Dearest forum dwellers,
In one of my earlier responses to other posts I referred to those who are very discriminating about what they eat and how they eat as "gastrologists", which I got from the dictionary. The dictionary offered a few for me to pick up after I
entered Chinese phrase mei3shi2jia1 and I picked "gastrologist" from all the candidates, after scratching my head for a while, not knowing it was actually a mistake.
This afternoon I had a pleasant "conversation" with our dear Uncle Tim, topics going from food to home electronics. To my surprise, I was told the word "gastrologist" is in reality commonly used to refer to stomach doctors and its cousin "
gastronomist" is the right term for what I meant. I certainly learned a good lesson.
As well as hundreds of thousands of English learners in China, I am in the habit
of going to Kingsoft Dictionary, too, when words or phrases looking new come to
me. The convenience of its electronic version is beyound all words. The deeper I go in the path of English learning, though, the more limited I find it is.
The dictionary, which is supposed and believed to be the most prestigious one among all English pursuers, hardly tells any difference between the doctor and the
particular eater. It is reasonable that the dictionary sees numerous of minor
mistakes, but the most disapponiting part is that it includes enough idioms/phrase entries but it doesn't bother to give any examples. Learners are thus not getting to know the proper way in which the idioms and phrases are to be used. For those who have been learning this language for some years, the amount of the phrases/idioms they master is in no way less important than that of vocabulary.
I know what you are whispering, guys. I propably am getting too hard on a dictionary like Kingsoft. You may find a better choice if you try some of its competitors such as Oxford. As prestigious as Oxford is, though, it is still not enough when it comes to examples, to mastering the usage of the idioms. My suggestion is, therefore, we should never stop reading if you are determined to conquer
this langauge, though it's not going to be easy with new expressions coming up everyday acoss the world. Only by reading as much as we can can we gain a real good command of this fast growing language.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. To know what and how the Romans do, the best
way is to go to Rome. To know what and how they say, the best bet, by the same
token, is to read things written by them, native English speakers.
Sorry that it turned out so long again...I didn't mean it, though.
Panpanpan.
