I’m also German. I think I’m about C1 level English. Sometimes I come across words where I’m not sure about the exact meaning or I’m confusing words. I use “wadoku” and then paste the German translation in the “meaning” notes to get a clearer idea of the meaning of a Japanese word.
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I’m glad my background in TESOL is finally paying off. 
Yeah, I probably only know the word because I wanted to try out futsal as a child and had to explain to my mom that I didn’t need cleats for that.
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Coming from a romance language, I noticed that the english words in WK I struggle the most with are all short, narrowly-used and with old english root/germanic origin.
Stuff like : fins, cleat, clam, yonder, foster, lumber, toil, loiter, sickle, yarn… so many leeches with those one.
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That’s the issue I wanted to point out. It’s maybe not a real big deal but sometimes just frustrating
Beside those longer idioms and phrases these are exactly the words which let you pause for a moment. You maybe know them passively but recalling them actively is a different thing because they are rarely used in everyday’s colloquial English. Aren’t they? I think I never talked to someone about “loitering to that field yonder to toil with a sickle”…
I actually don’t know the correct use of “yonder” because I had never ever came across this word before…
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I think I never talked to someone about “loitering to that field yonder to toil with a sickle”…
I actually used all of those words in conversation today except for “yonder.” Yonder just means “over there” but it’s something people only say ironically these days because it makes you sound like a 19th century homesteader (or a hick). I think any native speaker would know what it means though. It’s also used in some idioms like “the great blue yonder” (referring to the sky). When used as an adjective it has a classical poetic feel, like the famous line from Romeo and Juliet: “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”
Uncommon words to me are things like torrid, lugubrious, or salubrious… Somewhat affectatious words which only come up when reading literature.
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C-can I be the pedantic party-pooper? “Cleats” are the bits that stick out of the shoe, not the shoe itself. They can even be attached to an otherwise normal shoe to give yourself more grip.
EDIT: aaaaaaah I just looked this up and apparently in American English it is used as a shorthand to refer to soccer boots - ignore meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
though it might be more helpful to know that it “technically” means the sticky-out bits anyway, cos you might come across the word in other contexts, and also I don’t think British people use the word in this way
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'MURICA!
But in all seriousness, that’s really interesting to know @Radish8! Thanks for sharing the differences between BE and SE. Now, I won’t be so smug about it.
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I feel a bit silly tbh!
The ones on football boots are usually referred to as ‘studs’ in Britain anyway, just to add further confusion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Yea, I get screwed up all the time when I already have Japanese selected as my keyboard and then do reviews.
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I’m a pretty well-educated Brit but there are plenty of English words I don’t know. I’ve already learned a few new ones while studying kanji, finding it all quite enjoyable
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I feel better now.
Well yes, I’m sure english native can effortlessly use this kind of word when they need them. If WK chose them as mnemonic, it’s common enough. But for non-native they are a pain.
Today, I got one those words in review again : 渉 = “Ford”. Was an hell of a surprise for me to discover that ford is not only the name of car-making company but an actual English noun and verb 
Perfect illustration ! For romance-language native “torrid, lugubrious, or salubrious” are very easy, it’s completely transparent in language such as french, spanish, italian, portugese… Give me those words over cleat, yonder, ford and stuff any time 
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The Scandinavians disagree with you
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Just relieving to hear that…
Relieved. Relieving gives me a rather different association, talking of mnemonics!! 
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I guess this question can fit in this thread… Can someone help me understand this mnemonic for the vocab word low (低い - ひくい ) :
“You look down and very low to the ground is a man, looking up at you. Your friend is there too, but you don’t know this little man. Your friend says “He coo’, he coo,” referring to the low to the ground man.”
I don’t understand what “coo” means in this context! 
(I searched and found the word “to coo” but then it would be “he cooes”, right? And it wouldn’t make much sense… 
)
Right! See? Lost in translation…
I think what it means is that, “he’s cool” which translates to “he’s okay/harmless”. You don’t know this man but your friend does so he was just hanging out. However, you didn’t know this. So when you looked down you saw a stranger staring at you.
You start to panic and shout, WTH! who is this weirdo and why is he on the ground looking at me???
Your friend laughs and says, “No KatiKanji, I know this guy. He cool, he coo… hikui…”
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I’m from the American South, so this may be a regional variation, but around here it’s used to refer to any type of shoe with spikes on the bottom to give it better grip (usually a sneaker used for sports). There were signs up in the school gym saying that we couldn’t wear cleats indoors (to play basketball, for example) since the spikes could mess up the floor.
And yes, grippy soccer shoes definitely fall in that category
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