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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On June 05 2013 18:47 thedeadhaji wrote: my level of syntax is much higher than my level of diction though so I can probably smoke and mirrors you guys and sound pretentious :p You're well schooled in the art of sounding pretentious, certainly.  | ||
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FoxShine
United States156 Posts
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Ilikestarcraft
Korea (South)17733 Posts
On June 08 2013 04:26 Soymilk wrote: You didn't know "candlestick" before this? I didn't either... | ||
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Hesmyrr
Canada5776 Posts
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doner0
United States233 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 08 2013 11:47 Hesmyrr wrote: You'd think it was pretty straightforward, "candle" + "stick" :p always thought it was referring to the candle inself, not the holder :O Maybe it's b/c I grew up with Candlestick Park since I was little and preconceptions had formed at a really early age. In this book, the context told me that the word was used to refer to the holder of the candle, so I had to look it up and as a result I found out that I had the wrong definition of the word for the last 20 years! I'm more than happy to find out and admit to my shortcomings of knowledge since it's the truth after all and it's not like I have to come off as if I'm a learned man online (unlike certain rl social functions... ugh), especially if I learn as a result  | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 05 2013 21:53 Steveling wrote: I face the exact same problem haji. I picked up an epub of Brave New World in english the other day, had to open a lexicon like 4 times for the first page. But it's so rewarding when you finish a piece of quality literature without help. Gotta keep on it. Loved Brave New World! It's what got me started on this Sci Fi craze over the last year. Could you believe that I never read books outside of class growing up, not even Sci Fi? Now I read ~50 books a year! On June 05 2013 22:30 13_Doomblaze_37 wrote: Gaijin isnt a derogatory term, its an excuse for us to not know kanji stroke order properly and use で and に incorrectly while speaking =) Im surprised you didn't know all those words considering how well-written you are, but its always good to learn something when you read! Gaijin really is a derogatory word. (ask mani) It means "not one of us". To be treated as 'not one of us' is painful if you're say an Indian dude or White dude who's lived in Japan for say 20 years. "From a different country" is gaikokujin. On June 05 2013 22:57 momotaro wrote: I didn't mean that as an insult. I was only a bit surprised how someone who could write English fluently not know some of the words which I learned in middle school. For example, corrugated steel, cretaceous era, indolent, and others seem fairly common in books, magazines, newspapers, and other reading materials. To Archas, thanks for "cornobble", I need to find a use for this word soon :p Never read as a kid growing up!! I was so slow at reading and it was so painful that I'd often resort to spark notes. I even spark notes'ed the latter half of Fereignheit 451 in 9th grade. I reread (?) it this year and it was a fantastic book. God I was so ignorant back then... On June 06 2013 01:00 spinesheath wrote: Really, "wooden"? As in "made from wood"? Also you really should know "flagstone", considering that it's part of the twilight tileset in Broodwar (the dark blue/black stuff). Not knowing "unhinged" shows that you don't play MTG. I think it was using the third meaning here 1. consisting or made of wood; wood: a wooden ship. 2. stiff, ungainly, or awkward: a wooden gait. 3. without spirit, animation, or awareness. 4. dull or stupid. On June 06 2013 10:05 jcroisdale wrote: Wow this is so weird to me, everyone is saying how much work it is to look up words they don't know. I thought it was commonplace to do this. I have always done this, I thought it was standard to look it up if you didn't know. Its very interesting to me that most people do not do this. I guess this might be my reason for excelling in vocab and failing in grammar. I can tell you a thrilling story with amazing syntax and vocab, that is full of run-on sentences and fragments, with comma's strewn about as if they were sprinkles on my cupcake story. Cormac McCarthy!! On June 06 2013 10:07 hp.Shell wrote: Okay, at first I thought this was Haruki Murakami's blog. I was awestruck. But now it seems more realistic. Good on you for looking up those words! Not the first time I've been told this, as you might imagine. Apparently my Japanese writing resembles his style too. On June 06 2013 13:24 kefkalives wrote: Haji, Have you read Heart of Darkness? If not, Conrad was a pole, who spoke english as his 3rd(?) language. Some of the most complex english vocabulary in a novel i have ever read. read it in school. Classmates hated it, I actually enjoyed it. I don't remember much about it since I read it over 10 years ago, but it's on my bookshelf so maybe I'll read it again On June 06 2013 22:33 Silencioseu wrote: Excuse me but what do you mean by "day week"? I believe it is "one week in the future, the same day" | ||
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HaRuHi
1220 Posts
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Scorcher2k
United States802 Posts
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9-BiT
United States1089 Posts
On June 05 2013 13:03 MountainDewJunkie wrote: Slake = lake filled with snakes. Buskin = the pokemon that evolves into Combuskin. Gibbous = a hat that only f2p's wear | ||
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emythrel
United Kingdom2599 Posts
There are some words on there that I am surprised u didn't know, so much so that I must assume you are not a native speaker or that your school needs a good kick up the backside! Read more books, its a fantastic way to learn new words that you can use to insult morons without them knowing it! you can find the word rhododendron in two Harry Potter books, don't ask me how I remember that lol | ||
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Geiko
France1951 Posts
Or did you just include that to see if anyone would actually read the whole list :p | ||
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Race is Terran
United States382 Posts
lol@ candlestick | ||
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 10 2013 08:05 Geiko wrote: You seriously didn't know what "wooden" meant ? Or did you just include that to see if anyone would actually read the whole list :p 3. without spirit, animation, or awareness. nope! not in this context! | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
On June 10 2013 07:54 emythrel wrote: you can find the word rhododendron in two Harry Potter books, don't ask me how I remember that lol Yeah it's plant (common enough around here), which you can tell because of "dendron" --> treelike structure. I dunno what rhodo is though. Everybody's obvious words and strange words are different! Only solution is to read more. :D | ||
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Aerisky
United States12129 Posts
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On June 10 2013 16:11 Aerisky wrote: I think it might not be so much knowing a word as not having seen it used in that way. I imagine that the context clues would usually refer you to readily inferred categorical definitions for almost all the words in that list. yup that's a much better way to put it | ||
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MaxField
United States2386 Posts
About the list, i am way impressed you were not only willing to look all these up, but then to re-write them all up here for us, just to make me realize how little vocab i have. I have been hating myself recently becuase i have been noticing how poor my english vocabulary is, and this was the nail in the coffin. Gotta start studying/reading more... (and then my japanese will take a nose dive) | ||
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Rayeth
United States883 Posts
On June 10 2013 14:02 thedeadhaji wrote: 3. without spirit, animation, or awareness. nope! not in this context! Something to think about when trying to decipher words is to break them into parts of them that I do know. Which can be difficult when starting out but once you figure out most of the prefixes and suffixes you can figure out a lot without a dictionary. "Wooden", I would break into two parts, "Wood" and "-en" assuming we know what wood is, we are already a good portion of the way there. Now how do you get from 'wood' to 'without spirit or animation'? The suffix "-en" means "made of" Which would easily lead us to the first definition of wood. The rest of the definitions are why English is such a maddening language. Definitions 2,3, and 4 all take the first definition and apply it to something NOT made of wood, ie "a wooden gait" means someone walks with a very stiff step or a person with a "wooden face" would be without animation or not moving very much. It is easy to understand these things by saying "he walks like he was made of wood", or "his face looks like it is made of wood", or "he acts like he is made of wood" and then leave the understanding up to the reader to realize that wood does not have any facial animation or would look silly trying to walk, or is very boring to talk to. But since writers love using less words, 'wooden' can say all of that at once. You're describing how something seems to be made of wood, which implies that it has no animation, or is stiff, or that person is dull, etc. without having to say all of that. Apologies if you already knew all of this and I sound like an idiot. I have no idea how obvious this sort of stuff is to non-native speakers. Being a native speaker makes it pretty hard to tell how much random context/structure I pick up on without even thinking about it. | ||
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Jragon
Australia1471 Posts
On June 06 2013 13:24 kefkalives wrote: Haji, Have you read Heart of Darkness? If not, Conrad was a pole, who spoke english as his 3rd(?) language. Some of the most complex english vocabulary in a novel i have ever read. Vladimir Nabakov also writes beautiful English prose despite it not being his first language. I remember having the most new words to learn with Stephen Donaldson's the Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, and gave up almost immediately on Canterbury Tales. It really does sap the enjoyment from reading if a certain rhythm and pace can't be maintained, the grasp of the book can never take hold before being disengaged by the dictionary. | ||
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