Mining the dictionary

A good dictionary is one of the first tools that a language learner should pick up, and exploiting it for all it’s worth is one of the first skills that a language learner should practice.

When planning to use a dictionary for your own language studies, consider the following four points:

• Meaningful sentences
• Collocations
• Cross-checking
• Learner’s Dictionary (monolingual)

Meaningful sentences

Bilingual dictionaries are good for a quick fix of language. All you have to do is look up a target term and you’re presented with a block of possible translations, but you’ll be shortchanging yourself.

Better than the simple translation given in the dictionary are the example sentences presented. You can “mine” these sentences to help build mnemonic networks, expose you to collocation, and let you see the word in context so as not to establish it in your mind as a rigid translation.

You’ll find that there are often a lot of examples provided, but I don’t suggest writing down (or typing out) all of them. Instead, focus on the sentences of which you already know over 80% of the content. The point is not to force yourself to digest a completely foreign sentence, but to help you better establish a target term in your memory.

Examples*: Target term is 굵다 [big; thick; burly].

Good sentence to mine: 그녀는 다리가 굵다.
Reasons:

• I know all of the words outside of the target term. (그녀 [girl; she; her] 다리 [legs])
• It has good imagery.
• It allows me to easily adapt it to a personal experience, for example a girl who I know who has pudgy legs.

Bad sentence to mine: 굵은 막대가 하나 있어야겠다.
Reasons:

• This is the first time I’ve heard of 막대 [rod].
• I’m not very familiar with the 야겠다 [have to], especially when coupled with 있다 [exist; have]. I would, at the moment, revert to my own lexicon and use 필요하다 [need; require; necessary].
• The sentence doesn’t immediately strike me with an image, except for an obviously phallic one. Then again, maybe that’s the best sort of imagery for getting words stuck in your head.

Another good sentence to mine, this time for the term 낫다다 [better; superior]: 영어에서는 그가 다른 학생들보다 낫다.
Reasons:

• I know all of the words outside of the target term. (영어 [English] 그 [boy; he] 다른 [other] 학생들[students] 보다[more than])
• It has good imagery.
• It allows me to easily create a simple story in my head; a story of a boy who dominates his Korean classmates when it comes to English speaking ability.

The “good sentences” feel like foundations for the target terms, while the “bad sentence” distracts me from it.

*Note: I am actually pulling these target terms from a list of core vocabulary words that I’d like to learn, so these examples are really words that I’m working on as I write this.

Collocations

You’ll also find in the dictionary examples of collocations. Verb-noun collocations might be a little less obvious because lexicographers are limited in terms of how much space they have to give examples, but noun-noun collocations are pretty evident. Knowing collocations will help you choose the correct word for the correct string of words instead of isolating individual ideas in your first language and trying to apply the same logic to your second language.

A non-native speaker, for example, may make the mistake of saying something like, “He got held away,” when really they meant to say, “He got carried away.” You can see how they could easily use “hold” in place of “carry”, but the first sentence sounds awkward if you were even able to catch their meaning. (Or, “Grasp the meaning,” but never, “Seize their meaning.”)

Here are some collocations for the term 결심 [determination; resolution] which might often appear in native-produced language:
결심이 굳다 [to be firmly resolved]
결심을 뒤흔들다 [to shake one's resolution]

A lot of unnatural speech produced by non-native speakers is the result of a lack of knowledge of collocations. Incidentally, they are usually the funniest mistakes to come across. Take for example one of my students who recently remarked that the “dog was ruined” when trying to describe a scene where a dog was wrapped in toilet paper by a mischievous child. The meaning comes across, but it’s obviously not a sentence made by a native speaker.

Cross-checking

When there are multiple options, cross check them! The dictionary doesn’t provide context for translated entries, so if you want to make sure you’re choosing the right word then cross check it going from target-term to your native speech.

Take for example this dictionary entry for 뇌물 [bribe]:
a bribe; palm oil; payoff; payola; the golden key; grease; silence money; boodle; slush; soup; a pie; a shakedown.

You can immediately see a few problematic entries. A bribe or payoff might work out well, but using payola might make you sound like a B-rate 1960s rocker trying to bribe his song into a radio station rotation. Slush might work, but probably only when you’re referring to a “slush fund”. I’ve never personally heard of “palm oil”, though we might say “greasing someone’s palms”, and soup and pie just make me hungry. I’m not sure what a boodle is.

These examples are, of course, highlighting what a Korean speaker might face trying to find an English word, but it’s a similar outcome for the English speaker who is looking for a word in a foreign language. To avoid picking the wrong word, run the words through the dictionary back into English so you can get a better feel for how they match up.

Learner’s Dictionary (monolingual)

I won’t say much about this because there’s really not much to say, but as soon as you can make the transition to a monolingual dictionary, do so by bridging the gap with a learner’s dictionary. Learner’s dictionaries use simple language to explain the meanings of words, and often they’ll have handy lists like 2000 core vocabulary. Unfortunately for the gadget-savvy, learner’s dictionaries tend to come in the traditional analog format (i.e. a heavy book). But they are well worth the minimal investment.

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• Kanji – The Layman's Best Friends
• Study slower, learn faster
• Mnemonics – The Mental Sketchpad
• Recommended Book: Effective Japanese