10 ms·
Multi-Layer Dictionary (2016)
- grenoire 7y agoHas there been any attempts to 'translate' this into other languages? I'm struggling most often with vocabulary first, whereas the grammar is much easier for me to grasp (programming helps?)
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoI could swear I've seen something alike for Spanish.
- gerry_shaw 7y agoI would love this in Spanish and French.
- aserafini 7y agoSeconded, I _need_ this for German.
- m463 7y agoThe objects in the pictures would need to be built to higher mechanical specifications first. ;)
- bananasbandanas 7y agoThere is a list of semantic primes on the German Wikipedia, though it seems like it's just a translation from the English words: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantisches_Primitivum https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantisches_Primitivum
- dragonwriter 7y agoThe theory of semantic primes is that they are universal, so (aside from using an older or newer version of the list of primes, like the 14-prime or 65-prime versions instead of the 60-prime version), you'd expect the list for any other language to be equivalent to a translation of the list for whichever language you encountered the list for first.
- azinman2 7y agoWant for French badly. Would pay.
- tom_mellior 7y agoSeveral people are writing this. May I ask why? I just don't understand the use case. If you want a list of basic words, take the 60 basic English words and look them up in a French dictionary. But more generally, can't you just look up anything you want in a dictionary?
- nicky0 7y agoThe use case would be for the teaching and learning of French. Just as this website is for the learning of English. Yes, we can all look up a few words in the dictionary.
- tom_mellior 7y agoTo be honest, I think this website is more about the intellectual challenge of constructing the layered dictionary than about actually providing a learning resource. But that is again because I don't see the point of using this for learning. I'd be interested in someone's concrete thoughts about how/why to use this. To take an example from elsewhere in this thread, if I encounter the word "gauche" in a French text, I could just look it up in a normal dictionary, or I could look it up in a French multi-layered one and invest some effort into deciphering a French paragraph saying the equivalent of "X is on this side of your body: Most people do not write using the hand they have on this side of their body. They write using their other hand." Sure you can learn such basic terms this way. But why would it be better?
- nicky0 7y agoI think the idea is that you would actually study this as a set of lessons to build up the initial vocabulary in a new language for describing things, rather than use it as a word reference.
- scarejunba 7y agoIt's at most the same as this dictionary surely but once you've defined a word and "English", you just say: Jour. N. The same meaning as the English word 'day'.
- raidicy 7y agoWould pay for a Japanese version of this.
- taoromera 7y agoLearning words in Japanese could mean: 1. learning the sounds and the meaning (using a phonetic script, such as hiragana or romaji - the Latin alphabet) or 2. Learning sound, meaning and kanji (the ideograms) Learning the kanji is a topic in itself and there are dozens of methods and approaches, but if you like the "start with the most valuable first then build on top of that one bit of knowledge at a time" approach, you might be interested in a project I worked on a while ago: https://prezi.com/m/ihobq38emnq3/env3/ https://prezi.com/m/ihobq38emnq3/env3/ I have flashcards with example sentences up to the first 300 items or so, contact me if you're interested.
- jpamata 7y agoIt's nothing like it but as a beginner, among the best books I've read about vocabulary are the "Madrigal Magic key to X" series of books by Margarita Madrigal. In it, she breaks down how to convert English words into French, German, etc. If I can recall correctly, here are a few simple examples on French: 1) Words ending with -or: replace the -or with -eur professor –> professeur, aggressor –> aggreseur 2) Words ending with -ist: just add an e at the end specialist –> specialiste, artist –> artiste 3) Words ending with -ic: replace it with -ique romantic –> romantique, fantastic –> fantastique 4) Words ending with -ary: change -ary to -aire extraordinary –> extraordinaire, solitary –> solitaire 5) Most words ending with -a: replace -a with -e encyclopedia –> encyclopedie, spatula –> spatule 6) Words that end with, -ine, -ble, -ance, and -ion are also spelled the same way in French.
- stared 7y agoI was told that there are many English-French false friends. Vide Casually Explained on French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69toGGjoO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69toGGjoO0
- dragonwriter 7y agoWell, the base layer of primes references the term “NSM” (which stands for “natural semantic metalanguage”, Wierzbicka and Goddard’s theory which holds, among other things, that there is a universal core of base concepts across languages; the count of 60 such primes coincides with the 2002 iteration; there's also a 14 prime version from 1972 and a 65 prime version from ~2014.) The layering beyond the primes isn't consistent though, and wouldn't be so much a translation as new work for each language.
- dvh 7y agoash = When something burns and becomes many very small dry pieces that moving air can cause to move. Kind of tree.
- Animats 7y agoThe 60 words: to see, saw, seen. thing, something, what. this, these. the other, another, else, is the same as, be, am, are, being, was, were. one of. two of. person, people. many of, much of. inside. not, do not, does not, did not, some of. all of. there is, there are. more than, live, alive. big. small. very, kind of. if, then. touch. far from. near to, in a place, someplace, where. above. on a side of, hear, heard. say to, said about. word. true.
- raldi 7y agoHow would you define left and right based on these words?
- naikrovek 7y agoWhy don't you follow the link and find out?
- raldi 7y agoI asked because I followed the link and couldn't figure it out. I couldn't even find the list of 60 words, and clearly I'm not alone as evidenced by the fact that the top of this thread is the top-ranked comment. Also, please reread https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pushpop 7y agoThat’s an about page. If you go to the home page then you can see those words: http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ The site isn’t the prettiest nor most logically laid out but the link to the words themselves was pretty clearly labelled (in my opinion).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- skeoh 7y agoFrom http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/Lesson-12F.html#12-21 http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/Lesson-12F.html#12-21 12-20. right. [X is on the right side of your body.] = X is on this side of your body: Most people write using the hand they have on this side of their body. [I use my right hand when I draw pictures.] 12-21. left. [X is on the left side of your body.] = X is on this side of your body: Most people do not write using the hand they have on this side of their body. They write using their other hand. [My child held my left hand.]
- peterkelly 7y agoIf you like this, you'll definitely enjoy the talk "Growing a Language", by Guy Steele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0
- nalzok 7y agoI was waiting for him to share thoughts on the failure (?) of Lisp, which I believe is a decent "shopping mall", but unfortunately he did not :(
- harperlee 7y agoJust 60 words plus a huge context shared with the reader through living a human life (so not a lot of hope of feeding this into an algorithm and having it do anything resembling understanding). Or perhaps with thorough explanations something like this could help bootstrap understanding by a machine?
- dougb5 7y agoThis is very interesting -- a kind of topological sort of the dictionary. It seems like a very natural thing to want to do with subject-specific glossaries as well. Often when I approach a new topic or hobby I want a glossary of all the jargon up front, and I want the words ordered from least to most demanding of in-knowledge.
- ErotemeObelus 7y agoI am a newbie to topology, so please help me. What is a topological sort and why does it describe this?
- Robin_Message 7y agoNot sure why it's called topological sort or what it had to do with topology, but it's a graph traversal where predecessors are visited before their successors. Such a sort only exists if there are no cycles in the graph.
- __MatrixMan__ 7y agoIt's been a while since I took a Topology class, but I left it with the understanding that Topology is all about taking a set (nodes, say) and applying some notion of closeness (how many hops?). Once you've done that, you have a topological space. The sets that you've defined as "close together" are your open sets. Loosely speaking, smaller open sets are considered closer together than larger ones. This might seem boring in the case of directed graphs, which have an obvious notion of closeness, but there are more exotic spaces where you might not usually think to use "spacial" reasoning, but where it can be applied anyhow thanks to the formalism. In a topological sort, you end up arranging the elements based on nearness to each other (as much as is possible for a list), so that elements in a given open set in the typical topological space over directed graphs are likely to be next to each other in the list. It's a pretty topological way to do things, which probably explains the name.
- ww520 7y agoThe "topological" in topological sort is more related to "network topology" than the mathematical topology (open sets). "Sort" is related to ordering. Topological sort thus is related to the ordering of a network graph's nodes by their edges. You can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting to see what it actually is. Topological sort is good in dealing with dependency graph. It can turn a dependency graph into a linear ordering of nodes. GP mentioned topological sort because words depend on other defining words and it's one big directed acyclic graph. Do a topological sort on it and you got a linear list of words ordered by dependency. Group the consecutive words that have no dependency together and you got the word layers. Within each layer all the words don't depend on each other. The words in one layer depend on the words in the lower layers.
- phonebucket 7y agoIf true, this is interesting from an academic perspective: word meanings can be derived from a space of 60 dimensions. But I’m not still not convinced of the value with respect to language learning. Learning how language is spoken from the fundamental 60 words sounds like trying to learn mathematics from its fundamental axioms. It seems like you might just get caught in a long list of definitions where you might be faster off trying to internalise some higher level useful concepts first.
- ErotemeObelus 7y agoword meanings can be derived from a basis of 60 mutually orthogonal vectors... which in the frame of linear algebra does mean a space of sixty dimensions. But not in this frame.
- scarejunba 7y agoIt pushes some things out of the language and into the environment. If humanity went extinct and we had only this dictionary it is unlikely that word meanings would be interpreted to be the same as they are today. But it's intended as a learning tool and it'll do fine for that.
- tom_mellior 7y ago> a space of 60 dimensions I don't think that's true. How would a 60-dimensional vector capture all the syntactic relationships between the words in a complex sentence?
- phonebucket 7y agoYeah, I was sloppy and wrong with my wording. Thanks for pointing it out. I meant a sequence of one-hot encoded vectors of length 60 could make a good model of English.
- trox 7y ago> If true, this is interesting from an academic perspective: word meanings can be derived from a space of 60 dimensions. But I’m not still not convinced of the value with respect to language learning. More like 60 x N , since each of those words can appear arbitrary many times.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- grooomk 7y agoReminds me of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach in linguistics by Anna Wierzbicka, Cliff Goddard and others. Nice to see, that there is actually quite some overlap both in quantity as well as in the actual words.
- david_ar 7y agoIt's not a coincidence: http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/about/research-behind-the-dictionary.html http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/about/research-behind-the-di...
- dejawu 7y agoThese are also known as Semantic Primes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_primes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_primes
- waksana 7y agothis is great because: 1, I can review words by learning the next level 2, I can use english immediately no matter which level I am at. because at any level, I have the ability to explain anything
- mrb 7y agoI suppose this answers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19331307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19331307 "What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define all other words?"
- perfunctory 7y agoThis reminded me of the minimalist constructed language Toki Pona. As the author herself puts it - " It was my attempt to understand the meaning of life in 120 words." https://tokipona.org/ https://tokipona.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
- murat124 7y agoWhat a great way to learn a new language. Would pay for another language of this.
- inetsee 7y agoThis reminds me a little of "English Through Pictures" by Richards and Gibson, and "English Made Easy" by Crighton and Koster. Both use images to provide concrete examples for those words that can be illustrated visually.
- bloak 7y agoCould someone add links to all the words in the definitions, linking to the definitions of those words? I've seen that done for a different language, though in that case the fully connected component had more than 60 works. I think it was more like 120. Of course it doesn't make sense to do this competitively because it's so unclear what counts as an adequate definition. I'm not sure this sort of dictionary would help me learn a language: I think probably not much. But it's definitely fun in a philosophical way.
- kieckerjan 7y agoTangential, I have always wondered why compact or pocket dictionaries (the single language ones) contain the simplest words. If space if of the essence, why not skip the words that everybody knows (like "table" or "shoe") and use the saved space for difficult words? After all, those are the ones you are likely to look up.
- veridies 7y agoI'd like to see research on this. I have an MA in TESOL and teach ESL, so this is very within my field. While some of what's happening here is basically a self-guided version of classwork, a lot of it seems to rely on very logically precise understandings (defining 'flat' as the shape of unmoving water). I can say from experience that students really struggle with being given a single example like that, even when they know all the words being used; it's just not how most people think. Visual aids and/or multiple examples are pretty essential, and often it requires watching a student to see what's registering and what isn't.
- kd5bjo 7y agoIt also falls into the trap of treating the most common definition as the only one. When you look up left/right in here, you'll find positioning, but nothing about liberal/conservative opinions or a legal guarantee (the right to X) or departing (he left the train station).
- crazygringo 7y agoIt's conceptually interesting, but it also strikes me as a problem that doesn't need solving. Having worked with and taught foreign language, nobody learns the first 1,000 words of a language from a same-language dictionary, nor should they. Children learn from the world; adults learn from classes or a translating dictionary. (Only intermediate/advanced level learners start to use a native dictionary.) The idea of "bootstrapping" language knowledge from a single dictionary just... isn't going to be necessary for anyone?
- abecedarius 7y agoI didn't start from zero, but this children's dictionary of French in French was useful to me learning it: https://www.amazon.com/Mon-premier-dictionnaire-Roger-Pillet/dp/B0007DU07S https://www.amazon.com/Mon-premier-dictionnaire-Roger-Pillet... All the words it uses are defined within it -- of course with some circularity, but it's heavy on examples and pictures. It was intended for nonnative children taking classes in a style more like native immersion than is typical in schools. I wish more resources followed this philosophy.
- vidarh 7y agoMy first French class did dive into French long before we were at 1,000 words, and we were strictly not allowed to use anything but a same-language dictionary. We of course did have the benefit of a teacher who would translate if absolutely necessary, but she also insisted on sticking to French in the lessons wherever possible from the very first day. It was far more immersive in my first year of French than e.g. my fourth year of German. It seemed to work quite well.
- leecarraher 7y agoi once solved a similar problem with set theoretic approach using matroid theory and the greedy method for constructing a matroid basis using a thesaurus as my independence oracle. This was over a decade ago, so I no longer recall the results, but it certainly seems similar in the goal of finding a primal set of words that can in some way define all others.
- kazinator 7y agoThere is nothing wrong with circularity in dictionaries, though. This is a solution in search of a problem. It may be the case that the definition A happens to use some word B, in whose definition we find word C, whose definition uses A. However, that isn't really a problem, because these definitions are not simply substitutions of exactly one word for another. The definition of A uses numerous other words other than B, that of B uses words in addition to C, and C uses words in addition to A. That is, the existence of cycles in definitions doesn't necessarily make the definitions irresolvably circular.
- taoromera 7y agoWhat about grammar? You need grammar to form the definitions so you need to teach it at some point. One approach would be to mix in grammar bits into the word flashcards. Like: Flashcard 1: word 1 F 2: word 2 F 3: grammar bit 1 F 4: word 3 ... You could use the grammar bits provided by English Profile based on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference): https://www.englishprofile.org/english-grammar-profile/egp-online https://www.englishprofile.org/english-grammar-profile/egp-o...