How to Master Successfully Any Language of the World 28
few distinct meanings. And when you are making your vocabulary, make it according to
the meanings. It will be a meanings-based-vocabulary, not words-based.
To help you to understand exactly each meaning that you see in a dictionary for that
specific word, I advise you to classify the meanings into groups.
A meaning may represent:
a) A person (or an animal): man, John, old lady
b) An object: table, car, mobile phone, a piece of writing
c) A situation: representation, official (related to authorities), place, setting
d) An action / activity of a person: to write, to cut out, negotiations, handle
(something)
e) A process: rain, to rain, to burn, to turn into something
f) A quality or an ability: imagination, lively, funny,
g) A thought or a belief: to think of, a wish, morality,
h) A mental state or emotion: fun, exhausted
i) It may point at a relationship between those above (i.e. who is the doer and who is
the receiver of action, etc): because, in, at on, etc.
As you see, this grouping of MEANINGS is hardly related to the common grouping of
WORDS into parts of speech.
Topics List for Your Vocabulary
Below is the list of topics that your vocabulary may contain. This is an approximate list.
Although I haven’t thought up anything better. So, you may definitely use it. This
grouping is rather arbitrary, and some meanings (even meanings!) may belong to more
than one topic or fall somewhere in between. Anyway, this is a general pattern and you
decide where each meaning you have just learnt belongs. Here are the topics.
1. Movements/Rest: come, go, step, fall down, slip, lie (somewhere), hang (an object
is hanging), drive a car, turn around, rock (from side to side – a person or an
object rocks themselves)
2. Movement of things: bring, take, send, hang (somebody hangs something), rock
(something, from side to side)
3. Give and Take: get, receive, provide, need, propose (an object to somebody),
hand in
4. Activities performed on objects: pour (liquid), bend, mix, close, pierce, divide
(into pieces), break, responsibility, consuming, melt (you melt something), burn
(you burn something)
Copyright © 2012 Dmitry Slomov. All rights reserved.
Dmitry Slomov is a language learning consultant, a tutor and the author of the Russian Language Course – Lessons with Dmitry
Contact Dmitry at: http://www.courseofrussian.com/en/contact.html
