How did you discover LINGQ?
Tell us about It.
How long until you became Premium user?
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When I was looking videos on youtube about learn English, I found a recommendation about LINGQ. I am not Premium user yet :c
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Steve Kaufman’s videos and eventually he mentions Lingq
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Saw it mentioned online and tried out the free tier for maybe five or six months before getting a paid subscription. Now I’m one of the people recommending it to other language learners online.
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I was studying (B1) Mandarin. I saw LingQ mentioned in a list of language courses and tools. I checked it out, just like I checked out the other things in the list. I tried the “free” version briefly, then realized I needed to try the Premium version in order to try out all the features. I subscribed for a month, which was quite inexpensive.
I finally decided LingQ wasn’t useful to me at the time. I was already B1 in Mandarin. Looking at the mini-stories, I saw a problem with identifying words with no spaces around them (Chinese and Japanese). So I stopped after one month. That was 2022.
One year later, I subscribed again, to start learning Turkish. But after 3 months, I stopped. I could read the mini-stories, but I was mostly ignoring the endings. Turkish is all about endings, and LingQ doesn’t teach. So I found other courses to learn about Turkish and specifically about endings. Six months later I was better at Turkish, and started a Premium LingQ subscription again. That is 11 months ago, and I am still finding LingQ useful for Turkish.
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I stumbled upon a video which was talking about language acquisition
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It’s been so long, I honestly don’t remember…
I was using Memrise for a year or so (old A1 course from 2015/2016-ish which was far better than what they do now imo…also when it actually used MEMES and association which it no longer does). It worked great during that time, but as I started the A2 course, and even while doing the A1 course I came to realize that I would be constantly reviewing cards for ages and that I’ll only learn new words barely at all so I figured there had to be a better way.
I’m sure I somehow came across Steve’s videos at around that time or earlier regarding input based learning. It sounded intriguing, but I still felt like I would need SRS. However, Steve’s videos sounded very convincing and he was very enthusiastic about what he was doing. I did like too, that he didn’t always mention LingQ. What he was showing was something that you could accomplish outside of LingQ if you wished. He also didn’t sugarcoat the language learning process. I had also found LWT (learning with texts), a similar app, but free. I found it so clunky that it felt like too much work. I did try free LingQ then for like a day and realized I wouldn’t be able to give any sort of assessment without paying, so I paid for a month. Around this time I had also bought Assimil German and thought it would be really cool if I could import that into LingQ. So I did that. LingQ was so helpful and quicker to learn words that I gave up on Memrise and never looked back. LingQ is my go to app for language learning.
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Steve’s videos on Youtube, of course 
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I discovered LingQ either via Steve Kaufmann’s advertisements on YouTube, or by trawling around the internet in search of a good language learning application. I have no doubt that I have made far more progress in French with LingQ than with other methods.
Here’s my language learning story.
I learnt French to a B1 level 30 years ago. I thought at the time that my level was much higher, but it wasn’t, Two years ago I took up learning French again. I first used Duolingo for eight months, and almost finished the course. The only reason I didn’t is because they totally reorganised the lessons. and made it tedious to use. Then I did Busuu for two months at the end of which I completed the course and scored 100% in their B1 exam, and about 96% in their B2 exam. I was nowhere near B2. Is anyone surprised?
Almost two years ago I also started learning German, and completed the Babbel course over several months
Then I moved over to LingQ for French and German,
It’s fair to say that it took me months to figure out how to use LingQ for learning French. It took me a year to figure out how to use it with German starting from a false beginner level. I’ve used it for German for almost 18 months, and I am roughly B1 now.
I suppose I could express annoyance that it took me so long to use LingQ. After all, why can’t they structure it properly from the start? The truth I suspect is that we don’t all use it the same way, and it might be that there is no optimal method. And the fact that all of the well known polyglots use different learning strategies does suggest that each learner must find their own method.
I do use Anki, mainly with sentences, in both French and German. And I don’t subscribe to the comprehensible input theory of Stephen Krashen, which is pushed by Steve Kaufmann. But I do subscribe to the idea that quantity of input is important.
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And these people end UP becoming a Lingq user ?
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I was using DuoLingo during the pandemic to dust off my long unused French. I had several years of streak. Then they made me and many other long timers really mad by removing the self-deterministic aspect of it and turning it into a nanny app. They also prepared to take down a really helpful forum.
There was much talk in the forum before they took it down about alternatives and LingQ was mentioned. I dropped my DuoLingo app and streak. I tried a few of the alternatives before LingQ. But LingQ was a revelation and I never looked back.
I use it solely for reading my own content. As a first effort I read a translation of the gripping 700+ page novel “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, something I never in a million years could have done without LingQ.
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I was on reddit and i saw a one line comment. “If you want to learn a language use Lingq and Fluent Forever.”
next day i jumped into premium on lingq and downloaded the fluent forever anki deck for french. I had zero knowledge of what either were when i started. Best decision i could have made.
Something about how simple and confident the comment came across made me just believe it whole heartedly
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Probably through youtube and comprehensible input videos. I tried it, didn’t really understand it and came back to it a year later. I’m 900+ days in.
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Was watching some videos about language learning as I had decided to start learning French again in 2019, saw an interview with Steve and then started watching his videos. Eventually I heard him refer to using LingQ a few times and looked into it. I also remember hearing him say he liked to do a lot of reading to learn, I kind of felt that would not be my thing, but got intrigued by the idea of trying it out. I tried the free version of LingQ first, ran out of free LingQs, figured this program would work well for me and bought the premium access.
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It’s worth adding that I had been trying to do something like this manually for a while already. I was reading books (in Russian at the time) while looking up and penciling in the translations of words I didn’t know. That (minus the penciling) was also to a significant extent what I’d done to learn English back when I was a teenager.
So LingQ immediately struck me as a technologically superior (and, in hindsight, quite obvious) way of doing what I was already trying to achieve.
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LingQ is part of the long journey of trying lots of different language learning techinques, methods, and software. I tried many different things before LingQ, including ‘old school’ language courses (pretty good yet expensive), speaking a lot (mainly just solidifies what you already know), Anki flashcards like Fluent Forever (has severe shortcomings, is slow making cards, and is boring), MIA/Mass Immersive Approach (watching content you don’t understand is useless and flashcards are boring), Michel Thomas (great introduction to a language yet expensive), grammar textbooks (important, but boring), DuoLingo (good to build a habit, but overall shit for various reasons), and various other boring, not great software like Drops, Memrise, etc.
I first heard about LingQ a long time ago, probably from some YouTubers or blogs or something and thought I’d try it out. The free trial is so short that you can’t actually trial the software. After I finished my free lingQs (probably like the first Mini Story or two), I didn’t sign up, because I wasn’t going to upgrade to premium for a software I didn’t even know worked. Maybe close to two years passed before I saw the interview of Mark on Steve’s channel about the release of LingQ 5.0. I was thinking of starting to learn Italian at the time, so decided that I would buy a month membership to trial the software, cause the free trial is completely worthless. I kept extending the month membership, as I wasn’t certain if I’d stick with it. After maybe nine months, I switched to the annual plan. It’s been like two and a half years as a premium member.
Since LingQ I have continued to experiment with other methods, as I consider there are shortcomings with the software. My main criticism is the way LingQ deals with definitions, which is an incredible time-waste (discussed here). Since LingQ, I’ve tried out private tutors (amazing yet expensive), dual subtitles on YouTube with Language Reactor (amazing), and recently bilingual books (great). Over the years, I’m gradually improving the efficiency of my language learning and study.
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Oh thats a very good question mate,
Nowadays I am studying an electronical degree nontheless in a future I would like go to USA or Canada so I realized that I have to study english or french ,then in that i moment ,I put in google searcher :“what is the secret of polyglot people”,and I found out a video from steve kauufman with a girl ,and I dont believed all kinds of languages that spoke so eventually I saw a bunch of his videos and obviously I noticed about this website ,thus that`s all
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