Reading and lookups
The word popup
Clicking a word anywhere on Lingaku, in the app or on a page with the extension opens the same popup. It shows what the word means and records that you looked it up.
- Website
- Mobile app
- Browser extension
Opening and closing it
Click a word to open its popup. On a narrow screen it opens full-screen. Ctrl+click or Shift+click opens the word’s dictionary page instead. Esc closes the popup.
Definitions
The popup shows the dictionary entries for the word, in the order set under Study options → Dictionary (see English meanings and monolingual definitions).
An inflected word gets a box under its headword: the dictionary form, the form in the text, and each step between them, such as presente › io. Each step opens the grammar point that explains it, in its own popup.
When the word is part of a fixed expression, such as per favore, the expression comes first. The book icon beside a headword opens that word's full page, and the arrow next to it folds the entry away.
Grammar in the sentence
When Lingaku recognizes grammar in the sentence around a word, the popup gets a Grammar tab. It covers the whole sentence, not just the word you clicked, and lists the grammar points it found, such as the passato prossimo or a pronoun attached to a verb.
Point at a grammar point, or move to it with the Tab key, and the sentence at the top of the tab shows where it is: the grammar itself is highlighted, and the words it attaches to or connects are underlined. Click it to open the grammar point in its own popup: a short overview of what it means, its structure, the explanation, your level for it, and a Progress tab. The book button at the bottom opens its full page.
One word can belong to several grammar points. ci, for example, can mean “there” or “us”. Lingaku cannot always tell which one the sentence uses, so it shows them together: the word, then a link for each meaning. Pick the one that fits.
Lingaku only finds the grammar points it knows how to spot, so a sentence can hold more grammar than the list shows.
Signed in, each grammar point shows your level for it, and the list starts with the points you know least; among those, the rarest come first. Opening a grammar point counts as looking it up: it marks a New point Seen.
Your level and suspending
Signed in, the popup has the five level buttons N, S, F, K and M (New, Seen, Familiar, Known, Mastered). A marked button is the level Lingaku suggests. Choosing one sets your level for the word everywhere. See Levels and progress.
The pause button suspends the word: it stays at its level but is left out of reviews. Press it again to unsuspend. A word that needs attention has a flag button; clicking it dismisses the flag.
At the bottom of the popup is the word as it was recognized, with a book icon that opens its dictionary page in a new tab. Signed in, the bar also shows how many times you opened the word and links to its lookup history.
What a lookup records
Each time you open a popup while signed in, Lingaku saves the lookup with the page and the sentence it came from. Opening a word’s or character’s dictionary page counts the same way. Words you look up often come first in your reviews. The first lookup also marks a New word Seen. Your lookups are listed on the Lookups page.
Adding a word to a deck
Each entry in the popup has an add button. It adds the word to your main deck as a card with its reading, its first meaning and the sentence you found it in. The menu next to it adds it to any other deck of yours, or sets which deck is the main one.
Lingaku