讯息： 16
语言: English
Roberto12 (显示个人资料) 2022年3月10日下午3:14:44
PrimeMinisterK:For instance, consider Nornen's question, "Kia estas via vivo?" And you don't know the word "kia" so you look it up in the dictionary and it says "what kind of, what sort of." So then you think, "What kind of is your life?" Oh, that's gibberish. Let me try: "What sort of is your life?" Well, still gibberish.I suppose an English translation is: what kind of (a) life do you have?
So you walk away as confused as you were before you went to the dictionary.
PrimeMinisterK (显示个人资料) 2022年3月12日上午6:11:47
Roberto12:I suppose an English translation is: what kind of (a) life do you have?I believe I'm starting to understand the rationale behind the translation "what kind of" or "what sort of," but when it comes to bilingual dictionaries you expect a plug-and-play answer.
For instance, if I look up "ĉapelo" in here in the vortaro, I get "hat." I don't get "a covering for the head usually having a shaped crown and brim" (Webster's current definition for "hat").
It might also be helpful if it provides more possibilities than how "what kind of, what sort of," for instance, also providing "how" or "of what manner."
Metsis (显示个人资料) 2022年3月13日上午2:57:24
So I use Lernu and even Google translate to get a rough translation, but checking in PIV – and sometimes in ReVo – the use.
PrimeMinisterK (显示个人资料) 2022年3月13日上午3:07:10
Metsis:For me a dictionary is something that contains case government (what case or preposition comes with what) and examples. PIV and Reta vortaro are the topmost monolingual ones. What Lernu has is more a wordlist than a dictionary, a simple list of words and their possible translations of the style "a horse is ein Pferd".I have found that bab.la is more useful than the vortaro here at Lernu. It not only has a larger database of words but will sometimes also provide example sentences.
So I use Lernu and even Google translate to get a rough translation, but checking in PIV – and sometimes in ReVo – the use.
It seems to me that dictionary has different meanings depending on if we're talking about monolingual or bilingual dictionaries. I used to have a Spanish/English dictionary and it also was just, as you describe it, a word list.
