Non-School Vocabulary Builder

Day Agent · Sep 30, 2011

The term 'butcher paper' recently reminded me of the difference between proper and living English. It didn't even register in my passive vocabulary.
Are there any thesauri that emphasize contemporary English? Real-speak dictionaries? Now vocabulary builders, flashcards?

Preferably for the lazy - software, RSS.

Suggestions so far:

Reader's Digest WordPower games: com co.uk ca (Jamesaritchie)
General media, including TV soaps. (jaksen)
Linguistic corpora: COCA (related) (Fallen)
The Urban Dictionary (benbradley)

Jamesaritchie · Oct 1, 2011

Try the word power games on the Reader's Digest site.

But butcher paper is still widely used, and still contemporary.

blacbird · Oct 1, 2011

Go down to your local watering hole, sit at the bar and toss back a couple, and listen to the conversations around you.

caw

Day Agent · Oct 1, 2011

James - thanks for the tip.

Blacbird - I do not live in an English speaking country.

jaksen · Oct 1, 2011

Watch American soap operas. There are still a few around and you can prob. watch on the internet.

I have a very good friend who is Dutch. I once commented on his 'perfect' English pronunciation, diction, grammar, etc. Both his spoken language (on the phone) and in writing was impeccable. I asked him if he learned to speak English in school and he said not really. He said most of what he knew about English - the accents, the casual phrases, etc. - he picked up from watching American soap operas.

Day Agent · Oct 1, 2011

jaksen - thank you for the suggestion.

mirandashell · Oct 1, 2011

What on earth is butcher paper?

OP, is it British English you want? Or American English? The two are different.

To get British English, try the World Service on the radio.

Snick · Oct 1, 2011

Reading a wide variety of literature with a dictionary beside you is the best way I know of for expanding one's vocabulary. Read fiction, non-fiction, news, business, and so on.

Day Agent · Oct 1, 2011

Miranda - butcher paper is any extra large sheet of paper (I'd say A2 and up), used typically in brainstorming and in crafts as raw material and to paste collages on. I'd guess it's generally used for any large sheet of paper, especially of low quality.

Snick - I suspect publications are generally globalized, replacing regional living vocabulary with vegetative English 101 equivalents. It may provide a rounded, universal, educated vocabulary, but it lacks the vitality of speech.

blacbird · Oct 2, 2011

Day Agent said:
Blacbird - I do not live in an English speaking country.

And nobody here knew that.

caw

frimble3 · Oct 2, 2011

mirandashell said:
What on earth is butcher paper?

I've always known it as 'butcher wrap', the somewhat coarse brown paper on a big roll that they use to wrap meat in 'old-fashioned' butcher shops.
My dad worked in a paper mill, we used that and 'shelf-wrap', the white equivalent, for art projects, parcel-wrapping, etc, as the OP says.

frimble3 · Oct 2, 2011

Day Agent, along with the soaps, you might try movies with contemporary settings, either American or British English. That's how my mother worked on her English, back in the day before ESL classes, etc.

Day Agent · Oct 2, 2011

frimble3 - thank you for the suggestion. Though I agree some films and TV series are linguistically diverse, most are standardized - mall.

Fallen · Oct 2, 2011

Linguists compile corpora of naturally ocurring language (as well academic, news, etc registers). They get their material from a variety of places, including forums like this. Okay it's not 'real-time' speech, there's still an amount of 'pre-planning' in the words, but it shows up language as it's used, not as it should be used (non-standard/standard).

And if you need to look at language being analysed in natural circumstance, there's 'functional grammar' to consider. It takes exmples of language from all registers and compares and contrasts differences (doesn't judge it to be right or wrong, just analyses it).

Not exactly the lazy approach... sorry.

bonitakale · Oct 2, 2011

I thought the white stuff was butcher paper. It had a bit of slickness to it, so the meat didn't drip. Don't ask me where I've seen this; maybe it's a distant memory from my childhood?

Day Agent · Oct 2, 2011

Fallen - thanks for the tangent. Looking into it.

Bonita - the largish paperlike sheets you refer to are probably the origin of the term.
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/x.asp?w=800&h=1280

Jamesaritchie · Oct 2, 2011

Day Agent said:
Miranda - butcher paper is any extra large sheet of paper (I'd say A2 and up), used typically in brainstorming and in crafts as raw material and to paste collages on. I'd guess it's generally used for any large sheet of paper, especially of low quality.

Snick - I suspect publications are generally globalized, replacing regional living vocabulary with vegetative English 101 equivalents. It may provide a rounded, universal, educated vocabulary, but it lacks the vitality of speech.

Butcher paper is used for crafts of all sorts, for brainstorming, and many artists use it for blocking out large projects, but it got it's name because it's the same paper butchers used to wrap meat and the like in. It comes in brown and white. We still have a couple of butcher shops around here that use it, and I know two restaurants that wrap carry out food in it. Not so long ago, artists used to buy it in rolls directly from butchers. Some still do.

mirandashell · Oct 2, 2011

Ah! Of course! Thank you.

LynnKHollander · Oct 3, 2011

Any Costco or restaurant supply store will probably carry 15 inch diameter rolls of 24 inch white paper. Yes, it's used to wrap food or line serving trays, but I use it to make full length clothing patterns and to line kitchen shelves. Kindergartens use it on easels. It makes great one-use banners and is a gift wrap you can doodle on. Butcher paper is also used by fishmongers.

Experiencing a variety of input is a good way of expanding your vocabulary. I used to read Harlequins by various New Zealand and Australian authors; I've read mysteries from Conan Doyle to Charlaine Harris. I've read the first edition Emily Post and the most recent Miss Manners. I had a subscription to GQ as well as Esquire and Playboy, but I admit I never thought of watching soap operas.

Fallen · Oct 3, 2011

I'd never seen or heard of butcher paper until this thread, then, damn, I've just read a book this afternoon where butcher paper was being used to cover an artist's painting. Strange, strange world.

LynnKHollander · Oct 3, 2011

bonitakale said:
I thought the white stuff was butcher paper. It had a bit of slickness to it, so the meat didn't drip. Don't ask me where I've seen this; maybe it's a distant memory from my childhood?

I've seen that sort of paper called 'freezer paper'. It's used in home freezers and in rental meat lockers/custom butchering; sometimes it's mentioned in books on quilting. Apparently pressing it (slick side next to the fabric, not the ironing board or the iron) with the fabric causes it to stick to the cut-out applique or a part of a quilt block, which may help the sewer sew more precise seams.

benbradley · Oct 3, 2011

Day Agent said:
The term 'butcher paper' recently reminded me of the difference between proper and living English. It didn't even register in my passive vocabulary.
Are there any thesauri that emphasize contemporary English? Real-speak dictionaries? Now vocabulary builders, flashcards?

Preferably for the lazy - software, RSS.

I was thinking of http://number2.com that I've used for the GRE question of the day and such, but that doesn't sound quite like what you want.

There's the Urban Dictionary, an informal dictionary which has a huge number of "living" definitions of the latest word usages, phrases and sayings, usually by the people who use them. The definitions are often laced with obscenities even when the word or phrase itself doesn't have an obscene or off-color meaning. When it comes to "living language" the Urban Dictionary is on fire.

Day Agent · Oct 3, 2011

Fallen - I think you'll enjoy this.

benbradley - you are right. Urinal though it be, the Urban Dictionary may be a place to visit.

Fallen · Oct 3, 2011

Day Agent said:
Fallen - I think you'll enjoy this.
.

Oh excellent! I bet I'll be coming across that sometime soon too! Thank you for the link. I got a name for all those 'funny, I was just talking/reading/looking at that, and...'

Edit: hubby is reading The Seventies Unplugged by Gerald DeGroot. Baader-Meinhof are also a German terrorist group-couple. Small, small world.

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