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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
hey @zoran , any update on this one? or how to overcome this? In Dutch separable verbs are also a thing and the suggestion gave by @ericb100 is never available in Dutch.
Could you please enlighten me, what a “separable verb” exactly is? I do not speak German, although I do understand some of it (my native tongue is Dutch). I had never heard of a separable verb. Could you explain with maybe 1 or two examples how that works in German?
gbonnema,
It looks like in Dutch there is similar behavior to German. For example in Dutch, you have the infinitive form of the verb: aanbieden
When this is conjugated, the prefix “detaches”.
Present form:
ik
bied aan
jij
biedt aan
hij
biedt aan
wij
bieden aan
jullie
bieden aan
zij
bieden aan
It looks like the behavior is similar to German and the prefix moves to the end of the sentence. Example:
I’m offering this to you. (english)
Ik bied je dit aan (dutch)
So the there’s an issue when you want to link this. Ideally you could create a Lingq for “bied…aan”, but for this currently you would have to LingQ “bied je dit aan” if you wanted to keep these “together” with your Lingq. However the “in between” parts are variable. If I’m offering something to “my Mother” or “my Sister” then I would be creating a different Lingq for each of these scenarios…none of which will pop up for the other scenarios.
I’ve generally gotten around this for my purposes by just creating another definition for “bied” with the infinitive form. So I can quickly see that this may have a separable prefix. If it’s the same as German for Dutch, many of these base forms of the verb can have different prefixes which will often drastically change the meaning.
Personally I have stopped creating LingQ’s out of several words. One of the reasons that does also apply here is that you get told that several words form a specific meaning together. This is counterproductive if you want to learn recognizing this on your own. So when reading a German subclause, your brain has to learn that the meaning of the verb you have already read may alter depending on a word that is still to come. This is very much similar to how you have to learn differentiating main and subclauses by the word order used or to get a feeling on whether something is meant literally or not.
For words that are often used together I tend to simple add this in the LingQ for the word that contains the main semantics, similar (or maybe exactly) as described by @ericb100. So for seperable verbs this would be the actual verb. So if you have the word anbinden for example, you may encounter it in a sentence like this:
Hans bindet seinen Hund an.
Here you could create an additional definition for bindet like this:
(an+) attach
an+ means that it is an plus the actual word. (In the language I am learning I have both ways, something changes in meaning due to some word in front or some word behind the LingQed word. I use the position of the + sign to differentiate both scenarios.)
The more you force yourself to recognize this structures, the faster you will learn them. Try using LingQ as a tool, not a crutch.
Thank you, that explains things. To be honest, as native Dutch, I did not realize this separation although of course I do use it when I speak Dutch. Living in Finland, this kind of separation afaik does not occur. Thank you for the explanation.
