English for Wizards
Turbo-charged vocabulary notes
By John Moore
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STの注釈から生まれた便利な辞典
STのホームページに日英時事用語辞典があるのをご存じですか？紙面に載った記事の注釈を、日本語と英語の両方から検索できるという優れものです。単語の学習に役立てましょう。
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STサイトを下にスクロールすると、右下に現れる赤いボックスがBuzzwords
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There comes a fateful turning point in every man's life when his son surpasses him in some skill and makes him feel over the hill. These days, Peter is clearly better than me at writing kanji. I can still read kanji better, but that's only a matter of time.
What really made me feel over the hill was when I pulled out my big, old, homemade collection of kanji flash cards, with many notes scribbled on the back of each one. Peter said, "Why didn't you use the computer for that?" Whoops. That was before the great PC revolution, my son.
Today's computers are the perfect tools for organizing notes, like when you are learning a foreign language and have to remember vocabulary. For example, have you ever thought about all those footnotes printed below Shukan ST articles? Imagine collecting them all, week after week, into some kind of alphabetical index. Wouldn't that be useful?
A year or two ago, the editor of Shukan ST asked me that question, so I put together a little program called Buzzwords, which you can try out for yourself on the Internet. Just go to st.japantimes.co.jp/info/st-buzzhelp.htm. It's a database with over 60,000 vocabulary footnotes from articles going back six years. You can enter either an English or Japanese word to see a list of various meanings and uses, and even different forms, of the word.
For example, if you enter "wizard" in the blank and press the "Buzz" button, you'll see eight entries including one talking about a baseball wizard named Ichiro.
You can also search for just part of a word. Try entering "zard." Now you see more entries, including hazard and haphazard, along with the expected blizzard and lizard. Sorry, there is no entry for the Japanese pop singer by that name.
This is great for studying kanji, too, by the way. I entered 法 and got 479 results!
But please don't complain if some of the results you see are hard to understand. This is really just a shoestring program I put together literally in a few hours. It's sort of like a diligent ST subscriber's set of homemade flash cards. Thanks to computer technology, the flash cards are searchable and available worldwide. That's all.
And speaking of homemade computer programs: You still have time to participate in our online English for Wizards opinion survey, which we introduced last week. It's at st.japantimes.co.jp/engwiz-survey/. Thanks!
Shukan ST: June 27, 2003
(C) All rights reserved
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●英字新聞社ジャパンタイムズによる英語学習サイト。英語のニュース、よみもの、リスニングなどのコンテンツを無料で提供。無料見本紙はこちら
