I realize that if I either know a word outright or learn it by LingQing this will update my known words counter. What then does the Lingqs learned counter signify?
Learned LingQs are those words and phrases you learned by LingQing. For example, in my own case, I have created over 45,000 LingQs and have learned over 5,200 of them. Realistically, I (and you eventually) will have learned many more than LingQs than are recorded. For example, I may have learned 10,000 words and/or phrases since I started LingQing six years ago, but it would take a very long time to go back through all the words that are still yellow and move them to white.
Let’s imagine you have a text “beautiful day”. Let’s suppose, you know the word “day” (you mark it as known immediately) but do not know the word “beautiful” (you create a lingq for it).
As a result you have 1 known word and 1 lingq.
The next day you read a text “beautiful night” where the word “night” is known for you but you just guess what the word “beautiful” means. You move the lingq to the higher status and mark “night” as known.
Now you have: 2 known words, 1 lingq, 0 learned lingqs.
The 3rd day you decided to move the status of the lingq even higher because you’ve learned it.
You have: 3 known words and 1 learned lingq.
Gotcha. Thanks much!!