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How do you guys handle disambiguation? That is, when you keep thinking one thing means another thing? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I use Anki and the MOST consistent reason a word lands in the leech pile is not because I can't remember what it means, but because I consistently think it means something different than what it means.

So for, instance, I keep thinking French costaud means, "rib or side", probably because I associate it with *costal" from anatomy class or costilla from Spanish.

What I do in this instance is make a Match Pairs card with:

  • costaud matching "strong, burly"
    and
  • côte matching "rib."

This way I practice differentiating them and simultaneously learn the correct word for rib.

But I do worry that I'm unintentionally strengthening the connection by having them always together like this.

What do you guy do for these situations?

Edit: You may notice that a properly formatted card would include le/la to indicate the gender of the noun, which costaud, as an adjective, would not have but I am inconsistent and also don't like depending on little tricks that only work in index cards, so for the matching card I do not write "la côte" because that way I could guess the card based on part of speech instead of definition.

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[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

I find that digging into the words help. In your case, you're mixing them up because they are indeed related! Somebody who's costaud has strong côtes (according to the CNRTL, they are not 100% sure either).

In my case with Chinese words I learnt to write them so I'd distinguish 我找钱 much more clearly, but I still get the odd mistake like when I confused 午(noon) next to a horse for 牛 (cow)... I was very confused as to why the horse was labeled as cow. But yeah, the general idea is to have more data from more senses to sort the words better in my brain.

Their shape, their sound, the way to write them (physical movements), a picture of what they represent, an anecdote tied to the word, or in this case to learning the word, etc.

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

Ah, yes, etymology got me a long way with my native language, but I never dive into it for my foreign languages, partially because I'm just in a hurry....

They're also usually located in native language dictionaries, the reading of which make me break out in hives.

Speaking of which:

I didn´t know about the CNTR but here is the etymologie of two related (?) words from that site and I can't make sense of it, honestly. I'm used to an etymology tracing the root word from latin, (then often what it turned to in French), to what that word turned into in English; yet, I see no mention of any root words at all in these entries:

bête

  1. Subst. ca 1100 beste « animal [terme générique] » (Roland, éd. Bédier, 1597); 1160-70 au fig. [en parlant d'un homme] « être stupide » (Béroul, Tristan, 1309 dans T.-L.);
  2. adj. ca 1220 id. « stupide [en parlant d'un homme] » (G. de Coincy, Mir. Vierge, 321, 294, ibid.), seulement en a.fr. (T.-L.); repris au xviiie s. 1763 (Diderot, Salon de 1763 cité par Greimas dans Fr. mod., t. 23, p. 138). Empr. au lat. bēstĭa qui, d'une part s'est transmis par voie pop. sous la forme bīstia (v. biche, a.fr. bisse), d'autre part s'est maintenu sous la forme class. (bēstĭa) et s'est transmis par voie d'empr. par l'intermédiaire d'une forme *bestie, v. Fouché, Phonét., 417. L'hyp. d'une formation pop. à partir de *bĕsta, Dauzat 1968, EWFS2 (forme non attestée de manière sûre — v. TLL, s.v. bēstĭa, 1935, 34-37 —, mais déduite du dimin. bēstŭla, Fortunat, Vita Martini, 3, 341, var., ibid., s.v. bestiola, 1941, 27) fait difficulté parce qu'elle fait appel à une 2e var. de bēstia (bīstia postulé par a.fr. bisse est bien attesté).

embêter

  1. 1794, janv. « causer une vive contrariété à quelqu'un » ceux qui les ont « embetté » (Arch. mun. de Passy, Délibération ds Brunot, t. 10, p. 225, note 6); 1794, 20 juin Frederic-Guillaume est... embêté par cette ridicule secte (Bull. Conv. Nat., ibid.) ; 1831 embêté part. passé adj. (Sue, Atar Gull, p. 22); 1842 embêtant part. prés. adj. (Flaub., Corresp., p. 91); 1876 embêtant part. prés. subst. (Goncourt, Ch. Demailly, p. 113 : l'embêtant est que ça revient toujours);
  2. 1820, 19 avr. « causer de l'ennui » (Stendhal, Corresp., t. 2, p. 188 : M. Taglioni et sa femme nous ont embêté ici d'un ballet à la française); 1840 embêtant part. prés. adj. (Matelots et Matelottes, ii, in Répertoire dram., IV ds Quem. Fichier); 1842 embêté part. passé adj. (Flaub., Corresp., p. 93); 1874 pronom. (Id., ibid., p. 135). Dér. de bête1 ; préf. en-; dés. -er. https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/emb%C3%AAter/verbe
[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Haha! Yeah these are hard to parse, even for us. It's full of abbreviations, for a start. But they do tell you the story of the words as best as is available, and do tell you clearly when a link is a hypothesis, a guess, etc. With references.
So bête comes from beste in old french (ca 1100 means circa 1100, ie, around the year 1100). A.fr. is an abbreviation for ancien français. It's interesting because similarly for the adjective version, it starts around 1200 (so I'm guessing we have direct sources with the word appearing) and then in the 18th century dictionary, we start discussing the path from latin towards French. By successive borrowing (Empr. meaning emprunté, ie borrowed).

It's not always super clear and concise because, well, language isn't ;)

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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