Many words in a language seem to mean the exact same thing, however, they are used in different contexts and have more nuanced meanings. What are good strategies you have found for determining the different nuances of words that seem to mean the same thing?
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Lots of input to a lot of different contexts/type of media. Even a native speaker may not be able to understand the nuance of a specific word if he hasn’t faced it in different contexts or simple not very often. And nuances may also differ on region, social class, age of the person using the word or phrase in question as well as the situation and so one.
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Each potential “definition” usually consists of a list of potential translations with commas between them (this is what works best with Lingq, as opposed to having separate definitions for each meaning).
I select a definition that includes a translation that makes sense in the particular context I’m looking at and assume that’s the one that applies. If none seem to be right, I look up the word myself outside of lingq in one or more online dictionaries and may add an additional definition to one of the lists.
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I’m resigned to reading many millions more words of text.
That’s how I learned this for English, my native tongue.
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The app/website HiNative is often useful for this. At least, it has frequently helped me figure out nuances in French.
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