Is it better to Lingq single words or phrases? And does that vary from language to language (Russian/Spanish)?

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1

I see that I have the option. It seems that phrases are the best but I’m not sure. Thanks,
Paul

2

You can certainly do phrases (maybe to save interesting ones that you find) but LingQd words are useful because they are more likely to recur in later lessons than whole phrases are. (Also, if you use the green check mark at the end of the lesson to complete it, the site decides that you know any individual words that you hadn’t LingQd… be careful)

3

Ah ok. But if they are lingq’d then all is well? I think I may have some of that going on. It says I know 161 Russian words but I find that hard to believe.

4

I personnaly like to save both single words and hole expressions. A single word can have different meaning and I also find it easier to remember words in meaninful expressions. So when I find a new word I often save it twice: the singe word and a longer expression where it appears.

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5

Yeah it doesn’t say 161 now so I guess you must’ve identified a lesson or two where that happened…

If you just Lingqd a phrase it will still auto-learn the individual words on you, so there’s not really a way around lingqing the words. Lingqing phrases is certainly a good idea though, I don’t mean to suggest it’s not.

6

Yes, that’s a good method - to save single words and whole expressions-, especially in the beginning of study.

7

I found I saved more single words at the beginning of learning a language, and am now saving more phrases. I often spend time highlighting different combinations of words until I find an expression that suits the rest of the sentence.

8

Both. Individual words are important for simple vocabulary, but in Russian a lot of phrases require you to LingQ the entire phrase to make sense, i.e. prepositional phrases. A lot of words that are isolated don’t make any sense whatsoever. P

В то же время At the same time
Время от времени From time to time
Что ты имеешь в виду? What do you mean?
По моему мнению in my opinion
Не за что Don’t mention it/you’re welcome (informal)

I don’t like to rely on my native language, but you can see the translations are quite simple and make it easy to remember what the phrases mean, when you translate them as a whole, than bits and pieces.

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