Learn French Through Natural Reading
Comprehensible words via contextual understanding.
Word-in-context (WIC)
You shall know a word by the company it keeps
— Firth (1954)
The word-in-context (WIC) technology at mywords.io helps the reader get the contextual meaning of the word, in both English and French. We help you know a word by the company it keeps, eliminating the need for Google translate, dictionary, or any of technologies which might distract you from the text.
When the reader encounters a sentence, such as this next one from L’Étranger:
J'étais noyé dans le bruit et la poussière.
On clicking noyé, the reader would get the explanation (NOT the translation) in this specific context.
noyé
Overwhelmed or engulfed by something
Submergé ou englouti par quelque chose
Similarly, on clicking bruit, one would get
bruit
Noise or sound
son qui dérange
On clicking poussière:
poussière
Dust or dirt particles
Particules de saleté qui flottent dans l'air
WIC: In the wild Example
Here is a screenshot of another example:
The sentence is:
Mais il le fera sans doute après-demain, quand il me verra en deuil.
On user’s clicking on the word deuil, the translation of the sentence is immediately provided just above the original French text. Simultaneously, the page displays the explanations of the contextual meaning of the word in both languages:
Now this is a funny example — deuil has very little ambiguity in any context. Nevertheless, the reader can still learn how a ‘french-minded’ person would explain the meaning of the word. The expressions used here, such as il s’agit and signe de are both very useful for describing things in general.
WIC-Gin
Gin is good.
On clicking on a deuil, the word is saved to the user’s notebook for review. Subsequently, whenever the user clicks deuil in their notbook, they will see all sentences they’ve read in which the word deuil has appeared. This sentence-word association is achieved via a data indexing algorithm called generalized inverted index (GIN). Gin is good, better than Elasticsearch lol.
The 2 sentences (or better, contexts) where deuil has appeared are as shown in the screenshot.
Conclusion
Word in context technology has been introduced. Examples have been given. Everyone is invited to use the WIC technology and have fun reading French with ease at mywords.io.
Remember: you shall know a word by the company it keeps.