What's with the 2k word limit?

I think I might have already asked this a while ago, but the questions probably got lost and didn’t really get an answer, so I’ll ask them in this thread:

  1. In the v4 the word limit used to be 4000 words per lesson. In v5 it is reduced down to 2000 words. Why was the limit halved?

  2. Could we have it restored back to 4k words? (and while we’re at it - could it be increased even further?)

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Hmmm. Always been around 2000 for me in v4, at least for books. I also have notes from various users in the past that have referenced the lessons being 2000 words (pre-v5). Maybe you’re thinking of an earlier version than v4??

Actually, limit got changed from 4k to 2k words a while ago. Lot before we released v5. At the moment, there are no plans to make changes.

Umm… I used to create 3k word long lessons up until the very moment LingQ 5 was released. In fact, all the time during beta I thought v5 editor wasn’t quite ready yet, exactly because I didn’t understand it’s behavior on creating longer lessons.

I often have to deal with texts longer than 4k words when preparing learning materials for myself and I always relied on the editor to tell me how long of a text I can get away with.

If the lesson appears too long, I need to find a meaningful place in the text to split it (which is itself a challenge for a language you’re not yet fluent in). Then I need to find corresponding place in the audio and use audio editing software to split it as well. Being limited at only 2k I’m going to have to do this process a lot more often :frowning:

Anyway, out of curiosity - what is the justification behind such a low word count limit?

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When importing a book, the importer would always split it at 1900-2100 word mark, so a 100k word book would give you about 50 lessons. However, if you imported it manually through “Import Lesson” button, chapter by chapter, you would end up with something around 30 lessons. And they would hopefully align with chapters (or at the very least won’t get split mid-action at random points). Of course, it’s a lot more work, but also more control and in the end more enjoyable learning experience.

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The artificial 2K limit has been a problem for years.
It’s still possible to create much longer lessons by copypasting text into the lesson while editing.
Such a limit in LingQ is as reasonable as 640KB barrier was in MS-DOS.
BTW, we’re speaking about dozens of kilobytes here!

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I actually like the limit of 2k. Ideally you would be able to choose how long your text is of course…

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I find this 2k split quite annoying too and have commented on it on several occasions. I would much prefer to have a lesson per book chapter rather than a chapter divided into 3 or more parts. Technology has moved on considerably since 2014 when the limit was introduced and surely, the database should be able to handle longer lessons now.

This split becomes even more of a problem when uploading audiobooks because audio files do not match the text of the lesson at all.

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Because people who had slower internet connections were complaining (8 years ago!) that their lessons were loading too slowly. I found the original thread here https://www.lingq.com/en/community/forum/updates-tips-and-known-issues/automatic-splitting-of-imports-dictation-improvements

As I have mentioned before, the internet of 8 years ago is like the bronze age by today’s standards. People have much faster connections now and I really don’t get why they won’t raise this limit again maybe to 4 or 5k words, but no luck so far.

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Wow, thanks for the history lesson! I did not know that. In fact, for the past couple of years I was silently hoping that the max lesson length would be increased in v5 (because why wouldn’t it be?). I realize now that I shouldn’t have been silent about it at all…

It’s funny how we’re having the same discussion with the same complaints as 8 years ago.

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