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

[imron]

It's just not the sort of conversation that I myself go particularly out of my way to engende

Nor is it the type of conversation we encourage on the forums.

 

Feel free to take it to PM if either of you want to continue it.  Otherwise posts will start being deleted.

[Gharial]

Another post pointing out the obvious. But thanks for that, Imron! Noted.

[Francis101]

I appreciate Demonic Ducks take thus far and also Gharial's beneficial post about the actual specifics of such things. Even if I as an American born Citizen would have to consult a dictionary to figure out exactly what was trying to be communicated.

Baron also added useful insight. 戴 睿’s was very beneficial as well as he actually owns the book I was referencing. Part of the reason I started this post was to see if I needed to actually drop the cash for a frequency dictionary or see if lists would suffice.

 

I would say my main motivation for using these tools is the only things that I encounter in Chinese are the things I expose myself to. I frequently browse lots of Chinese material and would just like a better general sense of awareness. I figured if I work through the first 500 characters or so on a list or a dictionary it would benefit me by plugging the holes I have in my beginning Chinese ability. I definitely would never think using them as a sole resource for studying Chinese.

[Gharial]

I appreciate Demonic Ducks take thus far and also Gharial's beneficial post about the actual specifics of such things. Even if I as an American born Citizen would have to consult a dictionary to figure out exactly what was trying to be communicated.

Baron also added useful insight. 戴 睿’s was very beneficial as well as he actually owns the book I was referencing. Part of the reason I started this post was to see if I needed to actually drop the cash for a frequency dictionary or see if lists would suffice.

 

Apologies for seemingly imposing some unknown or unclear language on you (and for being a bit too grouchy with the other members, that can't have been much fun for you to read. Welcome to the forums, by the way! ). I was just trying to add (or was gearing up to adding!) a few pointers. I too own the book you were referencing, guess you must've missed that bit in my first post. Anyway, stuff like corpus linguistics is actually pretty interesting once you get into it, even though knowledge of it isn't strictly necessary to use products like the frequency dictionary (you could skip or come back later to most of its explanatory front matter, for example. Or you could just buy a more useful conventional yet still corpus-informed dictionary like the ABC ECCE, as I mentioned before). I'll just throw out the following in case you are or become more interested though: Tony McEnery, one of the authors of that frequency dictionary, has written another book called Corpus-based Language Studies, which has a unit on research on tense and aspect in Chinese versus English (so it'll be of a bit more relevance than books about just English corpus linguistics).

[roddy]

Another post pointing out the obvious. But thanks for that, Imron! Noted.

 

Yes, Imron, thanks. 

 

Gharial, if you'd responded to the OP's post in the first place - like you did in #16 - this'd be a much more coherent and helpful topic. Instead you just typed about whatever the OP's post reminded you of at the time. 

 

For the OP - have you looked at the word lists for the HSK exams. There's a set of 9,000, divided across four levels, for an older exam no longer used, and another set for the current exam which I think totals 5,000 or so. If you just want to do some checking to make sure you haven't somehow missed out some high-frequency items, that should do the job. 

 

Newer lists are available here, older lists should be fairly easy to find. 

[Gharial]

Gharial, if you'd responded to the OP's post in the first place - like you did in #16 - this'd be a much more coherent and helpful topic.

 

Well, like I say, to me there's "light and conversational", then there's "more detailed and considered". I can write reasonably clearly and informatively (or will often go back and rewrite things to make them so), but sometimes I (just wanna) shoot off something relatively "inconsequential", even "ill-considered" - so shoot me! It's not usually such a problem on other forums, in my experience. I guess Chinese study improves the mind - that, or makes us more fastidious! (Hmm, could that if you'd responded to the OP's post in the first place - like you did in #16 - this'd... stretch do with a bit of work? It doesn't read quite right to me, so I can't and won't make head nor tail of it and will scweam and scweam and scweam until it's stylistically to my complete satisfaction! ).

 

 

Instead you just typed about whatever the OP's post reminded you of at the time.

 

Yes, the Routledge Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese reminded me of the very similar Routledge Frequency Dictionary of Japanese, and vice-versa. Funny, that!