There are alot of words that I come across while reading that are not in the dictionary. By ‘dictionary’ I mean a reputable source dictionary. I am wondering what everyone does with such words? I’m not talking about the names of things.
Google translate gives its best guess, but can be misleading as it never just throws up its hands and says ‘I don’t know. This looks like junk to me!’.
I don’t trust google, either. So I don’t even bother to use it. I don’t trust the AI translation from LingQ either. Sometimes it just spits out the word it was supposed to translate. The English Wiktionary has a lot of stuff, but I guess that also depends on the language.
If I can’t find anything then I just ignore it and move on. In that case, I assume it is not common enough to get into a dictionary. And so it is not important. Of course, if you are learning a less popular language then that could indeed a problem. And if your mother tongue might not be so popular either, then finding a good dictionary is then also much harder. Best is then if one of the languages is then English.
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I ask ChatGPT.
Usually, just showing a word and asking what it means is enough. If that’s not enough, giving the sentence where it appeared usually gives a good answer.
We can also keep asking questions like with a private tutor.
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Thanks for the response. I’ll give ChatGPT a go for this.
Reverso (https://context.reverso.net/) is a good source that shows you what that word has been translated to from various sources, allowing you to see in what context the word is being used.
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Another good suggestion, thanks. Resources for words not in dictionary so far: ChatGPT, Reverso.
Well, Reversio doesn’t have my target language, so not good for me. If you are really desperate you can still try a mono-lingual dictionary in your target language. That gave me some clues, however it is only really useful if you are already quite advanced.
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I try an English dictionary, if there is no translation to my mother tongue and after that a monolingual one. Google Translator can be used. Just see if it fits in the context. If the word is important you will come across it later on and if you discover that the meaning you wrote originally doesn’t fit the correct meaning, you can change it afterwards. No harm done.
If it is a noun, I sometimes google it to see what is meant. If it is a concrete object, I get images that show what is meant. If it has some cultural meaning, I may get a wiki entry in the target language etc…
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