A way to combine different forms of the same word in LingQ?

Good evening. I was wondering if LingQ has a function that allows you to combine different forms of a single word?

For example, if a person has records for “to eat”, “eats”, and “eat”, these are already three different entries. And if there were dozens of such words, then there would already be thirty entries.

Is there any way to optimize this process?

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nah, not in the base service at least.

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No, unfortunately it’s not the case. I know it’s been requested several times before, but it hasn’t happened.

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I totally agree with you - it is a huge problem for me as well. I am using LingQ to learn a highly inflected language, so a simple noun can have dozens of different forms. Since one of the best ways of learning new words is to work with their very simple definitions in the target language (for example “a bowl = deep, round container”), I would love to be able to add in my lessons. But unfortunately this serious limitation means I cannot really create my own definitions, because I would have to do it for every single form of the word, which would take ages.

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I gave up on creating definitions for every form of a word long ago. I create one for the two or three forms I encounter first, sometimes using copy&paste for longer definitions. If one of the other forms reappear in another text later they either

  • appear with the forms that I already made definitions for, so having those additional ones wouldn’t serve any purpose
  • appear without them, in which case I can simple create those additional definitions, but at least I don’t have to do so for a dozen of them in a row

I am in general very generous with my definitions, simple writing on or two possible translations most of the times, or picking the ai translation if it fits. At the end of the day my aim is to learn the language, not to create a dictionary. And a definition that appears good now might not so once you have made some more progress in the language. So putting to much dedication into the creation of those definitions is just a waste of time imho.

Btw, I can highly suggest the Google Dictionary plugin I am using in my chrome browser. I just have to double-click on a word to get a definition which is good most of the times. Much faster then waiting for the pop-up dictionary to show up.

Btw, I can highly suggest the Google Dictionary plugin I am using in my chrome browser. I just have to double-click on a word to get a definition which is good most of the times. Much faster then waiting for the pop-up dictionary to show up.

Oh totally, it’s a game changer! I actually found a very useful plugin called “definer”, which even allows you to choose which source you want to use for the popup, so sometimes I also check the translations in wiktionary this way.

However, this doesn’t solve my problem - I really benefit a lot from using simple definitions in the target language, which is an important part of full immersion learning strategy. That’s why being able to link different forms of the same word would be absolutely fantastic. As well as having AI tell you which number, case, tense, mood, etc. it is - I know it is possible to implement, because some other language learning platforms have been using this feature for a while already.

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It would probably already be of use if the suggested definitions would include definitions we wrote ourselves if the new word is close enough to another one we have already created a lingq for.

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