HUGE fan of the new vocab update! But

Bunpro
#1

I’ve wanted vocab ghosts for a long time, and I’m very appreciative of the Bunpro team for adding the new features!

しかし / ところが . . .
However…
(you’ll see the irony in this in a minute)

In my humble opinion, the next vocab enhancement needs to be focused on synonyms. There are several vocab words that are going to perpetually be in my vocab ghosts because they have very similar definitions with other vocab words in my reviews.

Here are some examples of synonyms that I struggle with consistently:

事態 - じたい
situation, (present) state of affairs, circumstances

状況 - じょうきょう
state of affairs (around you), situation, circumstances

事情 - じじょう
circumstances, consideration, conditions, situation, reasons, state of affairs

状態 - じょうたい
current status, condition, situation, circumstances, state

しかし
however, but

ところが
Even so, However, Even though, But

だが
but, however, (and) yet, nevertheless, still, for all that

但し - ただし
but, however, provided that

I fully admit that my issue is probably not understanding the subtle nuances between these similar words. But when doing grammar reviews, instead of getting the question wrong, we receive prompts when entering an answer that is similar to the grammar point that is the correct answer. I would love to see something like that added for vocab as well.

I have tried using the “Add Synonym” feature, but perhaps I haven’t set it up correctly because I still get the question wrong if I enter one of the synonyms as an answer when doing my reviews:

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I understand an update like this is probably a massive undertaking. Especially when there are thousands of vocab words. I just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone has any other thoughts or experiences.

Again, HUGE thank you to the Bunpro team for the new features and all of the hard work that they do! It is greatly appreciated!

13 Likes
#2

Absolutely in support of this suggestion. It would be immensely helpful.

Not that the current vocab update isn’t already great of course!

7 Likes
#3

If I’m not sure which word fits in a given sentence, I usually just toggle hints and it immediately eliminates that problem.

2 Likes
#4

Synonyms is currently only for English input – so for when you translate a Japanese word into English. I should probably add something to tell people that they can’t input synonyms in Japanese :thinking:

Synonym support for Japanese input though is a very interesting idea.
Currently our approach is to add a “leading-hint” (the hint that shows in orange when you input something that is correct but not what we are looking for) for these types of instances.

6 Likes
#5

I love the orange hints, but sometimes I wish they were less generic and integrated with grammar. For example, the phrase 彼はとても___だ asks for “kind”. If I write やさしい, it just says something like “this works here, but let’s try a different nuance”. Instead, it could say “i-adjectives should not be followed by だ - try an appropriate synonym”. This could help with learning and also help narrow down to an appropriate synonym even if two words have similar nuance.

Not sure how feasible this is, but it could also encourage people to understand the phrase instead of just guessing a synonym based on the translation hint.

2 Likes
#6

I’d rather see short vocab explanations appended to easily confused words rather than a synonym list, to be honest. Most Bunpro sentences are carefully written to take into account formality, collocations, and situational nuances that should clue you into which synonyms are preferred.

Take your first example, the many Japanese translations of the word “situation.” To be honest, those words aren’t too interchangeable. 事態 is used for exclusively negative situations, and accordingly, the Bunpro example sentences are all negative. 事情 means something more like “circumstances,” and is commonly used in the context of giving a reason or an excuse (which the Bunpro sentences also reflect). 状態 is used when talking about a factual, objective condition of a certain object or person. Finally, 状況 is closest to the English word “situation;” it refers to a general state of affairs surrounding you or another person.

While Bunpro is really careful to communicate these differences in their example sentences, I really wish there an extra box on a word’s definition page that listed related words or synonyms, much like grammar has. I think that kind of hotlink between synonyms on Bunpro will give learners a heads up to take extra care to note the differences between the two words.

5 Likes