Improving the memorizability of EDICT entries
The data for my word list comes from EDICT. The major hurdle in literally memorizing the English meanings is the lack of convention for related words. One example:
英語 [えいご]: the English language 日本語 [にほんご]: Japanese language
Why does the word “the” precedes “English language” while not for “Japanese language”?
Another example:
一日 [いちにち]: one day/first of month 二日 [ふつか]: two days/second day of the month 三日 [みっか]: three days/the third day (of the month) 四日 [よっか]: four days/4th day of month
“One day”, “two days”, “three days”, “four days”, no problem with that. However, the format is inconsistent for the other sense.
To improve the memorizability, I often modify entries in my word list. For the first example, I remove the “the” from “the English language”, making it use the same convention as “Japanese language”. For the second example, I consistently applied the format “x day of the month”. So, they become “first day of the month”, “second day of the month”, “third day of the month”, “fourth day of the month”, etc.
The last round of change concerns the use of “e.g.” vs. “etc.”. Example:
士気 [しき]: morale (of troops, team, etc.) 図 [ず]: figure (e.g., Fig 1) 開く [ひらく]: to open (e.g., a bank-account, festival, etc.)
Some use “e.g.”, some use “etc.”, while some use both. The one using both is clearly wrong. “e.g” means “for example” which implies non-exhaustiveness. Therefore “etc” (”and others”) which also implies non-exhaustiveness is not needed.
I decided to use “e.g.”, and here are the entries that are affected:
| Old | New |
|---|---|
| morale (of troops, team, etc.) | morale (e.g., troops, team) |
| to take (e.g., time, money, etc) | to take (e.g., time, money) |
| times (three times, each time, etc.) | times (e.g., three times, each time) |
| to flow (liquid, time, etc.), to be washed away | to flow (e.g., liquid, time), to be washed away |
| to open (e.g., a bank-account, festival, etc.) | to open (e.g., bank account, festival) (Why the need for “a” and “-” anyway?) |
Everytime I make a change into my word list, I also have to synchronize the entries in Mnemosyne. What a disintegration mess.
PS: “e.g.” is from the Latin “exempli gratia”.
