November 22, 2014　=========
☆ nervous　　神経質な
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As you probably know, I often use ALC’s online translation dictionary: http://www.alc.co.jp/
It’s a great way to increase vocabulary, as when you search for a word in either English or Japanese, it gives you a range of translations. Of course, my English—English dictionary does this too, but the benefit of Eijiro is that you get the Japanese translation. I thought some interesting “research” would be to see whether the alternative words for “nervous” were the same on ALC and in my English dictionary… what do you think? Will they be the same or different?
From my dictionary, some synonyms for “nervous” are:
apprehensive, anxious, edgy, fearful, jumpy, on edge, tense, uneasy, uptight, worried
From Eijiro on the Web, the alternatives are:
edgy, high-keyed, jittery, nervy, prissy, sensitive, temperamental, touchy, uptight
Interesting! Only two words the same, edgy and uptight.
Looking at this selection of words from ALC, I’d say that these were more like slang, whereas my dictionary offered words that were acceptable in both formal or informal situations. “Prissy” for example would never be used in a formal situation, however, it is still a useful word in some situations!
So, what should you do? Well, a Mind Map, of course! But how to know which words to include… well I suggest that you do more research – find sentence examples of each of the words that you are not familiar with and decide whether it is a word you think you’d use or think you want to learn, and include that word. If you don’t think you’d every use a word like “prissy” then you don’t need to include it on you vocabulary map. So “nervous” is your main topic, and then your sub-branches are all the different words you can use to describe someone who is nervous. If it’s a less common word, include a sentence example to help you.
Bye,
Chris