BECAUSE I AM SO GODDAMN TIRED OF BEING BOMBARDED WITH ADS TRYING TO LOOK UP PRONUNCIATION OR SYNONYMS (btw. for anyone about to suggest an ad-blocker extension. only if it works on the silk browser on my e-reader will that info be actually helpful to me)
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https://schools.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/secondary ( sign up for the homeschool account. it's free. the website also has some audio&pdf language learning resources for french, mandarin, italian, german, gaelic and others! )
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ps. this is the one i like for chinese (you can look up copied in written chars, english words or the pinyin spelling for both mandarin and cantonese). also free with no ads !!!
This is a living Chinese dictionary that lets you contribute your Chinese learning experience to the community. Not only are your search res
Sometimes when I'm stuck for a word I like to use onelook.com which, on top of the typical thesaurus service, lists popular words described by or found near words. This can often times help me find the word that is just on the tip of my tongue.
Ok, I know it may seem like a weird resource to share, but bear with me.
Some people, such as myself, aren’t interested in calling people slurs, meaning we aren’t the most familiar with derrogatory terms. So what do you do if you’re reading or watching something and a term comes up that you know is supposed to be derogatory but you don’t know to who or why the term might exist?
Or what do you do if you’re a writer and you have a racist character but don’t know what term they might use?
Or what if you wanna check if something is a slur or ok to say?
Or maybe you just want to educate yourself to better be able to pick out the racists in the crowd or are wondering where a racist term might come from.
Now you have somewhere you can look.
How it works:
It breaks down slurs by nationality, regional area, and ethnicity (e.g. “Icelanders“, “Central Americans”, “Black Russians”) in alphabetical order.
They also have some religions as well, such as “Jewish”, “Amish”, “Mormons”, and “Hindus”.
They also have a special section listing words related to immigrants as a whole regardless of race.
The entries have the slur, who it represents, and its reasoning/origin, and often include slurs used in other languages as well.
So, Linguee is an online dictionary, available on your PC (via their website, here), or your smartphone or tablet (Android and Apple). All free and wonderful.
And some of you may be thinking “why would you not use Google Translator???”. Well, let me tell you a litle secret:
GOOGLE TRANSLATOR IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH
Oh, yeah, I said it. It’s not good enough.
You type one word, well maybe you’ll be okay. You type a whole sentence and you’re f*cked, specially if one of the languages isn’t English. Look, I can’t get the damn thing to translate me something from Spanish to French if there is a feminine word, it’ll just be in masculine in the French translation. It doesn’t happen always but it happens too often.
Seriously though, it’s a nightmare.
Don’t believe me?
Now, let’s take a moment to compare what you just saw, to Linguee.
First of all, yes, I typed guapa (pretty), which is a feminine word in Spanish, and it gave me the masculine word in French for, hold on to your sit, charming. You can see that Linguee explains a whole lot more about the word you just translated, plus a lot of examples. Not all of them are great, but they are sooo useful.
Oh, do I love Linguee. I mean, he understands gender, you know? Oh AND the audios with the pronunciation AREN’T ROBOTS. Oh yeah, I know.
HOW DOES LINGUEE WORK, THOUGH?
So, how Linguee works is, mainly like a dictionary. You pick the two languages you want to translate back and forth, and you type a word in one of them in the search bar.
Now, unlike a normal dictionary, you won’t only find direct translations of the masculine words, BUT also the plurals, AND (drumrolls please) also the feminines. And it’s specially useful when the feminine form of a word holds some other meanings, like here:
I know, I’m sorry. But it’s a really good example.
My point is that it’s incredibly versatile. And you’ll love it. I mean, I didn’t tell you all the story; it also has expressions, and common sentences. And even if they don’t translate it directy, they’ll find texts in both languages, that have that sentence, so you can compare.
OMG, just look at this, please.
IS THAT ALL YOU GOT?
Well, yes it is. Everything is clear enough to me. Linguee wins by 1000000 points. I’m sorry Google. Your efforts are appreciated, and you help a lot of teenagers write their English essays in Spain but, this is as far as our relationship goes. I’m breaking up with you. In fact, I broke up with you months ago.
WAIT, IS LINGUEE PAYING YOU TO SAY THIS??!
Oh I wish, I really do. But no, sadly, no.
WANT ME TO TRY A LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOL? SEND ME A QUESTION! (but please, just free stuff; I can’t afford anything else. I love my tutor but she isn’t exactly the cheapest).
