>"What does this word mean"? >"Look it up in the dictionary" >"Why can't you just tell me??" FWIW, I'm not sure I've ever done that and I've learned two langua

>"What does this word mean"? >"Look it up in the dictionary" >"Why can't you just tell me??" FWIW, I'm not sure I've ever done that and I've learned two languages (outside of a classroom environment, which I expect makes a difference). I usually just encounter words in books and infer their meaning from context. As I encounter the word more and more and tried to use it myself I gained an understanding of what it meant. It is an interesting bootstrapping problem.