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I 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 technolog

by simias 8y ago

I 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 It one of these problems that modern technology has completely and utterly superseded.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 dictionary instead of one of the digital alternatives available. It's so much faster and convenient. You can also easily look up any slang word, archaism, proper noun etc... I've been learning Portuguese lately and quite naturally, having grown up using dictionaries extensively, I bought a Portuguese dictionary. I end up not using it, I just look up on my smartphone instead. The main problem is not so much the lookup speed but the fact that a small pocket dictionary simply doesn't have enough words while large ones are way too bulky to use comfortably and carry around. I suspect that for people learning languages with a more complex script (chinese comes to mind) modern technology make things a lot easier as well, I remember reading that looking up words in a Chinese dictionary could be quite complicated for a beginner.

nerdponx 8y ago
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.
- larkeith 8y ago
  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.
Symbiote 8y ago
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.
cooper12 8y ago
> I suspect that for people learning languages with a more complex script (chinese comes to mind) modern technology make things a lot easier as well, I remember reading that looking up words in a Chinese dictionary could be quite complicated for a beginner. It's honestly not that bad once you learn a little about recognizing the radicals [0] that make up each character. The way these dictionaries work, at least for Japanese, is that you first lookup the main radical, and then you just need the stroke count [1] of the second component. These radicals/components are reused often so once you learn how to write a few of them you can get decent at counting the strokes (a dictionary I perused actually recommends breaking the non-radical part into common components and just summing up their parts to count faster). This narrows it down pretty well and then you just have to visually search for the character. There are also alternative methods that can be used such as that of Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Dictionary [1], which uses a three-number code, with the first being how the radical and its component are visually oriented, and the other two their respective stroke counts. I've also learned the four corner method, [2] and while it can seem deceptively simple, it's also remarkably unintuitive in what part of the kanji is considered a corner (and also relies on a specific writing of the kanji). Of course modern technology does make it a tad easier, especially for those who have no clue about things like radicals. The online dictionary Jisho [3] for example lets you search by radicals where you can select each radical—even a sub-component—regardless of position, and it'll just give you a set of kanji containing those radicals, ordered by total stroke count. You can also draw the kanji, but in my experience this works very sub-optimally, and still depends on using the right number of the ever-important stroke count. I own a denshi jisho [4] which lets you draw the kanji with a stylus, and that works a lot better. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha_Kanji_Learner%27s_Dictionary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha_Kanji_Learner%27s_Dic... [2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method [3]: https://jisho.org/ https://jisho.org/ [4]: Literally "electronic dictionary", they're veritable beasts, and contain not only multiple Japanese dictionaries, they also have specialized dictionaries (like business), J-E and E-J dictionaries, pronunciation dictionaries with audio, encyclopedias, other multilingual phrasebooks, practice for the TOEIC, and so many more that are too numerous to list.

by simias 8y ago

nerdponx 8y ago

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.

larkeith 8y ago
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.

Symbiote 8y ago

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.

cooper12 8y ago

> I suspect that for people learning languages with a more complex script (chinese comes to mind) modern technology make things a lot easier as well, I remember reading that looking up words in a Chinese dictionary could be quite complicated for a beginner. It's honestly not that bad once you learn a little about recognizing the radicals [0] that make up each character. The way these dictionaries work, at least for Japanese, is that you first lookup the main radical, and then you just need the stroke count [1] of the second component. These radicals/components are reused often so once you learn how to write a few of them you can get decent at counting the strokes (a dictionary I perused actually recommends breaking the non-radical part into common components and just summing up their parts to count faster). This narrows it down pretty well and then you just have to visually search for the character. There are also alternative methods that can be used such as that of Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Dictionary [1], which uses a three-number code, with the first being how the radical and its component are visually oriented, and the other two their respective stroke counts. I've also learned the four corner method, [2] and while it can seem deceptively simple, it's also remarkably unintuitive in what part of the kanji is considered a corner (and also relies on a specific writing of the kanji). Of course modern technology does make it a tad easier, especially for those who have no clue about things like radicals. The online dictionary Jisho [3] for example lets you search by radicals where you can select each radical—even a sub-component—regardless of position, and it'll just give you a set of kanji containing those radicals, ordered by total stroke count. You can also draw the kanji, but in my experience this works very sub-optimally, and still depends on using the right number of the ever-important stroke count. I own a denshi jisho [4] which lets you draw the kanji with a stylus, and that works a lot better. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(Chinese_characters) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha_Kanji_Learner%27s_Dictionary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodansha_Kanji_Learner%27s_Dic... [2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-Corner_Method [3]: https://jisho.org/ https://jisho.org/ [4]: Literally "electronic dictionary", they're veritable beasts, and contain not only multiple Japanese dictionaries, they also have specialized dictionaries (like business), J-E and E-J dictionaries, pronunciation dictionaries with audio, encyclopedias, other multilingual phrasebooks, practice for the TOEIC, and so many more that are too numerous to list.