Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
Agreed. Most of the 5 or so words (if not all) I looked up were from reading Crime and Punishment. 
Since then I've read pretty light and recent stuff so I haven't had much need.
Even with Dostoyevsky, I didn't look up most stuff I didn't now as the the Kindle is just so slow to pull up the dictionary etc. that I'd just read on.
I'd do it more on an LCD tablet I'd guess, as I could touch the word and get the definition to pop up nearly instantly. The speed of e-ink readers keeps me from using it as much as I would if it was fast. |
And millions of L2 readers out there would probably enjoy the luxury of quick lookup with multilingual dictionaries. The implementations in ebook readers so far is pretty unconvincing. I would rather hang myself than use an E-Ink device to read Japanese or Spanish, where I may need to look up a word several times on each page. A PC with a good multilingual popup dictionary is far superior. A reader device with similar speed and usability could be the bee's knees for L2s of many languages, even those not actively studying language.
Of course, even native readers frequently lack the necessary vocabulary for some content...especially stuff with intentionally dense writing or archaic/deprecated usage. Quite common in some of the free material out there, just by virtue of age.