Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
I've realized lately just how much vocabulary one has to acquire if one wishes to become fluent in a second language. So I thought it would be interesting to post a diagram of some common but obscure vocabulary items and see if you can name them in a second language you've learned. You can also feel free to do this in your native language. I chose this image because 1) ideally you should know all of this vocabulary in your native language and 2) even though farming methods are not universal, farming is pretty universal and most languages should have unique names for these items (unlike say the inside of a computer where vocabulary might be borrowed from a few major languages). Obviously you may not use any dictionaries or online aides, just your mind!
I understand full well that this does nothing more than test if you learned obscure vocabulary in a foreign language, but it does show the breadth of vocabulary a language contains since these are not super common nor super specific items and a native speaker would ideally be able to identify them without being interested in agriculture in particular.
For 2 you can give the name of the item as a combination or both parts. 6 is one item with 2 images, there should be no difference between them. 9 and 10 are not meant to be some specific type of this tool, just the general tool. Some of these items might have multiple names but very few of them should.
I advise you to hide your answers. You can put guesses then color them red if they were incorrect.
I understand full well that this does nothing more than test if you learned obscure vocabulary in a foreign language, but it does show the breadth of vocabulary a language contains since these are not super common nor super specific items and a native speaker would ideally be able to identify them without being interested in agriculture in particular.
For 2 you can give the name of the item as a combination or both parts. 6 is one item with 2 images, there should be no difference between them. 9 and 10 are not meant to be some specific type of this tool, just the general tool. Some of these items might have multiple names but very few of them should.
I advise you to hide your answers. You can put guesses then color them red if they were incorrect.
Last edited by Viktor77 on Mon Sep 21, 2015 7:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Why are they all gardening tools? I think variety of items would be more on point.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
– The Gospel of Thomas
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Yes well you can offer up an image but all the good ones had STOCKPHOTO written across them so this is what I found and besides these are all gardening tools that native speakers should know easily.Xephyr wrote:Why are they all gardening tools? I think variety of items would be more on point.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
– The Gospel of Thomas
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Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
ah yes, a lawnmower is a farm tool
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.
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Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
A: Tang
B: Corong
C: We don't have a word for that
D: Gada
E: Mata
F: Jagung
G: Busa
H: Hati Yahudi
I: Cakar.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
My attempt at all of them in German and English. My English is not much better than my German according to this. I've just realised what 3 is, but I'm leaving my answer.
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Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Man, I don't even know half of those in English. Like, yeah sure if you want to get to post-C2 level and be able to effortlessly converse about anything, you'd wanna learn about farming tools, but I have zero interest in farming and gardening, so I'd only bother learning them if I had to. Also, fluent doesn't mean the same as proficient or having a good vocabulary - it just means that you can speak without excessive hesitation, which means that anyone B2 level and above is probably "fluent", but even then...
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Of course I understand. This is just to demonstrate the average vocabulary size of a native speaker, even in domains we don't care about, which is who we ultimately want to emulate as a foreign language learner. And we never used that system in the US, or at least none of the institutions I attended ever did (maybe Illinois does but I've never been tested by them, they test more by means of your MA exam and defense.).finlay wrote:Man, I don't even know half of those in English. Like, yeah sure if you want to get to post-C2 level and be able to effortlessly converse about anything, you'd wanna learn about farming tools, but I have zero interest in farming and gardening, so I'd only bother learning them if I had to. Also, fluent doesn't mean the same as proficient or having a good vocabulary - it just means that you can speak without excessive hesitation, which means that anyone B2 level and above is probably "fluent", but even then...
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
what system?
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
C2, B2, etc. I am not well read on this system as I have never been exposed to it.finlay wrote:what system?
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Ok, my attempt. Russian and English are languges I'm most fluent in, so it's a shame that I had to look up a lot of the words (red). German is my native languages, so this is for reference.
Russian
Xephyr's Pictures - got all of them except D (not an item I talk about often, and it turns out that the Russians just loaned the German word).
Farm / Gardening Tools - so I only knew 8 out of 12. I definitely do too little gardening in Russian.
English
Checked Imralu's answers after writing this down. I didn't know tools 8 and 9, got 4 wrong, am glad that even a native speaker is unsure about 5, and wait - F is not the pastry I thought it was?
German - and I still think that Xephyr's F is pastry. Xephyr, tell me that I'm right.
Russian
Xephyr's Pictures - got all of them except D (not an item I talk about often, and it turns out that the Russians just loaned the German word).
More: show
More: show
Checked Imralu's answers after writing this down. I didn't know tools 8 and 9, got 4 wrong, am glad that even a native speaker is unsure about 5, and wait - F is not the pastry I thought it was?
More: show
More: show
Last edited by hwhatting on Wed Sep 23, 2015 6:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
They're corn cobs. Also, E is supposed to be "eyeliner" (or at least "makeup")-- not "eye", which I would presume is pretty basic vocabulary.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
– The Gospel of Thomas
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Some comments on Imralu's German (for the words themselves, see my list):
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Last edited by hwhatting on Wed Sep 23, 2015 9:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Can you do the organs of the human body in a foreign language? I took out a few that I thought were a bit tough to identify from this not so great drawing.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
For my high school Spanish class, our teacher had us bring in a picture of the human body and label all the parts on it. Then we had a quiz where we had to list out all the terms we knew. I did very well on it, so I started making similar pictures for other languages I learned, but at some point I realised I wasn't really learning anything from them. Without context, these terms just don't stick for me.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
That I probably can do to an extentViktor77 wrote:Can you do the organs of the human body in a foreign language? I took out a few that I thought were a bit tough to identify from this not so great drawing.
- レバー
- 十二指腸?
- ちんこ、チンチン、ペニス
- 金玉
- 胃
- 耳
- 脳
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
ok i checked some - some have multiple words which is confusing
- 肺臓 haizou
食道 shokudoushit that's oesophagus because i'm a tool気管 kikan- レバー reba (meat)、肝臓 kanzou、肝 kimo
- 大腸 daichou
十二指腸 juunishichou (duodenum)?小腸 shouchou- 卵巣 ransou
- 子宮 shikyuu、母体 botai、子袋 kobukuro (meat?)
- ちんこ chinko、チンチン chinchin、ペニス penisu 男性器 danseiki、陰茎 inkei(my dictionary has a bunch of words marked "slang" as well as these) - also glans is 雁 (gan) apparently but I don't really need to know that.
- 金玉 kintama 睾丸 kougan, 陰嚢 innou
- 気泡 kihou、膀胱 boukou
- 腎臓 jinzou
- 胃 i, 胃腸 ichou、お腹 onaka (i did know this one tbh)
- 心 kokoro、心臓 shinzou (it's downright embarrassing that i forgot this one)
- 耳 mimi
- 脳 nou, 脳髄 nouzui
Last edited by finlay on Thu Sep 24, 2015 4:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
No but if you go to the doctor and they tell you have an intestinal infection you might want to know what they're talking about. Or if they ask where it hurts, if you just point to the lower back they might not know you mean kidneys. Now as a native speaker of English I never needed to know say "pleura" but these ones are pretty common.finlay wrote:and now to promptly forget them, seeing as i'm not training to be a goddamn doctor.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
In French I took a stab at it:
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Last edited by Viktor77 on Fri Feb 19, 2016 5:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
Thanks Hwhatting!
Umlaut on Äxte? Gah, I thought it was one of the feminine -t nouns with just -en. I guess it's like Nacht. Also, funny that I didn't think of the English word "hatchet" as well, but thought of both Beil and Axt. Das Make-Up ... I feel like, if German's going to take English words ... please just take the the as well. I don't care if everyone pronouncs it /zə/, I will too. Why is it der Drink??
Also, no one actually knows what the hell that yellow thing is with the holes. I guess it does look like corn cobs ... but with all the corn kind of carefully taken out leaving holes.
English
Umlaut on Äxte? Gah, I thought it was one of the feminine -t nouns with just -en. I guess it's like Nacht. Also, funny that I didn't think of the English word "hatchet" as well, but thought of both Beil and Axt. Das Make-Up ... I feel like, if German's going to take English words ... please just take the the as well. I don't care if everyone pronouncs it /zə/, I will too. Why is it der Drink??
Also, no one actually knows what the hell that yellow thing is with the holes. I guess it does look like corn cobs ... but with all the corn kind of carefully taken out leaving holes.
GermanViktor77 wrote:Can you do the organs of the human body in a foreign language? I took out a few that I thought were a bit tough to identify from this not so great drawing.
More: show
More: show
More: show
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
________
MY MUSIC
________
MY MUSIC
Re: Test your vocab knowledge in a foreign language
I tell you what I do in that situation: I find an English speaking doctor. Or if I really can't do that, I take my phone with a dictionary on it and/or do a lot of pointing to elicit the word from them. The need begets learning, not the other way round...Viktor77 wrote:No but if you go to the doctor and they tell you have an intestinal infection you might want to know what they're talking about. Or if they ask where it hurts, if you just point to the lower back they might not know you mean kidneys. Now as a native speaker of English I never needed to know say "pleura" but these ones are pretty common.finlay wrote:and now to promptly forget them, seeing as i'm not training to be a goddamn doctor.