Hello there, this is my first post to the forum. I came here to try out the Japanese side of the site so any issues I raise may only concern that section.
Anyway, I have a request for the lingq feature - when adding words from an article source they will usually be in a conjugated form (not as you find them in a dictionary) for example:
犬と話しているところを見られた
If I selected the first verb here, obviously I end up with a lingq’d wod that looks like 話している, but it would bepreferable if it were possible to change it to 話す for learning purposes.
So, it would be very useful if you allowed users to change the actual word being lingq’d before saving it in their vocabulary list.
Here’s a sample of some of my vocabulary list:
ちぢれて
乾いた
和んで
堪らなく
埋め尽くされていた
These are all verbs or adjectives, and none of them are in a ‘plain’ form which you would find in a dictionary.
If there’s already a feature that allows me to fix this, please explain it to me.
We save the form of words that appear in the text you are studying. The examples that you can access from your “LingQ widget” will be only for the form of the word that you have saved. This is done on purpose, since each form of the word functions differently, and with different other words.
You can, however, put whatever you want into the Hint space to remind you.
Furthermore, when you go to review words, those with similar roots will often be together when you search your vocabulary in alphabetical order. Our Japanese version is still in Beta and a few features do not work well yet, including the highlighting of already saved words. WE also have not addressed the issue of what will replace the alphabetical order. So stay with us and try to use the system as best you can.
You can also Tag any words that you would like to group together for review.
Thanks for the speedy reply, but I remain hopeful of change to this feature. If I wanted to be reminded what the ‘te’ form of a verb is, I wouldn’t be reading actual Japanese articles, I would be learning my grammar from scratch.
I would be very happy with the question asking about the form of the word I specify (namely the root form) and being reminded of the way in which it was used by th example sentence provided by the article.
I must admit that I do not really understand your point. If you want to look up a specific form of a verb you can look it up in a grammar book, or you can ask our tutor by clicking on the Tutor icon.
At LingQ you read and listen in order to get used to the language and to acquire vocabulary.
We think it is useful to save the same root word in different forms, first of all to reinforce one’s memory of the word through redundancy, then to see how it works in its different forms. We have no plans to change this.
We will introduce the ability to go through Flash Cards from the Hints, and you can put what you want into the Hint space.
I wonder if there are others with opinions on this issue.
As for me, I prefer to save the words so review them with the form they’re used in a text.
If it’s a new verb, I write its based form in the Hint space to remind me. To learn these verbs and other words the way I have saved them help me to know when to use this actual form.
I find that helpful, mostly when learning a new language as a beginner but not only. It often happens that I save the same word used in a different way and written differently if it’s an adjectives or verbs of different tenses. I can review them all to get use to these differences.
In that regard, I find it extremely useful to search my Russian vocabulary by 3-4 letter components of words. This will usually bring up anywhere from 10 to 75 or more words that share that component. Some of these words are related. Some are not related but simply confused in my mind because of some similarity.
I am very interested to know if others also do this.
Well, I still don’t quite understand the relative hostility to the suggestion I made. I just thought it would be nice if, when making a lingq, the actual lingq’d word was an editable field.
This way people who want to add the same verb 10 times in differrent forms can still do so, and people who would rather add the verb in it’s plain form and learn how to use it via multiple example sentences (only me, by the sounds of it) could do that.
By no means does this mean I dislike the service, as so far I have quite enjoyed using the website. I even added some material (check out Tower of Terror), and if that seems to go well I’ll spend the time submitting the remaining chaptors.
There is no hostility to any suggestion. On the other hand we do have a certain learning philosophy. Furthermore there are many implications to any changes that are introduced. What happens to the statistics if you edit a saved word? Is the newly edited word a legitimate word in the language? Let us just say that this is not something that we are considering at this time.
I nevertheless am looking forward to hearing from others on the point that you have raised. Again, however, it is just not something that we are going to spend time in the near future.
Thank you for the content. That is great. My only concern is copyright. Is this content free of copyright?
Well, I don’t want to forcefully argue the point.
As far as copyright goes, I’m actually not 100% certain.
The source is a radio drama which was broadcast on TFM radio and distributed online as a podcast, and now the podcast website doesn’t even seem to exist any more. So I’m hoping this means it’s usable material.
I should think disney would like any attention brought to it, as it’s essentially a fancy background story to one of their attractions.
If you have any pointers on importing, then I would be glad to take those on board (for example, is there a way to get the most accurate word count possible?)
I think it is OK if it was a podcast. Perhaps you could acknowledge the source, i.e. the podcast, or Disney or both, and even put a link.
What do you man in terms of word count? Note that all issues surrounding what is a word and how we count them for Japanese and Asian languages is not something we have addressed yet.
Keep the content coming and I can promise you that our Japanese service will get better. Welcome aboard.
I can see one major point with being able to edit the actual LingQ, namely if the word is misspelled/written with capital letters (or even just a beginning capital letter). It is somewhat annoying to realise that the word you just saved is misspelled (or similar), and deleting it and entering the proper form in the vocabulary section instead doesn’t help the statistics (to my knowledge a deleted LingQ still counts as a created one, at least it has happened to me several times).
OK, you could always enter whatever you want in the vocabulary section, but if you save words as you read/listen it is quicker to use the LingQ tool.
I do not mind saving words that have a capital letter. I do not think it affects anything in the system. I rarely come across a misspelled word, but it can happen. In that case, however the dictionary is unlikely to find that word, and there will be no examples, so it should be possible to know that it is misspelled, and therefore to just delete it and wait for it to show up again.
In any case the dictionary often does not find a definition for a word I would like to know. So I just delete it and move on. The same is true if you use the New Term function in the Vocab section. The New Term is too slow to be useful right now, but we hope to improve that shortly.
I keep two tabs open when I study, one on the WorkDesk and the other on Vocab. That way you can search for roots and components, and search for New Terms using the correct spelling or another form of a word that you are interested in. All of this will work better when it works faster.
It is not a good idea to be too obsessed with the accuracy of the statistics down to the last word. These are indicators. A bigger issue is for us to speed up the LingQ even more, and to speed up the New Term function which is painfully slow right now. We hope to have good news on this front this week. (We hope).
True, it’s not the end of the world if a word begins with a capital letter (or is written in capitals), or if it’s misspelled and I realise it after checking various online (or proper) dictionaries and don’t find anything, and I have to delete it, and maybe figure out the real spelling myself.