I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you!
There was a member here who had well over 100k known words in German and who felt she was still very much a beginner.
She dedicatedly used LingQ and it got to a stage that she felt that the number of words on her profile didn’t reflect her level. She spent time trying to correct her profile to reflect her actual knowledge and in the end deleted her account and started again.
Words known on LingQ can be inflated by proper nouns including people’s names, cities and countries - giving a tremendous number of words when you still don’t know the language. Imagine counting all city names Paris, London, Stockholm, Luxembourg, Monaco, Berlin, Madrid, Oslo, Amsterdam, Budapest, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Bratislava, Ankara that are exactly the same in English as the country’s language - I haven’t started learning yet but already know the 15 words.
Verb forms give rise to many word forms in certain languages. Taking Czech and comparing it to English, there might be a handful of verb forms in English compared to around 18 variants of the verb form in Czech.
Infinitive nést
English carry
Present tense
nesu
neseš
nese
neseme
nesete
nesou
Past participle
nesl
Passive participle
nesen
Imperative
nes!
neste!
nesme!
Present transgressive
nesa
nesouc
nesouce
Past transgressive
(do)nes
(do)nesši
(do)nesše
Not to mention the fact that past participles used for forming the past tense, passive voice and conditionals are related to the short forms of adjectives and unlike other verb forms, also express gender corresponding to the subject - giving rise to many more forms as there are three genders in Czech masculine, feminine and neuter.
In English, verb forms in the passive voice are simple - just two forms for singular and plural, the gender of the noun not making any difference whatsoever:
“It was bought” vs “They were bought” (“It” standing for any noun and “they” standing for any noun).
So x was bought
Or x were bought
For the equivalent in Czech - please note I do not know anything about the language and have found the below on the Internet - it looks like I would have to lingQ 10 words and remember 8 combinations of those words (as two occur together) for the three English words.
The three English words being “was”, “were” and “bought”
In LingQ I would need to lingQ the following words depending upon what was bought.
byl
byla
bylo
byli
byly
koupen
koupena
koupeno
koupeni
koupeny
On top of that, I would need to learn the correct combinations, i.e. byly koupeny, “byla koupena”, and “byl koupen” and so on.
The amount of focus and concentration required for all the forms of a single verb in Czech is tremendous. It also leads to a huge word count.
So I really wouldn’t worry if I were you.
The word count on LingQ tells you that you are learning and reassures you that you are making progress.
The fact that you may have lots of known words in Czech like our well-known German learner with over 100k words, but feel you are still a beginner like she did is absolutely fine.
There are many different types of language learners on LingQ with many different learning styles and approaches to LingQ, different language learning histories and different perspectives.
Some of the learners who refer to how “easy reading became after getting about 30k known words under their belt” may be spending 3 hours a day with a private one-to-one teacher and another 3 hours a day on self-study. You can bet your life there are some such people around.
Perhaps they’re reading leisurely on LingQ from time to time - accumulating 30k known words on LingQ and nonetheless passing A1, A2, B1, B2 level exams in the meanwhile outside LingQ reaching C level exams as their next level. Perhaps they’re not it doesn’t matter (though the rare few are, for sure, I know that from personal experience).
Don’t worry!
Don’t worry!
Don’t worry!
LingQ away and be happy!
Or not - if you choose not to - the most important thing in language learning is to derive pleasure from the experience and to find an approach that works for you.
It’s your experience that counts - your happiness, your achievements, challenges and successes - not anyone’s else’s.