[feature request] separable verbs!

It seems that dealing with the separable verbs is a source of so many troubles with learners, how? They simply cannot be added to vocabulary [easily; as intended to be at LingQ]. Because two words with text in between, is not selectable; which of course is only natural.

While one could wish for an ability to try and choose the proper infinitive form from a given list, which is already available by Reverso as tags when verbs are clicked on, but it might be much to ask the developers.

So hereby I’m suggesting a very intuitive way to solve that problem, once and for all:

An ability to simply edit the selected phrase for lingq creation, manually adding the prefix, and then (after getting the updated translations), choosing the right equivalent to finalize the LinQ.

It’s ok that they are not automatically recognized, but by simply adding the ability to edit the input text, it seems to solve the problem.

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Thanks for the feedback. Yes, German separable verbs are an issue on LingQ and we have never been able to come up with a good solution for dealing with them. In the end, you just have to learn how to notice them, save both parts and add a separate hint to both words which deals with the meaning when the verb is separated. Not to worry, this is not lost time. The time you spend creating these extra hints and noticing is very valuable and will help you learn. Hopefully, in future we will come up with a more convenient solution but it is a tricky issue for us! Good luck!

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Yes notes is how I handle the separables, but could you please reflect on possibility/probability of of a LingQ editing feature in the pop-up?

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We will see what we can do.

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Basically, what you are asking, if I’m correct, it is the ability to EDIT the length of the phrase and the translation of the phrase itself after we create it as lingQ.

That could be a workaround for sure. The problem is the limit of 9 words to select a phrase. With German this is a real limit.

@zoran Do you think manually editing a phrase afterwards, in the vocabulary tab, would be possible? So to go beyond the limit of 9 in post-production?

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Main problem I can visualize at least for the developer, is that every Lingq’ed word or phrase will “highlight” in different lessons (even if it’s known, it is Lingq’d). If one is editing the phrase, how could it ever link back into that lesson or another lesson? These edited ones would either need to not link back to any lesson, or carry some sort of wild card matching, which ultimately probably would be problematic to do. It would need to match just within a sentence. However, I could envision cases where you have a verb that could use the separable prefix, but doesn’t in a given context, but another separable verb IS the one with the separable prefix, within the same sentence. (I’m not smart enough to think of an example to demonstrate). So which LingQ would be “highlighted”?

This is not to poo poo the idea. I think it would be cool if they could come up with a way…I think it’s just not a very easy ask.

The original word is linked to the edited word:

(Original word in lesson, the sentence, edited infinitive, meaning of edited word)

Adds one field (or two) to each linq’s data.

Preserving the original clicked word solves the problem.

Multiple Lingqs can already use the same word and there’s no worry for losing the chance to define the constructing base in an independent LinQ.

Example: I select the single word hört, edit it to aufhören, select “to call off” as meaning and that’s all.

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What happens in the next sentence when it sees hört, but now the separable prefix in this sentence is “an”? Do you expect hört to be highlighted? and if so, under your conditions would it show as aufhören due to the edit?

What about words that have a huge number of prefixes? Like gehen?

BTW…there is a feature that is pretty much right there already…many of these words like gehen or hören are autotagged with a list of the prefixed versions. If you click on the tag, it will take you to reverso conjugation dictionary where it lists the meaning (with the prefix), as well as the conjugation. Try it out if you haven’t already.

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We need to focus on a goal, I want to send a LingQ to the vocabulary and SRS with a specific FRONT and BACK side and not a repetitive front and different back. With that in mind, I believe the easiest solution would be an editable field in LingQ pop-up.

The highlight color is just a hint. But a definitive metric.

A word with several meanings has the same trouble, and not considered a serious problem.

I’ll check if that’s something we can do, will forward this suggestion to our team.

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Replying to +1 this post.
The handling of separable verbs is the main weakness I see in LingQ for German at the moment, and @alizamani 's suggestion is a reasonable workaround from a user’s perspective.