[Course Forum] 5000 most frequent Italian Words ♫ Audio

I’m glad it’s helpful. I’m just reporting straight forward mistakes. I’m sure if I built a big course I’d appreciate someone catching typos…

And in that spirit, another quick one: the hint for “lei” lists “lei” as one of the incorrect answers.

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fixed lei.

Two more quick ones:

At least one of the sounds on “populare” is for "porgere"
The sound on “preoccupare” is “preoccuparsi” (that might not be worth fixing)

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fixed. worth to be fixed. thx

If I may, I’m going to make a suggestion with respect to your hints.

In an ideal world, each italian word in the course would have one unique definition, right? Of course, many times a single word can have multiple unique senses, and in those cases it makes sense to have multi-part definitions, because it is the combination of senses that differentiates one word from another.

Italian word X can have senses A and B.
And Italian word Y can have senses B and C.

So we often need multiple senses to uniquely specify words.

And if you can differentiate the word by senses, then I don’t think it’s helpful to use hints.

Take an easy case: “ragazzino” vs “ragazzo”

Your definition for “ragazzino” includes “teenager,” where your definition of “ragazzo” does not. That is enough to differentiate them. It is unnecessary to include “not ragazzo” in the hint for “ragazzino,” since the definition already does the work.

Now take a hard case: “qualsiasi” vs “qualunque”

Here is your definition for “qualsiasi”:

any, whatever, whichever, every, each, common [not chi, che, cui, quale, qualunque, chiunque, ognuno, ciascuno, tutto, ogni]

And your definition for “qualunque”:

any, whatever, whichever, every, each, common [not chi, che, cui, quale, chiunque, qualsiasi, ognuno, ciascuno, tutto, ognuno, ciascuno, tutto, ogni]

They are identical except for the one switch in hint, and the word ordering in the definition iself. That makes sense, since it does appear that these words are synonyms. I looked up both in collinsdictionary.com, and they are given identical definitions. Here are the senses, as enumerated there:

  1. any
  2. either
  3. ordinary, indifferent
  4. whatever

But while there is some reason to see some sort of semantic connection between “qualsiasi” and say “ognuno,” there really should be no danger of confusing those two words, as they are not strict synonyms. Here is collinsdictionary.com on “ognuno”:

  1. everybody, everyone
  2. each (one)

Simple, direct, and not in any danger of being confused with “qualsiasi” or “qualunque”. I don’t see a need to disambiguate them via hints.

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Your observations are right and I appreciate your feedback. Some hints are not necessary. But there are users (like myself) who really love hints as an alternative approach of differentiation. Like in the ragazzo example, I’ll rather prefer to have a hint. I even prefer some additional hints in cases where words do not mean the same but are remotely related. These can be confusing at first sight (like la gente vs. il popolo. Both words do have their own distinct meanings in both English and Italian but are sometimes translated alike.) I maybe added too many hints, though. It’s still an option not to read the hint, if you are certain, what word is asked for. But please report hints that seem to be stupid or too complex (like the qualsiasi example, where the hints do not ease learning). Removing them is always an option. That being said, I need to work on the English definitions (one word definitions for the last 3000 words in particular). Better translations, will help to differentiate words better and render many hints obsolete. I’ll find out. Here is the thing: I’m not an Italian, nor is my mother tongue English (not hard to tell). Hence I may need user feedback for some of the more subtle meanings. By the way: I added you as a contributor. Edit the course if you like. I trust you 100%, that you don’t mess up the course.

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Thanks for the privilege. What I will do with it is use it to edit typos only. This way I will save you some boring work. I will not alter the logic of the definitions, since you’ve put so much effort into the course. What I will say about definitions, etc, is that I am incorporating the frequency list that is the basis of the course into my own Anki deck. I intend to fill it out with the entire NVdB. Once I am finished I am happy to export the entries as I define them for my own offline usage into a CSV file, this way you can compare a different approach and decide for yourself if there is anything worth incorporating.

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The whole Anki idea sounds promising. Feel free, to continue posting your observations here, if you are “too lazy” to edit the course by yourself. Please check the syllabus (first level): The GitHub sources with csv files are maybe helpful (I discovered them too late). Also, I hope that you are aware that there’s a Anki add-on for importing Memrise courses. Works wicked nice. I could also send you an Excel file with the imported course.

Hello, and thank you for the course. I just started yesterday, and so far, it is exactly what I was looking for for Italian.

I noticed that the audio file for “appunto” (in Level 2) is not “appunto” at all, but rather “animale, il regno animale.”

So far, this is the only error that I have noticed, but I will continue to keep an eye (ear?) out for more.

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Thank you very much. Should be correct now.

One more: the definition for the word “l’aumento” (in Level 2) states that its corresponding word is NOT “l’aumento,” when, in fact, it is.

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Dankeschön. Fixed this. Keep up your good work. That’s extremely helpful.

I’m not sure if it was intentional, but “l’accusa,” “l’aereo” and “l’azione” from Level 2 are repeated in Level 22 with identical definitions.

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I’ll check this. This is not how it is supposed to be. The database sometimes plays tricks on me :slight_smile:

Update: fixed

Similar to one before, the definition for “chiaramente” (Level 4) states that the corresponding word is NOT “chiaramente.”

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Nice. Thx. Fixed.

Hi Robert. I just finished the fundamental vocab and decided to check in. I’ve been catching little typos as they come up, but nothing major.

I should say, I wish I checked in sooner - the add on to import Memrise courses just saved me a tremendous amount of time. Thank you so much for pointing that out.

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The audio file for “la conseguenza” (Level 4) doesn’t appear to be working, although it very well may be just a consequence (pun intended) of my own Internet connection.

Hi Bane. I checked this and I’m able to play the sound file on my side. Just FYI.

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Checked this. There’s an audio file that works for me. Do you use the app? The app is not very reliable when it comes to audio. Sometimes the audio file isn’t played properly -don’t know why.