@kokos “Google words you know” and @Steve: “I would suggest that using the examples in our Vocabulary page is more useful, especially for individual words.”
Examples from the Vocabulary are helpful for both words and phrases, in my opinion. For example, the userful French phrase “à ce qu’il me semble” (it seems to me) yields two examples from the Lessons.
A third site that provides useful examples for individual words–but not for phrases–is the Wortschatz International Portal: http://corpora.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/. Often it gives dozens of examples for the usage of a word, and it cites their sources as well. All, or nearly all, of the languages offered by LinqQ, including the beta languages, are represented, though I can vouch only for German, French and Spanish.
Our examples in LingQ work best with words, especially for less common phrases. When searching for phrases google has the advantage of looking at a much much larger corpus of texts than we have in the library. On the other hand our examples may be more familiar to us.
“Jeff, do you think that the “get a book on linguistics” and “learn Esperanto” suggestions are motivating for people who want to learn Spanish or Chinese and have never learned another language?”
I knew I’d have to explan that one… I mean that a beginner who has no clue about “grammar”, parts of speech etc. - might benefit from learning the tools (just like any musician “should” have an idea about the circle of fifths, how chords are formed, how to count to 4 etc.) . A beginner who hasn’t yet chosen a language, might want something “easy” - and in that respect, Esperanto could be a good choice. But mainly beacuse it’s somewhat easy and straightforward, not that the language itself teaches the student about grammar particularly well, or that the language itself is the best choice from a propaedeutic point of view (I don’t believe in either argument).
An experienced language learner could of course be interested in a book on linguistics and/or in Esperanto.
Why has nothing like the above scenario ever actually happened to me? Or if it did, I didn’t think about it… the fact that it was not correct was not evident to me… and I still managed to learn a lot.
“Nous venons de voir”. If I put that in google translate I get “we have just seen”.
There are countless such examples in any language, of commonly used phrases and combinations of words that work differently than in our own language. If I am given these up front in a grammar book, before I encounter them in the language, I get confused or can’t remember them. If I struggle with the language, I get used to most of them, guess from the context, or if using LingQ I refer to google translate. Every now and then I review a grammar book, and if this form “venons de” is explained, I will understand and remember it better if I have already experienced it.
Google translate does of course recognize the whole chunk of words, so that saves time. If we look up individual words, an electronic dictionary hopefully says that “venons” comes from “venir”, and maybe even that a conjugated form of “venir de”+infinitive means “to just have done something”. A decent written grammar would have an entry for the “venir de+infinitive” part.
One can’t be prepared for all the grammar patterns that may appear, but I don’t think it’s any harm in having a look at it.