Subject: RFI: Recommendation for a good Vocabulary Builder

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 20:46:12 +0200

The thing is that: I many times encounter in correspondence or on the Web 
words in English that I don't understand. So I look them up in the online 
Merriam-Webster Dictionary. However, afterwards most of the time I forget 
them again. I don't want to forget them as I want to enrich my English 
vocabulary which is pretty good, but still not as good as a native English 
speaker.[1]

So I'm looking for a recommendation for a good Vocabulary builder. 
Requirements/Nice to Have's are:

1. Preferably written in Perl/Python/Ruby. I think it's insanity to write such 
things in C, and I can't handle Tcl very well.

2. Multiple groups and categories of words preferably nested. One can choose
which category or selection of them to practice.

3. A nice GUI or a very convenient CLI.

4. I18n would be nice, but not an absolute must.

5. Open Source or very close. (a must!)

6. Stable and as bug-free as possible. (I have enough bugs on my hands with 
programs I did not write as it is now)

7. Preferably stores everything in an SQL database. (MySQL, Postgres, etc.) 
XML files would be nice as well.

8. Conveniently opened in its own window. (not full-screen)

9. Last but not least - a good one with many options and easy to use.

Looking for things like that in Freshmeat would be like looking for a needle 
in a hay stack. So I'm asking you.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

[1] - I don't expect to ever become as good as a native English speaker, who 
is keen on mastering his native language, but I wish to become as close as 
possible. A person should always have ambitious goals.

-- 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      [email-masked]
Homepage:        http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/

I don't believe in fairies. Oops! A fairy died.
I don't believe in fairies. Oops! Another fairy died.

---

From: "Ofir Carny" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 11:16:18 +0200

M-W also has a free word of the day service, very useful for learning
the rarer words, it sends you a word, pronunciation (in the HTML
version), definition, usage example, and history and related words. One
word per day.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shlomi Fish [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2004 8:46 PM
> To: Hackers-IL
> Subject: [hackers-il] RFI: Recommendation for a good Vocabulary
Builder
> 1. Preferably written in Perl/Python/Ruby. I think it's insanity to
write
> such
> [1] - I don't expect to ever become as good as a native English
speaker,
> who
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>

---

From: "Arik Baratz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 11:37:05 +0200

-----Original Message-----

[snip]

> possible. A person should always have ambitious goals.

An English speaker 'keen on mastering his native English' you cannot beat, but
you can definitely beat the avarage Joe, and even the Joe at the 90th precentile.
I have been told my (spoken) English beats most of Americans', and I am willing
to bet my written English skills exceeds even that. It's very much possible. Don't
dispair :-)

If you mentioned the m-w.com site, you might want to subscribe to the "m-w word
of the day", and "m-w buzzword of the day". You will get a daily email with a new
dictionary word, some etymology, nice stuff. You'd be surprized how many time
you'd come across a word that you recall from the Word of the Dat. After you
subscribe you may want to switch to the text version, which contains 0%
commercials (except for the obvious plug for the m-w dictionary). I've pasted the
body of today's Word of the Day below.

Other than that, Chen's method is time-tested and works. It's generic name is
"flash cards", not to be confused with "flash memory cards". I have seen some
commercial English flash-cards floating around [1]. A quick search over the net
provides a palm open-source project [2] that generates flash cards. I didn't see
any open-source PC ones but I guess if you dig hard enough you can find them.

-- Arik

[1] http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=flash-cards+english&btnG=Search+Froogle
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/oboeru/

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The Word of the Day for February 11 is:

excoriate   \ek-SKOR-ee-ayt\   verb
    *1 : to wear off the skin of : abrade  
     2 : to censure scathingly

Example sentence:
     "A day of arduous toil, that might excoriate a lady's palm, 
would make no sensible impression on that of a hardy ploughman." 
(Anne Bronte,  _Agnes Grey_)

Did you know? 
     "Excoriate," which first appeared in English in the 15th 
century, comes from "excoriatus," the past participle of the 
Late Latin verb "excoriare," which means "to strip off the 
hide." "Excoriare" was itself formed from a pairing of the Latin 
prefix "ex-," meaning "out," and "corium," meaning "skin" 
or "hide" or "leather." "Corium" has several other descendants 
in English. One is "cuirass," a name for a piece of armor that 
covers the body from neck to waist (or something, such as bony 
plates covering an animal, that resembles such armor). Another 
is "corium" itself, which is sometimes used as a synonym 
of "dermis" (the inner layer of human skin). 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

You Are Subscribed As: [email-masked]

To subscribe to the html version of Merriam-Webster's Word of 
the Day, featuring audio pronunciations, interactive surveys,
and more:
http://www.startsampling.com/sm/wod/changeofaddress.iphtml

(c) 2004 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

*mf mwt 021104 ARIKB at vidius.nospam.please.co.il mf*
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