Intertwined Words

I regularly play Word Master on my iPhone that requires one word to be linked to another by at least one letter. I got to thinking of pairs of words that link completely.

For two letters words, it's rather trivial. For example:

B A

E N

For three letter words, it's also not difficult. For example:

R A T

E T A

As the words get longer, the match-ups become more difficult but still possible for four letter words. For example:

T O R E

A R E A

Of course, looking at the previous example, you might accept TA, OR and RE as legitimate words but what about EA? Well, we need to agree on some reference source and the SCRABBLE DICTIONARY is as good a source as any. Referring to this we find that EA is indeed a word. 

EA: the Babylonian god of wisdom; son of Apsu and father of Marduk; counterpart of the Sumerian Enki; as one of the supreme triad including Anu and Bel he was assigned controlof the watery element.

What about a five letter match-up? It can be noted that alternating between vowels and consonents makes the match-ups easier to find. Difficult consonants, like C and V are to be avoided at all costs become there are very few two letter words to be formed from them.

 B A K E D
A B A T E

BA, AB, KA, ET and DE are all legitimate words according to the SCRABBLE DICTIONARY. What about a six letter match-up?

A B A T E D
D E N O T E

It's not that difficult but watching three words together would be more challenging. Anyway, just introducing the notion of "intertwined words" (for want of a better term).

Word Visualisation

Yesterday I began a new Airtable database titled Vocabulary aimed at keeping track of new words that I come across. My first entry was minatory but firstly I had to set up my fields which I did but then I got to wondering whether this database approach was the way to go about tracking new words. What alternatives are available? I decided to investigate.

One option is VISUWORDS and Figure 1 shows what this site produced for minatory:

Figure 1: https://visuwords.com/minatory

There's more information here about what it does. Another site that offers word associations is the aptly titled wordassociation.org that has supposedly become the world’s largest database of word associations. Figure 2 shows its output for minatory:

Figure 2: http://wordassociation.org/words/minatory

Cleary, as judged by this site, minatory is not a commonly used word. 

Moving along, the above site is associated with etymology and is full of fascinating information but unfortunately nothing is listed for minatory. However, the Online Etymology Dictionary does list the word:

minatory (adj.)

"expressing a threat," 1530s, from French minatoire, from Late Latin minatorius "threatening," from minat-, stem of Latin minari "to threaten; jut, project," from minæ "threats; projecting points," from PIE root *men- (2) "to project." Related: Minatorially.

According to this source, "Wordnik.com is the world's biggest online English dictionary and includes multiple sources for each word -- sort of a one-stop shop for definitions. It includes synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, same context, forms, rhymes, reverse dictionary, and thousands of user-created lists." 

Here is the link to what is has to say about minatory. The examples provided are very helpful in gaining a good sense of its meaning e.g.

And if you approach the area from the country end - along the trackbed of the Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway - you are still met by a forest of minatory signs.

Even a Google Search for minatory-related images throws up interesting results as Figure 3  and Figure 4 show:

Figure 3: source

Figure 4: source

Of course, I'm a big fan of using rhyme as a means of remembering and reinforcing words. Rhyme Zone is a useful site in this regard. Remember that Visuwords links minatory to omen, portent, presage so the rhyming link to divinatory reminds us of this link.

9 letters:

crinatory

10 letters:

divinatory

11 letters:

combinatory, comminatory, declinatory, inclinatory

12 letters:

cachinnatory

Another way of reinforcing learning is to link the word to one in another language. For example, in Indonesian minatory best translate as mengancam e.g. a threatening look = tampilan yang mengancam. Google Translate offers mengerikan as a translation, a word which means horrible so that's not so good. See Figure 5. It's better to translate threatening.

Figure 5

In conclusion, I've modified my Airtable database in the light of my above investigation. It now looks as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: link

Indonesian Language

Back in December 2017, a full three years ago now, I took a list of the 300 most commonly used English words with associated contextual sentences and translated them into Indonesian. I completed words from 1 to 100 in a first post, then words 101 to 200 in a second post but only partially completed words 201 to 300. This final post I completed today, Christmas Day 2020. Here are the links:

• Post containing words from 1 to 100
• Post containing words from 101 to 200
• Post containing words from 210 to 300

The site from which I took the words seems to be no longer active. I guess what motivated me was my current reading of James Sneddon's "The Indonesian Language: Its history and role in modern society". The book was published in November of 2003. I've always been interested in the language and learning it but have been rather lazy and disorganised in my learning.

I used Google Translate for the translations of the sentences illustrating the use of the 300 words and set things out like this:

A man and a woman sat down --> 

Seorang pria dan seorang wanita duduk

The indefinite article is of course a very basic word and is thus included in the list of words. As James Sneddon points out early on in his book, this sort of formal written Indonesian is quite different from what is spoken and even what is contained in casual text messages. Whatever grasp of the language that I have is largely academic.

There's other content that I've copied or created. Here are Google Drive links to a: 

• 1219 page dictionary in PDF format
• a vocabulary list (only six pages)
• a 363 page Kamus Gambar

Here are some other useful links that I've discovered (these don't require any registration):

• multiple topics at mylanguages.org 
  e.g. body parts (unfortunately requires flash to hear sounds)
• Indonesian: 42 FREE vocabulary topics with more than 1900 words in over 50 languages
  (contains pictures with sounds)
• masteringbahasa.com with 900 Lists of Basic Indonesian Vocabulary
• 1000 most common Indonesian words
• Indonesian Vocabulary Sets 
• Resourceful Indonesian

Most importantly, I'm currently immersed in the culture and surrounded by native speakers of the language, so there's every opportunity for improvement. Most challenging for me is understanding spoken Indonesian when it's suddenly directed at me. I tend to have a mental block on such occasions. This is simply a habit that I need to break.

Recherché

Recherché is a word that I'd heard of in the past but had long forgotten its meaning. I came across it being used in a video about the fine-matter constant that is approximately equal to 1/137. The person concerned described the topic as recherché and joked that if there was a three digit code to a physicist's briefcase, the first combination to try in order to gain access to it would be 137. So what does the word mean? Figure 1 shows the definition from Merriam-Webster:

Figure 1: source

I took the opportunity to sign up to the Merriam-Webster site in order to be able to save words and access other features that are available. This is a resource that I should make more use of.

I was apparently signed up to the Free Dictionary already but had forgotten my password. After resetting, this was the definition that I retrieved:

1. Uncommon; rare.

2. Exquisite; choice.

3. Overrefined; forced.

4. Pretentious; overblown.

French, past participle of rechercher, to research, from Old French recercher.

I also signed up with Dictionary.com. Apparently, I could log in via Facebook but I don't want to be dependent on Facebook at all so I've logged in anew. In what might seem like overkill, I've signed up to the Cambridge Dictionary as well. I guess I should just focus on one or two of these sites and not spread myself too thin. What I'll do is that I'll put the link to these three sites on my Google Sites webpage, so I'm reminded to make more use of them. Here is the current status of my language page:

• PDFDRIVE: good source of free books

• The Free Dictionary: good for vocabulary, flashcards and challenges of various sorts. I am a registered user.

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: I'm a registered user on this site.

• Dictionary.com: I'm a registered user on this site.

• The Cambridge Dictionary: I'm a registered user on this site.

• Smashwords self-publishing website and ebook site (some free and the rest relatively inexpensive)

• Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms

• EPDS seems to be a source of books on a variety of subjects

• Vocabulary.com this site allows you to set up classes and assign quizzes, challenges etc. created by yourself or others. It's free with up to 50 students per class.

Here is a link to my Google Document on vocabulary, collected from Dictionary.com (accessed using Facebook). I also have currently over 700 words on my Kindle that I've marked during my reading. The words can be practised using a flashcard system that shows an example of each word's usage and allows you to mark a word as mastered if you know its meaning. There is a way to export the data but my first attempt at doing so failed, even though it seems straightforward enough (notes on how to do it have been saved in Google's Keep) .

I try to keep track of what books I read via goodreads.

The Cambridge Dictionary has a blog that contains some interesting posts. The latest post is titled I don't know him from Adam: phrases containing names. I've contributed a couple of comments that are awaiting moderation: one concerning "See you, Jimmy!" and other concerning rhyming slang. The dictionary has its own YouTube channel which I've subscribed to.

There is even an English-Indonesian dictionary with translations of many colloquial expressions e.g. a good loser is translated as sportif while a bad loser is translated as tidak sportif.