About remembering words

In your native language, you probably don't sit down and memorize vocabulary lists. Instead, a tree is a tree, a person walking is walking, etc. You don't think about it.

The main thing with English is that we have a lot of synonyms that are closely related but not perfect copies of other words. We have a lot of ways to say big, for example. But if someone only uses the term big, and never says giant, large, enormous, etc., then we might think they have a somewhat limited vocabulary, but we can understand them.

Man, I have this problem with my own language, use associations, however unlikely. Take "papaya" for instance: I think of it's neck as Papa's male part, being inserted into Mama, with the delighted exclamation, "Ya!"

However this created some conflict with the mango (Man, go to it)

Forgive the punning

Thanks a lot for your answer

Thanks for your answer and it seems interseting

EF you've made my eve

I like learning languages but I was only any good at it, if then, when I took four years of latin in high school. (I wish I took two of french, but juniors in catholic schools didn't start freshman french, and it didn't occur to me to ask.)

I also took a bit of italian and a bit of german in those years, but I'll just say that I had acquaintance with them, not that I was any good at it.

In my late forties I went to Italy for the first time, and was stunned by how much I liked it, for many reasons including that I was interested for professional reasons, as in the design of cities. I then took seven semesters of italian at a university extension. I got pretty good at it, but have lost it now, years later, since I'm not engaged in speaking italian and would be embarrassed how much has apparently dissolved in my brain... except that sometimes I can even now read it and get most of what is being said.

I have explained all this to say that I made/typed my own italian dictionary, words that I hadn't known, word usage I wanted to remember, and that all became a fat notebook binder..
It's not that I ever used it in place of my textbooks, though I did use it a fair amount, but the ordering of it for my own mind was a useful way to put the information further into my brain.

Conversation if you can find it is good too, probably best, depending on whom you are conversing with.

Thanks for your answering