I’ve been thinking about this recently and I’m curious what other LingQ users do.
When I first started using LingQ, using the ignore button wasn’t clear to me, and so a lot of my known words came from things like people’s names, city names, country names, English, and other words that were relatively easy to recognize. Looking back, that inflated my known word count in a way that didn’t feel especially meaningful.
Because of that, for roughly the last 1,900 of my current 2,800 known words, I’ve taken a much more conservative approach. I’ve generally avoided counting things like people’s names, city names, country names, and acronyms as known words. In particular, I almost never mark personal names as known.
However, I’m starting to question that approach. If I’ve never encountered “Moscow” or “Saint Petersburg” before, but now recognize them instantly and know exactly what they refer to, have I really not learned anything? The same goes for country names.
I’m not necessarily asking when you consider a word “known.” That’s a different discussion.
What I’m wondering is: what types of words do you count at all?
For example:
Names of cities
Names of countries
Personal names
Brand names
Acronyms
Historical figures
Place names in general
Do you mark these as known when you recognize them, or do you exclude them from your known word count?
I’d be interested to hear how people approach this, especially those with very high known word counts.
To me a lot of these have the same problem as words like “telephone”–what some people call “international words”.
They can be so obvious to understand that no learning is required, but, that doesn’t mean I know the correct syllable stress or its declension pattern.
And there is a similar problem for derived verbs, where they may be apparent for understanding, but that doesn’t mean I know their conjugation pattern.
I have no idea whether to mark all the ones known that I can already read. I don’t, but I dunno if I should.
I just create cards for every word so that there is at least some record that I’ve seen that word before when I open a new lesson. Not really an effective approach if you use the SRS though.
I think it really depends what you value, do you want to know the names of cities in that language? Do you care if you can find them on a map? Are you planning a trip and want to be familiar with the cities and towns etc? If someone says a place name in conversation it would just be another unknown word to stump you if you haven’t learned it before. Same with peoples names, brands, historical figures etc.
I’ve said before that I’m suspicious about known word counts correlating to actual proficiency. There is almost an infinite amount of words to learn. Most of them will never be relevant to you or me. If you want the known word count to be closer to a reflection of your progress I would only mark high-frequency words as known and leave the rest as cards or ignored.
The LingQ method is to create cards for words you want to revise and then mark the rest as known via the end lesson feature or turning page sets all new words to known. That is how the app was designed to be used.
I don’t consider them words I actually know. I just un-LingQ them. I’m not too focused on the word count — I care more about how many words I’ve read overall.
I had exactly the same question and since word count is an indicator of language proficiency the numbers can add up or not to a significant difference. In general I don’t include English words when learning spanish. It would be good to get some official guidance from the Lingq team.
Yeah, I’m only asking because Russian has a different writing system.
Take the name of the country Albania (Албания) for example. I know the name Albania from English, I know it is a country, I probably can’t spot it on a map, but I know how to spell it. Should not the ability to recognize it in another script count as another word?
It is irrelevant. Take the French word indicateur. It can mean an informer used by the police, or an indicator. The French verb monter can mean to go up, to lift up, to set up (a tent, a club or a garage for example) and so on. How can you mark these words as known? The French verb renoncer can take a preposition. Do you know it when you remember the correct preposition or not? Many verbs change meaning according to the preposition that follows. This is the problem with using dumb online metrics to measure progress.
Names of cities
Yes, they may be significantly different from my native language and/or I do not know the city.
Names of countries
Same as above.
Personal names
No, names are not words that I need to learn so I ignore them (i.e. hit the X button).
Brand names
Same as above.
Acronyms
Depends if its an acronym of a real object that I want to know or just a name for something that I dont care about.
Historical figures
Same as names.
Place names in general
Same as cities.
TLDR; I add any of these that I consider to be of learning value. Do I need to know what the Italian writing is for Paris? Yes. Do I need to memorize the different names of people in Italy, no. On very limited occasions I do LingQ historical characters if they are of seemingly significant value for me to understand contexts which is usually not the case, unless it is written in a non-latin alphabet (for example Chinese).
I hit the ignore button for anything which is exactly the same as in English. I also hit ignore for brand names, historical figures, etc. I do add in notes about what the brand sells or what the figure is famous for if I don’t know, but I don’t count it as a word.
If a city or country name is different from in English to the point where you can’t guess on first glance, I don’t ignore it. For example I would ignore “Finnland (Finland)” but not ignore “Island (Iceland)”. I would ignore “Stockholm (Stockholm)” but not “Göteborg (Gothenburg)”.
There are so many words out there, it doesn’t really matter. Even if you ignore hundreds or thousands of words there are still enough in the language to get you to Advanced 2 on LingQ, which is the highest level you can go here.
Anything that distracts you from engaging with the language is a problem. Your feeling torn about this question is a problem. My advice is to choose a way (any way) to deal with this question that allows you to think about it as little as possible. You should be engaging with the language instead of thinking about whether to mark a word as known or ignored. Just choose one and keep reading.
Ultimately these aren’t going to matter much. If you count them all it will inflate your total a very small amount in the grand scheme of things.
I kind of do a hodpodge of sometimes including and sometimes not. Usually i’ll mark it as yellow if it is something different than the English version.
Names of cities: Generally I may link these if I don’t know the city. I’ll lingq it and then I may describe it…(this is a city in Texas) or something like that. I usually don’t ultimately mark these as known.
Names of countries: Yes, if the spelling or name is different from English.
Personal Names: No…I might if they are a signficant person in the history of the country, and give a description, but I won’t mark it known ever.
Brand names: No. Again, I might mark yellow and give description.
Acronyms: Mark it yellow and give the long form…maybe a description too.
Historical Figures: see Personal names above.
Place names in general: I might mark in yellow and give a description or where it is located. i.e. a park in Berlin. Or a district/quarter of a city. Or something I might want to see if I were to vist. I leave them as yellow.
I thought this conversation felt familiar … here is a very similar thread from 2023, with similar back-to-back replies from myself and @ericb100! And some other good thoughts further down.
@ZayaFTW – Take a look at that thread if you’re hoping to gather more ideas. Or, better yet, go have fun learning your language!
Ultimately all anyone wants to do is learn the language. I’m in the beginning stage of my language learning journey so I find statistics rather motivating.
Yours seems most like what I want to align myself with in my own studying.
Interesting, thanks.
I’ll stop being torn.
I agree with everything you wrote, thanks!
I’ll check it out, but I’ve definitely got a much better grasp of things now. Thanks!
That is a fair point. Then maybe just treat all words as words to learn, and as others have said, don’t overcomplexificationalise (1) it too much.
Do be careful though that you don’t mistake getting good metrics for language learning progress. I did that.
What I can promise you, is that if you keep working, put in the hours, think about the language, struggle through the frustrations and mistakes, you will learn. Just doing regular sessions every day if you can is the best measure of achievement.
(1) Note for non native speakers. That’s a silly made up word.
I have thought about this a lot. Because it affects how many words one says they need in their language. I am learning Spanish and I have seen people say anything from 20,000 to 60,000 words known to be B2 / fluency. It depends on what they think fluency is. And on if they over-estimate their ability. But it also depends on what they mark as known.
I hit ignore for:
Any word not in my target language.
Proper names (most of them).
Misspelled words (not different conjugations. But words not recognized by lingq because they are literally misspelled somehow).
I mark as known:
Words in my target language that are the same as my native language Even though it’s the same it’s still a genuine word in my target language).
Any Proper name that I would not know who/what/where it is. Because I want to know what is being referenced.
If I had to guess, for every 20 words I mark as known I ignore 1 word.
I use this criteria. If I a native english adult wouldn’t know it then I am treating it as a known word (aka I have to learn how to say it correctly, what it is, and that it exists in the first place). If I am learning arabic and Ahmad is written in the funky script, I will lingq that. If you need to save it for later is the rule I use. The names I will eventually go back and ignore and proper nouns but if they got marked known its not the end of the world. Once you break the b1 level your lings and known words are going to grow exponentially so don’t sweat it.
Names of countries (yes lingq and known if they are different and have to learn)
Jerusalén is different than Jerusalem; only slightly written but said it might as well be a new word.
Acronyms (SIDA in spanish is Aids, or ADN (DNA) that is definitely something you have to learn)
Other things I will usually ignore, just use your best judgement.
I count mostly everything that I actually want to learn. Word count is just a vague metric at the end of the day. I will see a verb that I already marked as known, but now it’s in a new context and it doesn’t make sense…so then I mark it as unknown again. There truly are an enormous amount of use cases for many, many verbs. This becomes even more apparent when you switch to street-talk, where almost none of the verbs make sense on the surface of how you studied them (I’m looking at you, Spanish!). I know you are asking about things like cities, countries, names etc… but even this issue with verbs made me realize not to take any of it too seriously. There are probably hundreds, thousands of words I have marked as known but are simply waiting for a different context for me to mark them as unknown again. If it is bugging you to be LingQing country names, then don’t. For me, I make LingQs because I wouldn’t have known how to spell it. Yes, I know that spelling may not be the main point of the website, but quite honestly, all the other words I learn, I DO know how to spell, so to me when I see a novel word, name, country, I decide to LingQ and then eventually move to known once I’ve more comfortable seeing it. Another category: I know some people refuse to count spelled-out numbers so as to not inflate their word count…but I still am VERY slow with numbers, so making LingQs and then moving to known is really important for me to get the hang of them.