Drilling different words with the same meaning

[koreth]

One thing I run into when I'm studying is that, when I'm studying a flashcard in "here's the English, what's the Chinese?" mode, there are often several correct answers. For example, 一样 and 同样 both mean "the same / similar." No native speaker I've asked can tell me the exact difference between those two words, though they all agree that the two aren't interchangeable. (One of those "Why?" "I don't know, we just don't say it that way" things I'm sure everyone is familiar with.)

Anyway, it doesn't feel quite right to mark myself wrong if I get the above definition, say/write 一样, and then the flashcard turns out to be for 同样. Mine was *a* correct answer, even if not *the* correct one. If I give myself the benefit of the doubt and mark it as correct, though, I'm not going to review 同样 as much as I would if there weren't a synonym.

The best I can come up with is to try to recite all of the Chinese words I know that fit a particular English definition, and mark myself wrong if I forget any of them no matter which card is showing. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to go about this, though.

What do other people do?

 

[Smoodo]

Grammatical Differences

First, I'll attempt to answer your question about 一样 and 同样.

一样 is what the ABC dictionary calls a 'Stative Verb'. The guide to the ABC dictionary continues saying, "These entries are frequently translated into English as adjectives, even though they actually behave in Chinese as verbs. That is, the sense of 'to be' is already incorporated into these verbs, e.g., 这个很好 'This is quite good". In fact, it is simply ungrammatical to place the verb 是, 'to be', directly in front of a stative verb. Because stative verbs are actually verbs, they are directly negated by 不, e.g., 不好 'not good', and can be further modified by adverbs of degree such as 很 'quite', 非常 'extremely' and 十分 'very: utterly'. One common fuction of stative verbs is that they may serve as adverbs to other actions, e.g., 慢慢 in 慢慢吃 'Take your time (eating)' and 认真得写 'write carefully'."

So, 一样 would be used like, "他写得一样“ meaning He writes the same (as someone else.)

同样 on the other hand is defined as being an ' Attributive' according to ABC is, "... any word, phrase or sentence that is found directly in front of a noun or noun phrase and fuctions to modify that noun. Just about any, phrase or sentence in Chinese can easily function as an attributive. Because of this, the label ATTR. is limited in this (ABC) dictionary only to those entries that have no possible function other than that of an attributive."

Therefore, 同样 cannot be written in "他写得同样”, instead must follow it's function in modifying a noun etc in say, "他写了同样的文章。" He wrote the same article (the same kind as someone else did).

Second, how I handle these situations:
Hope this helps. I just try to learn the grammatical functions because that's the difference between most of those words. Perhaps in a future version of PlecoDict the grammatical functions will be entries in the definitions so you could actually test on grammar usages instead of heaping them blindly with other 'words'. My gut feeling is this won't happen in PlecoDict because of the wide variety of dictionaries and word lists we have, as they do not follow anything more standard than perhaps "Character, Pinyin, Definition". That looks like the only common factor among all the dictionaries. I reserve the right to be wrong and admit I may be. :lol: [/i]

The 的，地，and 得 usage in sentences will give away what these words are doing when you stumble across them.