Q&A 問題回覆~

         在「“悅”讀一“夏” ~ 2011暑假閱讀計畫」一文中，有讀者提出了一個疑問，如下:

Q : 這份說明有一個字是"vocabularies"...我想請教的是這裡用複數型態適合嗎?還是用"vocabulary"就好?

     圖書館請教了國際處外師David Stevens，其很仔細的查詢了相關的資料後，有了以下的回覆:

 With respect to 'Big Vocabularies' on Page 29 of the Summer 2011 edition of Scholastic Instructor :

 Discussions about whether or not a plural form of the word 'vocabulary' exists are available online. Many of the contributors (in the discussion on English-test.net for example) advise that 'vocabulary' is an uncountable noun and that no plural form exists.

 The plural form however, does exist and is 'vocabularies'. It's just not a word we often use or see in print because its correct use is dependent upon context. 

 'Vocabulary' usually refers to all the words of a particular language so any discussion about the words of one language would require the singular form. A discussion about the words of two or more different languages however, would require the plural form 'vocabularies'.

'Think about all of the languages in the world, each one has its own vocabulary. So there is a Chinese vocabulary, and an Arabic vocabulary, a Russian vocabulary. ...the Chinese, Arabic and Russian vocabularies contain a large number of items.' (English4Today.com)

Whether the use of 'vocabularies' in 'Big Vocabularies' on Page 29 of the Summer 2011 edition of Scholastic Instructor is correct or not is dependent on the author's intention. I suspect that the author is referring to kids across the world having to learn the vocabularies of their respective languages, in which case the use of 'vocabularies' is correct.

I was initially concerned about the use of the word 'big' in 'Big Vocabularies'. 'Big' (to me) indicates font size or what sometimes call 'big words', meaning long or perhaps difficult words, rather than being an indication of quantity. I would suggest the subtitles 'Quantity of Vocabulary' (one language) or 'Quantities of Vocabularies' (all languages) but these sound so strange and this might be the reason the author elected to write 'Big Vocabularies'. 

 In addition, the first sentence does not read well : 'Kids learn 4,000-12,000 new words every year reading.' I would write the sentence as, 'Kids learn 4,000-12,000 new words through reading.'

I would refer the above questions to Scholastic for comment rather than make any suggestion of errors, given the reputation of Scholastic and the extensive proofreading that a publication entitled Instructor must receive.