Or are you saying the kanji don't have any phonetic transcription given at all?

 

Also, are you saying the Chinese Routledge frequency dictionary suffers from a lack of Romanisation as well? Your post doesn't make it clear.

[Gharial]

Is this a wind-up, D_D?   Both the Chinese and Japanese Routledge frequency dictionaries lack romanization (it's only given for each headword; there is none for the example sentence in which the headword appears). Japanese can as you say use kana for furigana/ruby purposes (i.e. to indicate the pronunciations of the kanji), but it is more common or sensible to use romaji under both the kanji and the kana entirely, so as to increase the accessibility of a work to those who may not know even the kana.

 

It's relatively easy to find online samples of pages from both works, and there is a quite recent thread regarding the Chinese one, replete with samples and links to reviews.

[Demonic_Duck]

Not sure why that's more "sensible" in any tool intended for serious learners. For a phrasebook, sure.

 

As for Chinese, it does seem odd to have a tool of that type which lacks any phonetic system (pinyin or zhuyin).

[Gharial]

Sensible just from the angle of improved sales. The more people who can immediately read (pronounce) the example sentences, the wider its market appeal should be, right? And it's not like such generally short examples would take up a lot more space and ink to transcribe. Saying learners of Japanese ought to use furigana for unknown kanji, rather than romaji for the whole caboodle (i.e. below kanji and kana), strikes me as a bit like saying learners of Chinese ought to use zhuyin/bopomofo rather than pinyin. (OK, I know the analogy is a bit daft as kana rather than furigana per se is a part of actual J orthography and will thus need to definitely be learnt at some point, while "Chinese" is somewhat split between the PRC and Taiwan, but still, I know what I prefer to use for Chinese at least!).

[戴 睿]

there is a quite recent thread regarding the Chinese one, replete with samples and links to reviews.

Which can be found here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42592-routledge-frequency-dictionary/

I own the Routledge mandarin frequency dictionary. I like the book, I think it serves it's purpose well.

The example sentences lack pinyin, but they're all fairly basic anyway, so I don't view it has a huge issue. I suppose as a pure beginner it might be.

The frequency dictionary shouldn't be your primary source for studying mandarin, but as a supplementary source it certainly has it's uses. Also, the topical vocabulary sections with extended frequency ratings is quite useful.

However, the OP's original questions was about pros and cons between a frequency word *list* and a frequency word *dictionary* - which is an important distinction, because the utility (being example phrases without pinyin) that both of you are criticizing isn't even present in a generic online word frequency list.

[Gharial]

However, the OP's original questions was about pros and cons between a frequency word *list* and a frequency word *dictionary* - which is an important distinction, because the utility (being example phrases without pinyin) that both of you are criticizing isn't even present in a generic online word frequency list.

 

 

Again, no offence, but that should usually be obvious, go without saying really (WYSIWYG)! And hey, we were talking about dictionaries, which do have examples that may need or could perhaps do with transcribing alphabetically. Anyway, one one way around your "problem" of list "versus" exemplar is to find and use a list that is actually linked to or available right alongside a corpus. The wordlists and corpus data on which the Routledge Chinese frequency dictionary is based allows one to see many concordance lines, and then somewhat more extensive context (>>) beyond the KWICs.

http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/query-zh.html

[Gharial]

I guess I can see some utility in tools like this, particularly for the very highest frequency words, though even then I don't feel it's a particularly natural or intuitive approach, and once you get past the first few hundred (couple of thousand at a stretch) relative frequencies for even a very large corpus probably aren't going to be too accurate anyway.

 

 

Good point, but sometimes corpus-based stuff needs to be cracked out, because there are occasionally teachers or materials that can't resist opting for the infrequent, atypical or even inauthentic or invented, as opposed to the frequent, typical and authentic.

 

As John Sinclair of COBUILD fame said (paraphrasing lots now!), the challenge of language learning is all the combinations that the everyday words can enter into but that aren't always amenable to mere intuition. But we're heading off into collocation, colligation etc here rather than the raw frequency of discrete items LOL.

[戴 睿]

It feels to me (no offense) like you are using a lot of technical terms and appraisals to hint at some sort of conclusion that could have been much more simply, concisely stated. Not to mention heading off the path of the OP's original inquiry.

[Baron]

The dictionary is pretty good if you're just checking that there aren't any conspicuous holes in you vocabulary, but if you were thinking of going though it, or a dictionary for that matter, and systematically learn the words it would probably be excruciatingly boring - it's just a list of words and examples.

 

I'd certainly recommend it as a resource, but if you'd like to improve your vocabulary, I'd suggest trying to expose yourself to it more in context, such as books/magazines, graded readers, textbooks etc

[Gharial]

I'm quite willing to explain things when necessary. Good luck to you guys if you feel strangely compelled to point out things like kana can be used for transcribing kanji, or that generic online frequency lists don't usually contain examples, or that KWICs, collocations, colligation etc are mere pointless technical terms of absolutely no use to anyone who might begin using corpora like those at the URL I provided, as you'll be here all day and then some.

 

To think that all this stemmed from my trying to point out that the frequency dictionary in question provides no pinyin for its example sentences. Still, that was an example of me stating the obvious too, eh! Completely unnecessary stuff that tires the eyeballs to exploding point.

 

But hey, that seems to be what these forums often excel at most: pointless nit-picking and point-scoring, hauling posters up for imagined "omissions" or "mistakes". Now THAT is what I'd call "using a lot of terms and appraisals to hint at some sort of conclusion that could have been much more simply, concisely stated. Not to mention heading off the path of the OP's original inquiry".

 

Anyway, we'll need to see what the OP makes of all this, especially the assumptions that they have little English, no brain, and zero research skills.

[戴 睿]

Wow, no need to take it so personally.

I'm sorry if I offended you, I was just hoping to get some feedback to the OP's questions as well, and seeing as 80% of your first post was about a Japanese frequency dictionary, and the final 20% basically just said "the Chinese dictionary is interesting to browse," I was hoping we might coax out a bit more on-topic information.

I don't understand why the jab about the OP having half a brain and no-research skills was necessary, either.

[Gharial]

Sorry, but the nit-picking really does get tiring sometimes. I'd had a pleasant couple of days e.g. bantering with nice posters like Elizabeth_rb about shelfies and the like, and then suddenly there's this IMHO totally unnecessary stuff to respond to and deal with. The forums can go from a fun to an "inquisitorial" place very quickly, and when people act all innocent but all so "clever" about their antics it just compounds the problem. All I can suggest is cut it out and get a life.

 

Here's how I read my first post, see if the bold then underline helps:

 

I was looking inside the Routledge Japanese frequency dictionary on Amazon, and was struck even moreso by the lack of alphabetical script (romaji in this case, rather than Pinyin) to aid learners. Sure, one can, if one knows enough Japanese already, read the example sentences easily enough, as most seem pretty short and basic, but the beginner would be better served by a dictionary that offered more than one example per item, and obviously that had romaji to assist the reading. There are plenty of such dictionaries around, and some offer some sort of frequency indications already. All that being said, I do have their Chinese frequency dictionary and it's interesting to at least browse.

 

 

But then, the following (really, no offence!) does make me wonder about your (English) reading comprehension:

 

I don't understand why the jab about the OP having half a brain and no-research skills was necessary, either.

 

 

That wasn't a jab at all. The keyword was my use of '(other people's) assumptions'. I'm actually crediting the OP with native-level English (Location: England), a fully-functioning brain, and some mean research skills LOL.

 

Not to sound chauvinistic (it's an unavoidable fact that this thread was started, and has been conducted, in English), but if you don't have quite native-level English (which is what I'm assuming), then you really do need to be careful about hauling a native speaker (me) up over something you only think (but can't be sure) they may or may not have said or implied. I'd caution some apparently native-level readers too though!

[Gharial]

OP: The ABC ECCE dictionary has useful frequency indications in it (well, HSK bands, plus the ABC's adoption of superscript numbers before the pinyin to indicate the relative frequency of totally homophonous items, then an asterisk after the pinyin to indicate the most frequent item if tones are ignored; the asterisk thus covers a wider set of items), provides full pinyin (even indicating tone sandhi!) for every example sentence, and is a proper dictionary (i.e. includes far more vocab than the Routledge frequency dictionary). I'm not sure if the ABC dictionaries have their own dedicated corpora, but their lists of Works Consulted include a number of items that are firmly corpus-based. Full review here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/30185-abc-e-cc-e-whats-the-story/?p=237924

 

To be honest, I think the Routledge could become a bit of a white elephant to you, were you to buy it. Sure, it's nice to know a bit more about the frequency and dispersion of an item, and the parts of speech index, the listings (in the character frequency index) of head-initial as well as non-head-initial compounds that a character appears in, and finally the lists of most common words in particular registers (spoken, fiction, non-fiction, news), are all interesting and potentially useful, but other than that I'm not sure what it really offers that other resources don't (for example, lists of thematic vocabulary - fruit, sports etc - are pretty much what visually-arranged dictionaries already deal in).

[戴 睿]

Here is how I read your first post:

I was looking inside the Routledge Japanese frequency dictionary on Amazon, and was struck even moreso by the lack of alphabetical script (romaji in this case, rather than Pinyin) to aid learners. Sure, one can, if one knows enough Japanese already, read the example sentences easily enough, as most seem pretty short and basic, but the beginner would be better served by a dictionary that offered more than one example per item, and obviously that had romaji to assist the reading. There are plenty of such dictionaries around, and some offer some sort of frequency indications already. All that being said, I do have their Chinese frequency dictionary and it's interesting to at least browse.

In regards to my comment about your post and the OP's brain skills, yes, I understand you were inferring that my critique of your post implied the OP would be to dumb to understand - my comment was made out of sarcasm, which clearly went both undetected and unappreciated - my mistake.

You're complaining about the environment of the forum, but notice the content of your posts and the content of mine.

I tried to point out how your posts were unclear and not very beneficial in answering the OP's root question - but notice that I never attacked your personal intelligence, as you did mine. My posts were at least constructive in the sense that they were pointed towards the content of your posts.

Your last post was much more directly useful to the OP, and by extension myself as a reader interested in the OP's question.

[Gharial]

So? I'd noticed and been looking at Routledge's more recent, yes Japanese release (I did at least make that clear LOL), and was surprised (as kanji really can have quite a number of readings, and not just the head entries) that no transcriptions (preferably in romaji, IMHO - not for me the snobbishness of Demonic_Duck's "serious learners"!) were included. The average reader should I hope be able to see my comments as obviously extending to the Chinese volume also (as we're all perfectly aware, this is Chinese-forums, not Japanese-forums), and I have to assume that only you and Demonic_Duck had "real problems" with what I said, as you're the only ones to have bothered "commenting" (so far ROFL)

 

As for your claims of your abundant sarcasm, all I can say is I've seen better. And do you really want to start a pissing contest about general quality/content of posts? Really? By the way, I wasn't attacking your intelligence, just your apparent failure in this instance to grasp my English by taking me to task over things I clearly didn't say.

 

Thanks though for the patronizing last line ("Your last post was much more directly useful to the OP, and by extension myself as a reader interested in the OP's question"), it's indeed a shame I can't always think of every single last thing that might be useful or relevant whenever I dare commit fingers to keyboard to post anything remotely conversational.

[戴 睿]

you and Demonic_Duck had "real problems" with what I said, as you're the only ones to have bothered "commenting" (so far ROFL)

... ... ... ... ...

it's indeed a shame I can't always think of every single last thing that might be useful or relevant whenever I dare commit fingers to keyboard to post anything remotely conversational.

My point exactly - conversation wasn't inspired. And there's a reason why.

[Gharial]

No no no, we are definitely having a conversation of sorts here. It's just not the sort of conversation that I myself go particularly out of my way to engender (be warned however, I have no objection to continuing with this type once somebody else has started, or at least helped start, one up).