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Chinese definitions?

inspiresme   March 3rd, 2011 7:07a.m.

What about making a separate list of words that focuses exclusively on learning Chinese in Chinese? Once you get to a certain level, learning the English equivalent isn't always desirable, right? It is often important to be able to explain the word in Chinese, so why not give a list of words that are only explained using Chinese or even make a game of it?

Byzanti   March 3rd, 2011 7:11a.m.

You can change the language to Chinese --> Chinese in the drop down menu on the top right (beside logout). The Chinese definitions apparently aren't wonderful at the moment. They still need people to improve them.

I personally edit pretty much every definition on Skritter for myself, and generally only use Chinese if it's more succinct or explains better.

James Sharp   March 3rd, 2011 9:48p.m.

I think that learning dictionary definitions is a kind of goal displacement, whether in English or in the native language. Learning a language does not mean learning other words that a particular word can sometimes correspond to - it is learning how to use the word itself.

So what I would want is for definitions to point to contexts where you would use the target word, and to successfully discriminate that word from other words I might think to use. Skritter rarely does either at the moment, (at least on the Japanese side), and I definitely think that is its weakest point.

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