I would like to request the ability to export either all or a section of vocabulary lists to a 3 field CSV file, this would allow users to use the flashcard tool of their choice to learn if they have a piece of software they perfer from a web interface. (In my case, mnemosyne)
I did a quick test to see which charactors are allowed in the vocabulary fields, and it seems you allow just about anything including quotation marks and commas - so maybe you could allow export to tab-delimited text instead?
In any case, thanks for the time and I look forward to hearing the lingq team’s opinion on the suggestion.
Considering that saving words here at LingQ takes a lot longer than adding/editing in any flashcard program (for me at least - it can take 15-20 minutes to save 10-13 words…), I find it strange that people would like to start saving words here and then go to the program of their choice, but that’s probably just me…
In my opionion, it would be better if one could simply import personal wordlists from CSV and similar formats. Example: each lesson that I import in Chinese has an accompanying wordlist (which I have in MS Word), and it would probably take me a just few seconds to import it if the tool existed, while it now takes a long time to add the words I want - plus the fact that I have to have either the item or the lesson in Word format opened to be able to mark the necessary phrase (preferably the Word document - even highlighting takes time in LingQ) as the phrase function isn’t the best for Chinese (yet).
I’m not saying it is a bad thing, but won’t the possibility of exporting wordlists, downloading mp3-files et.c. actually make people spend LESS time here? What is left after that, for those who don’t book events or send in written assignments…?
Personally I find it very useful to have the content text and mp3 provided online on the website.
I find it handy that I can make the vocab list by ‘lingqing’ them straight from the content (and the process of including the example sentence is streamlined too).
But as for rote-learning the vocab I perfer to use external software - hence the request.
I wonder if the lingq team will also allow a simmilar import command.
There will be more and more convenient tools for language learning developed all the time. LingQ will try bring these tools together for convenience.
The whole question of lists, importing, exporting, sharing etc. will be all be looked at over time, but it will probably be mostly in the second half of the year.
With regard to Asian languages I think we should just bite the bullet and change our content to put spacing between the words.
It does not take me that long to highlight an save words, by the way.
I played around with separating the words in Chinese and there were still problems when double clicking the words. It is Beta, and we cannot afford to really look at it now but we will. Hang in there you Asian language learners. All ideas and suggestions welcome.
I know an irc bot which seperates japanese words in non-spaced sentences. Seems in the background it uses some software called MeCab ( http://mecab.sourceforge.net/ )
I downloaded and played with the windows binary a bit, but I don’t really know how you use it in an application.
Here’s an example of me playing around with it anyway:
I found this tool where you can enter a text in Chinese and either get a translation at the footer of the page or a popup-translation (which gives you the same text with spaces): http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/annotation.html
I believe there is a tool called Dimsum which knows how to separate the words in Chinese. But I don’t think you can integrate it with LingQ.
I have been hearing this problem about separating the words in Chinese. I still don’t fully understand the problem. Can’t we treat each character as a word? Then I can select 2 or 3 adjacent words and save them as a unit? Perhaps someone could explain to me a bit more. Thanks.
Edwin, that’s a good point and is probably how we are going to deal with this issue. We will eventually separate Asian languages by character at which time everything should work properly. It’s just a matter of finding the time to do it amongst all our other priorities.
In the short term both norgus’ and jeff’s suggestions may help some of you try and import separated texts to your account.
If treating each character as a word works in the long run, as a workaround for now, we should separate each character by a space. If we separate a chunk of characters now, we will run into migration problem later on.
To separate each character by a space is very easy. You can probably do it with many text editors.
As for exporting vocabulary, I copy and paste my vocabulary list from my browser to a text editor, use a script to format it, and copy and paste directly to my spreadsheet program. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.
Once my vocabulary list is on my spreadsheet, I can do all sorts of things with it.