Quote:
Originally Posted by GrouchoM
So people who don't need a dictionary, I'm assuming you know the meaning of every word in the English language? Like the other person said, a dictionary would be a prerequisite if you're reading something from the 19th Century or older. Also, many Non fiction books in a field you're not familiar with would be much more enjoyable if you had a dictionary on the ereader. I think for me its one of the primary advantages of ereaders over paper books. I hate looking up words when I come across them in a book. And looking them up afterwards is not use since the words lose their context.
I remember reading David Copperfield and having about 4 pages or a list of 200 words that I didn't know the meaning of..
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Some of us have the advantage of having learned our vocabulary from books rather than TV sitcoms. You ever play
Free Rice? Before I got bored with it (which was before they increased the maximum level) I was consistently cruising at level 50. Now they've added some
really obscure words, and raised the max level to 60, I can't seem to break 58. Still, that's probably better than average. But the words I get stuck on aren't even English, most of the time, so it doesn't particularly bother me. :-p
I don't know every word in the English language, but I know most of the ones likely to turn up in books. The ones I don't know, I can usually dig out by their roots or figure them out from context.
You see, back before someone invented "phonics" and taught children to read by teaching them to sound out the word, then figure out which word from their speaking vocabulary matched it, we were taught to understand the written word, not its sound. We learned to deconstruct words down to their roots, to pick up clues from context, and so on. That way, unlike today, our reading vocabulary could be much greater than our speaking vocabulary. We weren't limited by just the words we had heard and had explained to us; in fact, it used to be common for a well-read person to make goofy mistakes in trying to pronounce a word, because they'd read it for years but never heard it spoken. Now, of course, that doesn't happen; people don't understand any word they can't pronounce. But it must be a horrible way to live, forever limited by turning written words into sounds and hoping one has heard the sound before, or having to carry a dictionary to understand one's own language.