Language Thinking Lab by Tymur Levitin

  Language Thinking Lab — A Series on How Languages Really Work "A dictionary can tell you what a word means. It cannot tell you why someone chose it." Most people believe that learning a language means learning words. That sounds reasonable. Open a dictionary. Find a new word. Read the translation. Memorize it. Repeat. After thousands of words, you should become fluent. But something unexpected happens. Many learners know thousands of words and still hesitate every time they speak. The problem is not vocabulary. The problem is that a dictionary and a language are not the same thing. Dictionaries Explain Meaning A dictionary has one purpose. It tells you what a word generally means. That is incredibly useful. Without dictionaries, learning a foreign language would be almost impossible. But dictionaries were never designed to teach communication. They describe language. They do not create it. Languages Are Built on Choices Every conversation is a sequenc...