Difficult Vocabulary Quotes

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In hell it is difficult to tell people from other people.
Jack Spicer (My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry)
Now Lucy sighed on his behalf. Communication must be difficult when your ass whittled the opposite sex’s vocabulary down to one word.
Tessa Bailey (Staking His Claim (Line of Duty, #5))
...I can't abide snakes." "I don't even think of her as a snake." "Ce'Nedra," he said patiently, "she's long and skinny, she wriggles, she doesn't have any arms or legs, and she's poisonous. By definition, she's a snake." "...I'm bitterly disappointed in you, Prince Kheldar. She's a sweet, loving, brave little creature, and you're insulting her." He looked at her for a moment, then rose to his feet and bowed floridly to the earthenware bottle. "I'm dreadfully sorry, dear Zith," he apologized. "I can't think what came over me. Can you possible find it in your cold little green heart to forgive me?" Zith hissed at him, a hiss ending in a curious grunt. "She says to leave her alone," Sadi told him. "Can you really understand what she's saying?" "In a general sort of way, yes. Snakes have a very limited vocabulary, so it's not all that difficult to pick up a few phrases here and there." The eunuch frowned. "She's been swearing a great deal lately, though, and that's not like her. She's usually a very ladylike little snake." "I can't believe I'm actually involved in this conversation," Silk said, shaking his head and going off down the hall toward the back of the house.
David Eddings (Sorceress of Darshiva (The Malloreon, #4))
There was only a language of families, a tongue woven from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and curt sentences, incomprehensible to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn't difficult to translate at all.
Courtney Milan
Elio Vittorini observed in 1957 that ever since Napoleon, France had proved impermeable to any foreign influence except German philosophy: and that was still true two decades later... By the time German philosophy had passed through Parisian social thought into English cultural criticism, its difficult vocabulary had achieved a level of expressive opacity that proved irresistible to a new generation of students.
Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)
There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4))
Was he mad at her? It was so difficult in text, and she wondered if her generation's reliance on written communication was making them better writers or simply more confused people. Body language told you so much; text on its own was subject to misinterpretation in every way possible. You'd think they'd all get very good at subtletly and vocabulary, in order to make their brief conversations more precise, but she hadn't noticed that trend.
Abbi Waxman (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
Maybe after I saved everyone we could all take a ride on the fucking Ferris wheel…Fuck was now added to my vocabulary. It was an outstanding word that could basically mean just about anything. It could be used as a noun, verb and adverb. It rolled off the tongue with ease and even if you spoke a foreign language it was difficult not to understand fuck off or off you fuck or fuck you.
Robyn Peterman (Fashionably Dead in Diapers (Hot Damned, #4))
Sometimes I think people think poetry must be filled with flowery language, thesaurus-driven vocabulary or the dreaded “purple prose,” which is often prevalent in my genre...But oftentimes the best poetry isn’t difficult to understand at all. It’s the juxtaposition of the words. The line breaks. The enjambs. The shape of the poem. Or the double meanings the positioning of the words make the reader feel or think or do.
R.B. O'Brien
It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
Conversion is seeing ourselves, and the ordinary people in our families, our classrooms, and on the job, in a new light. Can it be that these very people—even the difficult, unbearable ones—are the ones God has given us, so that together we might find salvation?
Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
I will persist until I succeed. I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny. I will persist until I succeed. The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I will persist until I succeed. Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be liken to the rain drop which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed. I will never consider defeat and I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are words of fools. I will avoid despair but if this disease of the mind should infect me then I will work on in despair. I will toil and I will endure. I will ignore the obstacles at my feet and keep mine eyes on the goals above my head, for I know that where dry desert ends, green grass grows. I will persist until I succeed. The Greatest Salesman in the World Og Mandino
Og Mandino
The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. Susan’s attempts at getting them to disbelieve in the things only caused the problems to get worse. Twyla had started to wet the bed. This may have been a crude form of defense against the terrible clawed creature that she was certain lived under it. Susan had found out about this one the first night, when the child had woken up crying because of a bogeyman in the closet. She’d sighed and gone to have a look. She’d been so angry that she’d pulled it out, hit it over the head with the nursery poker, dislocated its shoulder as a means of emphasis and kicked it out of the back door. The children refused to disbelieve in the monsters because, frankly, they knew damn well the things were there. But she’d found that they could, very firmly, also believe in the poker. Now she sat down on a bench and read a book. She made a point of taking the children, every day, somewhere where they could meet others of the same age. If they got the hang of the playground, she thought, adult life would hold no fears. Besides, it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying. There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like “disemboweled” in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather (Discworld, #20))
Sometimes the acutest of agonies are difficult to find expression in the given vocabulary: words fail but pain prevails.
Girdhar Joshi
Jesus Christ is alive and here to teach his people himself. He has not contracted laryngitis. His voice is not hard to hear, his vocabulary is not difficult to understand. — Richard Foster
Renovare (The Reservoir: A 15-Month Weekday Devotional for Individuals and Groups)
People who think that queer life consists of sex without intimacy are usually seeing only a tiny part of the picture, and seeing it through homophobic stereotype. The most fleeting sexual encounter is, in its way intimate. And in the way many gay men and lesbians live, quite casual sexual relations can develop into powerful and enduring friendships. Friendships, in turn, can cross into sexual relations and back. Because gay social life is not as ritualized and institutionalized as straight life, each relation is an adventure in nearly un-charted territory—whether it is between two gay men, or two lesbians, or a gay man and a lesbian, or among three or more queers, or between gay men and the straight women whose commitment to queer culture brings them the punishment of the "fag hag" label. There are almost as many kinds of relationship as there are people in combination. Where there are -patterns, we learn them from other queers, not from our-parents or schools or the state. Between tricks and lovers and exes and friends and fuckbuddies and bar friends and bar friends' tricks and tricks' bar friends and gal pals and companions "in the life," queers have an astonishing range of intimacies. Most have no labels. Most receive no public recognition. Many of these relations are difficult because the rules have to be invented as we go along. Often desire and unease add to their intensity, and their unpredictability. They can be complex and bewildering, in a way that arouses fear among many gay people, and tremendous resistance and resentment from many straight people. Who among us would give them up? Try standing at a party of queer friends and charting all the histories, sexual and nonsexual, among the people in the room. (In some circles this is a common party sport already.) You will realize that only a fine and rapidly shifting line separates sexual culture from many other relations of durability and care. The impoverished vocabulary of straight culture tells us that people should be either husbands and wives or (nonsexual) friends. Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social obligations. Straight culture has much to learn from it, and in many ways has already begun to learn from it. Queers should be insisting on teaching these lessons. Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way of denying recognition to these relations, of streamlining queer relations into the much less troubling division of couples from friends.
Michael Warner (The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life)
That Tolkien also included in Roverandom words such as paraphernalia, and phosphorescent, primordial, and rigmarole, is refreshing in these later days when such language is considered too ‘difficult’ for young children – a view with which Tolkien would have disagreed. ‘A good vocabulary,’ he once wrote (April 1959), ‘is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one’s age-group. It comes from reading books above one’ (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [1981], pp. 298–9).
J.R.R. Tolkien (Roverandom)
We are a culture that has forgotten how to be sad. We don't know how to grieve or be angry. We palliate pain, and numb discomfort with drugs, entertainment, busyness and productivity. We've marginalized unhappiness, removed it from our vocabulary. Most negative feelings have been pathologized, stigmatized, and named as being outside the realm of normal. Instead, we have normalized peace, prosperity and positivity. We whitewash our narratives, leave out all the shameful failures of our American origin story. We close our ears to the truth. We insist on bliss. When a task or commitment or relationship becomes too emotionally difficult, we jump ship, lest the bad feelings weigh down our lives.
Amanda Held Opelt (Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life)
A boat, for all its complexity, is in fact a version of simplicity, but of a satisfyingly complex kind. Get to know the hundreds of ways in which a boat-at-sea works and you become its master and commander. A boat provides control in what looks like uncontrollable circumstances. It is the mirror image of the realities of life on land, which look easier but are, psychologically, far more difficult, more subtle, less visible, and less predictable. The boat, in other words, is the haven from the storms at home. And because a boat's workings are a mystery, in the old sense that it is an arcane art, with its own equipment and vocabulary, its nostrums and obscurities from which the vulgar are excluded, it is also a source of potency and seduction.
Adam Nicolson (Seamanship: A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles)
(a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very ‘deep’ things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published. (b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man. (c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of ‘most complicated book’: the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read. (d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: ‘Einstein is a fool’, or ‘Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie.’ Everyone is scandalized, but they nevertheless go and tell other people that the theory of relativity is bunk, and that Tolstoy was a defender of the Russian aristocracy. (e) When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: ‘I’m a writer’, and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works. (f) Given his vast culture, a writer can always get work as a literary critic. In that role, he can show his generosity by writing about his friends’ books. Half of any such reviews are made up of quotations from foreign authors and the other half of analyses of sentences, always using expressions such as ‘the epistemological cut’, or ‘an integrated bi-dimensional vision of life’. Anyone reading the review will say: ‘What a cultivated person’, but he won’t buy the book because he’ll be afraid he might not know how to continue reading when the epistemological cut appears. (g) When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of. (h) There is only one book that arouses the unanimous admiration of the writer and his peers: Ulysses by James Joyce. No writer will ever speak ill of this book, but when someone asks him what it’s about, he can’t quite explain, making one doubt that he has actually read it.
Paulo Coelho
Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick. Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness. Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.
Charles Warnke
Focus intently and beat procrastination.    Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break).    Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives.    Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up.    Set up a distraction-free environment.    Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck.    When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode.    After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck.    Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests.    When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply.    Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating.    Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed.    Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself.    Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory.    Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones.    Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory.    Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently.    Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace.    Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly.    Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems.    Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any.    Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline.    Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings.    Improve your habits.    Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself.    Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks.    Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.    Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set.    Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively.    Preview the text before reading it in detail.    Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests.    Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan.    Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible.    During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers.    Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner.    Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust.    Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.
Barbara Oakley (Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything)
SELF-MANAGEMENT Trust We relate to one another with an assumption of positive intent. Until we are proven wrong, trusting co-workers is our default means of engagement. Freedom and accountability are two sides of the same coin. Information and decision-making All business information is open to all. Every one of us is able to handle difficult and sensitive news. We believe in collective intelligence. Nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore all decisions will be made with the advice process. Responsibility and accountability We each have full responsibility for the organization. If we sense that something needs to happen, we have a duty to address it. It’s not acceptable to limit our concern to the remit of our roles. Everyone must be comfortable with holding others accountable to their commitments through feedback and respectful confrontation. WHOLENESS Equal worth We are all of fundamental equal worth. At the same time, our community will be richest if we let all members contribute in their distinctive way, appreciating the differences in roles, education, backgrounds, interests, skills, characters, points of view, and so on. Safe and caring workplace Any situation can be approached from fear and separation, or from love and connection. We choose love and connection. We strive to create emotionally and spiritually safe environments, where each of us can behave authentically. We honor the moods of … [love, care, recognition, gratitude, curiosity, fun, playfulness …]. We are comfortable with vocabulary like care, love, service, purpose, soul … in the workplace. Overcoming separation We aim to have a workplace where we can honor all parts of us: the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual; the rational and the intuitive; the feminine and the masculine. We recognize that we are all deeply interconnected, part of a bigger whole that includes nature and all forms of life. Learning Every problem is an invitation to learn and grow. We will always be learners. We have never arrived. Failure is always a possibility if we strive boldly for our purpose. We discuss our failures openly and learn from them. Hiding or neglecting to learn from failure is unacceptable. Feedback and respectful confrontation are gifts we share to help one another grow. We focus on strengths more than weaknesses, on opportunities more than problems. Relationships and conflict It’s impossible to change other people. We can only change ourselves. We take ownership for our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions. We don’t spread rumors. We don’t talk behind someone’s back. We resolve disagreements one-on-one and don’t drag other people into the problem. We don’t blame problems on others. When we feel like blaming, we take it as an invitation to reflect on how we might be part of the problem (and the solution). PURPOSE Collective purpose We view the organization as having a soul and purpose of its own. We try to listen in to where the organization wants to go and beware of forcing a direction onto it. Individual purpose We have a duty to ourselves and to the organization to inquire into our personal sense of calling to see if and how it resonates with the organization’s purpose. We try to imbue our roles with our souls, not our egos. Planning the future Trying to predict and control the future is futile. We make forecasts only when a specific decision requires us to do so. Everything will unfold with more grace if we stop trying to control and instead choose to simply sense and respond. Profit In the long run, there are no trade-offs between purpose and profits. If we focus on purpose, profits will follow.
Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness)
categories are more difficult to learn than others. Nouns seem to be the easiest; adverbs—the most difficult; verbs and adjectives—somewhere in between” (p. 298).
Keith S. Folse (Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching)
Abstract words seem to be more difficult than concrete words.
Keith S. Folse (Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching)
target still seems achievable. For example, Eldridge et al. (2010: 82) investigated the vocabulary needs of learners who are studying school subjects in a second language, and found that the evidence ‘suggests a distinct lexical threshold of around 1,600–1,700 of the most frequent word families.’ (A word family is a group of words that share the same root but have different affixes, as in care, careful, careless, carefree, uncaring, carer; 1,600 to 1,700 word families represent around 6,000 individual words.) They add that ‘students who fall even 200 or 300 word families below the threshold seem to have a vastly reduced vocabulary in total and consequently find it extremely difficult to cope with content studies in the medium of English.
Scott Thornbury (Big Questions in ELT)
Many parents feel like they are victims of hostile and alien forces that have invaded their homes through MTV, VH1, video game hardware and software. Their children have interests, a vocabulary, and values—an entire culture that they, the parents, know nothing about. I have asked concerned parents, “How did your child afford a video game, a TV, and computer for their bedroom?” “Oh, he didn’t buy it; I bought it for him.” “You bought it for him and now you are upset with him because he uses it?” We must be discerning about the entertainment we provide. We may be inviting unwelcome guests who become difficult to evict.
Tedd Tripp (Instructing a Child's Heart)
Nevertheless, Michael Erard’s (2012) review of the cases of some of history’s most successful learners of multiple languages shows that their unusual talent was also associated with a willingness to work hard at tasks that many would consider too boring or difficult, such as using word cards to study vocabulary.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
Some theorists have argued that second language learners, like children learning their first language, can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort. Stephen Krashen (1989) has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure. There is no doubt that reading is an important potential source of vocabulary development for second language learners as it is for first language learners. However, there are some problems with the notion that vocabulary growth through reading requires little effort. As noted above, it is difficult to infer the meaning of a new word from reading unless one already knows 95 per cent or more of the other words, and learners usually need to have many meaningful encounters with a word before they recognize it in new contexts or produce it in their own speaking and writing. As we saw in Chapter 1, Dee Gardner’s (2004) research demonstrates that certain types of words are rare in narratives. Thus, students who read mainly fiction may have little chance of learning words that are essential for their academic pursuits. Conversely, reading mainly science texts will not provide many opportunities to learn the vocabulary of social interaction.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
Growing up doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting the religion of our ancestors, but it does entail sorting out the good from the bad in order to reclaim what has remained viable. It’s a balancing act: to recognize the blessings, even the ones that come well disguised, in the form of difficult relatives who have given you false images of Jesus with which you must contend. And it means naming and exorcising the curses—not cursing the people themselves, who may have left you stranded with a boogeyman God, but cleansing oneself of the damage that was done. The temptation to simply reject what we can’t handle is always there; but it means becoming stuck in a perpetual adolescence, a perpetual seeking for something, anything, that doesn’t lead us back to where we came from.
Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
In living out my conversion as a daily and lifelong process, I treasure most the example of my grandmother Totten, who dwelled in one marriage, one home, one church congregation for over sixty years. Her faith was alive for anyone to see; her life demonstrates that conversion is no more spectacular than learning to love the people we live with and work among. It does not mean seeking out the most exotic spiritual experience, or the ideal religion, the holiest teachers who will give us the greatest return on our investment. Conversion is seeing ourselves, and the ordinary people in our families, our classrooms, and on the job, in a new light. Can it be that these very people—even the difficult, unbearable ones—are the ones God has given us, so that together we might find salvation?
Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
The liturgy became excruciatingly boring. It dragged; it seemed a meaningless chore. I realized that what I was experiencing had been experienced, and endured, by every monk in that choir. And knowing that helped me to recognize this experience of tedium as a grace, a gift that not only allowed me to better understand the realities of monastic life but also provided an important step in my religious conversion. I was a guest, and didn’t have to go to choir with the monks; why, then, did I feel compelled to go? To hear the poetry of the psalms, as it turned out. And to learn that this was reason enough. The experience revealed conversion to me as largely a matter of trusting one’s instincts, even when reason cries foul. It is remaining certain that one’s progress through difficult terrain is heading somewhere, even when boredom and despair conspire to make it all seem worthless.
Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
if we don’t have a sufficient emotional vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate our needs and to get the support that we need from others.
Brené Brown (Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience)
Difficulties of technical translation: features, problems, rules Technical translation is one of the most important areas of written translation in modern translation practice. Like the interpretation technique, it has its own characteristics and requirements. The need for this type of work is due to economic and scientific and technical progress, as well as the development of international relations. Thanks to technical translation, people share experience, knowledge and developments in various fields. What are the features of this type of translation? What pitfalls can be encountered on the translator's path? You will learn about this and much more from our article. ________________________________________ Technical translation is one of the most difficult types of legal translation. This is due to the large number of requirements for such work. Technical translation includes all scientific and technical texts, documents, instructions, reports, reference books and dictionaries. The texts of this plan contain a lot of specific terminology, which is the main difficulty of technical translation. A term is a word or a combination of words that accurately names a phenomenon, subject or scientific concept, revealing its meaning as much as possible. The most common technical texts in the following areas: • engineering; • defense; • physics and mathematics; • aircraft construction; • oil industry; • shipbuilding, etc. The main feature of technical translation is the requirement for its high accuracy (equivalence). The task of the translator is to convey information as close as possible to the original. Otherwise, distortions may appear in the text, leading to a misunderstanding of important information. Vocabulary selection is carried out carefully and carefully. The construction of phrases should be logical and meaningful. Other technical translation requirements include adequacy and informativeness. It is equally important to maintain the style of such texts. This includes not only vocabulary, but also the grammatical structure of the text, as well as the way the material is presented. Most often, this is a formal and logical style. Unlike artistic translation, where the main task is to convey the content, and the translator can use his imagination, include fancy turns and various figures of speech, the presence of emotionality and subjectivity is unacceptable in technical translation. Let's consider the peculiarities of technical translation in English. According to the well-known linguist and translator Y. Y. Retsker, English technical literature is characterized by the predominant use of complex or complex sentences, which include adjectives, nouns, as well as impersonal forms of verbs (infinitives, gerundial inflections, etc.). Passive constructions are also often found. In this direction, it is permissible to use only generally accepted grammatical structures. Another feature of such texts may be the absence of a predicate or subject and a large number of enumerations. In addition, the finished text should have an appropriate layout equivalent to the original. Let's consider the basic rules of technical translation for a specialist: • knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar and word structure of the foreign language from which the translation is performed (at the level required for understanding the source text); • knowledge of the language into which the translation is performed (at a level sufficient for a competent presentation of the material); • excellent knowledge of the specifics of texts and terminology; • ability to use linguistic and technical sources of information; • familiarity with the specifics of the field
Tim David
INTPs tend to hoard items which help solidify the connection to the past. They find it very difficult to let go of anything they have collected (or indeed created) and which may have a nostalgic meaning. They assume that any object which is of interest now is bound to remain of interest for the rest of their lives. This emphasizes a strong sense of universality in the progression of time, just as it emphasizes the seriousness with which INTPs approach their interests. Frivolity is not in their vocabulary. INTPs often love keeping lists and databases in areas of interest, especially when the lists are associated with things of the past.
INTP Central [https://intpcentral.com/index_page_id_7.html]
If our parents didn't speak to us when we were very small, the opportunity to enter the world of language would close. There are reports from various countries and at various times of children who were found running wild. They learnt to survive by running and hunting with dogs or wolves, but they couldn't speak and it was very difficult for them to learn to speak. The fact that we can speak is based on the fact of parents and friends talking with us; without them we would be empty; we are filled with them and this is amazing. Gratitude starts to dissolve the barrier of duality; without you there is no me. 'I am me because I am not you!' is our ordinary ego position: I am who I am. But what do we have? Language. We were invited into it by people repeatedly speaking to us when we were small, and kindly correcting our grammar and vocabulary. The teachers at school helped us to learn to read and write and not to make our notebooks such a mess. The competencies that we now have were transmitted to us; we become ourselves through the other.
James Low (The Mirror of Clear Meaning: A Commentary on the Dzogchen Treasure Text of Nuden Dorje (Simply Being Buddhism Book 4))
Our ability to accurately recognize and label emotions is often referred to as emotional granularity. In the words of Harvard psychologist Susan David, “Learning to label emotions with a more nuanced vocabulary can be absolutely transformative.” David explains that if we don’t have a sufficient emotional vocabulary, it is difficult to communicate our needs and to get the support that
Brené Brown (Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience)
Difficult Distinctions: Famous and Infamous In a book by a well-known writer I once saw the phrase “Mom’s infamous recipe for pumpkin soup,” in which one mischosen word turned the meaning of the phrase around. Something famous is well known for its good or desirable qualities; a famous person is outstanding or distinguished in some way, and therefore admired. But something infamous (IN-fuh-mus) is remarkable for its bad qualities and bad reputation; it is notorious, scandalous, disgraceful, or evil. Thus, a family with a famous recipe for soup would cherish that recipe for generations, while a family with an infamous recipe for soup would have a hard time filling the chairs at the dinner table.
Charles Harrington Elster (Word Workout: Building a Muscular Vocabulary in 10 Easy Steps)
Language is so fundamental to our perception, we’re unable to perceive the flaws built into language itself. It would be difficult to tell, for example, if our vocabulary had fallen badly out of date, and no longer described the world in which we live. We would feel only a strange hollowness in our conversations, never really sure if we’re being understood.
John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
Missing the window for a “simple” skill, therefore, has wide-ranging implications because, while new learning may occur, it just becomes more and more difficult. This is especially critical in language accrual, because language, during the first three years, in addition to helping build vocabulary and conversational skills, helps provide a foundation for social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Dana Suskind (Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain)
Smell and taste are processed in parts of our brains that are reactive and emotional rather than intellectual, which is one reason developing a good vocabulary of aromas is so difficult. It’s a long journey from our lizard brain way up to where language is processed.
Randy Mosher (Mastering Homebrew: The Complete Guide to Brewing Delicious Beer)
Affect is perhaps the most difficult plane of human life to define and describe, not merely because it is a-signifying (and contemporary theory is so heavily directed toward signifying practices), but also because there is no critical vocabulary to describe its forms and structures.
Sianne Ngai (Ugly Feelings)
By the age of four, a child of professionals would have heard 32 million more words than a child on welfare. This 'thirty-million word gap' appears to have a huge impact in the child's development. 'With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children's vocabularies were growing and the higher the children's IQ test scores at age three and later,' Hart and Risley wrote. They continued to follow the children until they were nine years old and found that the number of words young children heard seemed to have a substantial impact on their brain development, IQ, and school performance. Later research has confirmed their findings, as well as their conclusion that by school age poor children are often so far behind that it is difficult for them to catch up. Moreover, many of the words low-income children heard were stern ones of scolding, while professional parents praised their children at every opportunity. Children on welfare heard two words of discouragement for every encouraging one, while children of professionals received six encouraging words for every discouraging one. As David Olds and many other researchers have found, it's not that poor families are averse to talking to their babies or to praising them...By and large, parents of every background love their kids, want them to succeed, and are happy to help them thrive. The problem is that struggling single moms living in poverty are stressed and busy, don't realize that talking to a baby is critical, and often are accustomed to a parenting style that is authoritarian.
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
effect are base lies, I'll have you and your friend know! However—" he yawned again "—I've been up all day and so, purely coincidentally, I do find myself just a bit sleepy at the moment. The which being so, I think I should take myself off to bed. I'll see you all in the morning." "Good night, Alistair," she said, and smiled as he sketched a salute and disappeared into the night with a chuckle. "You two are really close, aren't you?" Benson observed quietly after McKeon had vanished. Honor raised an eyebrow at her, and the blond captain shrugged. "Not like me and Henri, I know. But the way you look out for each other—" "We go back a long way," Honor replied with another of her half-smiles, and bent to rest her chin companionably on the top of Nimitz's head. "I guess it's sort of a habit to watch out for each other by now, but Alistair seems to get stuck with more of that than I do, bless him." "I know. Henri and I made the hike back to your shuttles with you, remember?" Benson said dryly. "I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of his vocabulary. I don't think he repeated himself more than twice." "He probably wouldn't have been so mad if I hadn't snuck off without mentioning it to him," Honor said, and her right cheek dimpled while her good eye gleamed in memory. "Of course, he wouldn't have let me leave him behind if I had mentioned it to him, either. Sometimes I think he just doesn't understand the chain of command at all!" "Ha!" Ramirez' laugh rumbled around the hut like rolling thunder. "From what I've seen of you so far, that's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Dame Honor!" "Nonsense. I always respect the chain of command!" Honor protested with a chuckle. "Indeed?" It was Benson's turn to shake her head. "I've heard about your antics at—Hancock Station, was it called?" She laughed out loud at Honor's startled expression. "Your people are proud of you, Honor. They like to talk, and to be honest, Henri and I encouraged them to. We needed to get a feel for you, if we were going to trust you with our lives." She shrugged. "It didn't take us long to make our minds up once they started opening up with us." Honor felt her face heat and looked down at Nimitz, rolling him gently over on his back to stroke his belly fur. She concentrated on that with great intensity for the next several seconds, then looked back up once her blush had cooled. "You don't want to believe everything you hear," she said with commendable composure. "Sometimes people exaggerate a bit." "No doubt," Ramirez agreed, tacitly letting her off the hook, and she gave him a grateful half-smile. "In the meantime, though," Benson said, accepting the change of subject, "the loss of the shuttle beacon does make me more anxious about Lunch Basket." "Me, too," Honor admitted. "It cuts our operational safety margin in half, and we still don't know when we'll finally get a chance to try it." She grimaced. "They really aren't cooperating very well, are they?" "I'm sure it's only because they don't know what we're planning," Ramirez told her wryly. "They're much too courteous to be this difficult if they had any idea how inconvenient for us it is." "Right. Sure!" Honor snorted, and all three of them chuckled. Yet there was an undeniable edge of worry behind the humor, and she leaned back in her chair, stroking Nimitz rhythmically, while she thought. The key to her plan was the combination of the food supply runs from Styx and the Peeps' lousy communications security. Her analysts had been right about the schedule on which the Peeps operated; they made a whole clutch of supply runs in a relatively short period—usually about three days—once per month. Given
David Weber (Echoes of Honor (Honor Harrington, #8))
And when in Acts (1.1–11) Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as the ‘promise of the Father’ that is going to descend on the world, he’s speaking of the way in which the gift of the Holy Spirit of God enables us not only to be a new kind of being but to see human beings afresh and to hear them differently. When the Holy Spirit sweeps over us in the wind and the flame of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gives us the life of Jesus. It gives us something of Jesus’ capacity to hear what is really being said by human beings. It gives us the courage not to screen out those bits of the human world that are difficult, unpleasant, those that are not edifying. It opens our eyes and our ears and our hearts to the full range of what being human means. So that, instead of being somebody who needs to be sheltered from the rough truth of the world, the Christian is someone who should be more open and more vulnerable to that great range of human experience. The Christian is not in a position to censor out any bits of the human voice, that troubling symphony which so often draws into itself pain, anger and violence. And to recognize that we’re open to that and we hear it is not about shrugging our shoulders and saying, ‘Well, that’s just human nature’ (one of the most unhelpful phrases in the moral vocabulary). On the contrary, we feel the edge, the ache in human anger and human suffering. And we recognize that it can be taken into Christ and into the heart of the Father. It can be healed. It can be transfigured.
Rowan Williams (Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons)
(KJV) King James Translation Important Facts An advantage of owning or reading a (KJV) King James Translation or Authorized Version, whether they are the older 1611 version or newer non-1611 version is that they are usually more accurate compared to many other bibles. They rank highly when translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek manuscripts. However all bible translations have many faults with the translation as does the King James Version which is not perfect by any means It’s a difficult task to master translation of hundreds of scrolls and manuscripts and compile them into a single book. With that being said, when choosing a bible you will usually have to choose between the lesser of the two evils, and it is always advised to have at least three translations if not more when you want to get a more accurate idea of what the writer is saying. One major disadvantage that the King James Bible (KJV) has is that the translators have replaced the holy names of The Almighty Creator and His Son, as many other translators have also done with other bible translations. This is never a good thing to do. To replace a proper noun or name, especially when it happens to be the name of our Heavenly Father or His Son our Messiah is a serious thing to consider changing. The bible clearly states in many verses to make His name “known” and proclaim it. It does not say to “change it” or to proclaim a different name. Our Opinion about Name Changes The reasons of why the translators chose to make these name changes is “not” something that we at Heavenly Publishers want to focus on. Instead, we prefer to educate readers of this fact, especially those that were not already aware of it and make suggestions as to how to fix this. Many translations around these days have this same issue and even other serious changes on top of this one. We would also like to encourage all readers to consider restoring the holy names of our Savior and Heavenly Father back into the bible and back into our reading and vocabulary. The example of how our Savior taught us to pray by starting out in prayer by acknowledging and revering the holy name of “Our Father” is something we should remember. The prayer starts out with the words, Our Father who art in Heaven, “Hallowed be Thy Name” and is a great example of how important and holy His name is. This word “hallow” means to render sacred and consider holy. So my question to you is can you imagine doing something like changing our Father’s holy name to something else? Never should this be done, but the translators of many bible versions have done this. The KJV is only one example of this spiritually criminal act. The people that have done this for whatever agendas they had will be held accountable and judged accordingly one day by their maker as He sees fit. It’s not our job to judge but to make others aware of this and hopefully reverse this wrongdoing.
Heavenly Father (King James Bible for Kindle: KJV with All Word Search)
Another reason that shame is so difficult to talk about is vocabulary. We often use the terms embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and shame interchangeably, when in reality these experiences are very different in terms of biology, biography, behavior, and self-talk, and they lead to radically different outcomes.
Brené Brown (Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.)