Creating LingQs for highly inflected languages! :o

Open Forum
1

Hi, gang! I’m interested in seeing how different users approach the problem of creating LingQ definitions for words in inflected languages, that is, languages in which a word’s morphology changes based on its grammatical function.

This isn’t a problem at all for something like Mandarin, and the inflectional case system in a romance language like French is itself highly atrophied (though verb conjugation, singular/plural and gender distinctions are still a concern). But German and Russian, two other languages I’m using LinQ to help me with, are both highly inflected.

Is there a basic format you use for writing your LingQ definitions? Do you give the dictionary entry and then mark its case/conjugation? Do you try and give a translation?
Let’s take “Kindern” for an example. Which of these definitions would you use?:
• child [dat. pl.]
• to/for the children
• Kind, das [dat. pl]
Or would you use some combination of them? Please share your strategy and some examples. Thanks!

2

For Russian I use Ìîðôîëîãè÷åñêèé àíàëèç if I want to identify a form, and I copy the information about the word to the hint window. For instance, for the word гостиницы they give Исходная форма: гостиница and Морфологическая характеристика: Gs ,Np ,Api, which stands for Genitive singular, Nominative plural and Accusative plural inanimate. So I put in the hint window: гостиница Gs,Np, Api hotel.

3

For me, I’d choose to/for the children for the sake of making the LingQ. If you were interested in understanding the grammar, I would choose the first option.

4

The only drawback to listing all of them, is you may not instantly know which case it falls under (unless you are at the level you are), so for a beginner it may be a tad more confusing to list them all