[suggestion] Pictures as hints

I think it would be great to add the option to use pictures as hints for words, rather than the english (or other language) translation.

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Recent studies have shown different learning styles do not exist. Some learn faster than others, but fundamentally all people use all their senses. Images are not something we will be adding since so many words and phrases don’t have meaningful images.

In fact, we used to offer this feature but removed it to reduce clutter since few used it. Use the review tools to vary things up or to get a handhold when just starting. Or to focus on specific types of vocabulary that give you trouble or that you want to learn (use tags to filter for these words). We know it’s a different approach, but it’s more enjoyable and much more effective. You do have to trust us on this initially.

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There are many words for which I do not want to see a picture.

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personally I find images much more effective, I always put them on flashcards in lieu of translations. :slight_smile:

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for those you would use words, but for many, nouns especially you can use a picture. you can even use pictures for some verbs etc.

I had also suggested to add the possibility to drag & drop from Google Images to the notes here: Can We Embed Google Images (Or Similar) In Vocabulary's N...

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@Khardy: he asked to add an option not to use only pictures instead of words! :S

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@tiago-ribeiro: to reduce clutter makes sense but don’t say that pictures are not useful instead of words. In some cases a lot faster, sometimes indispensable.
I linked another previous suggestion above that could give an alternative.

Ex: Quiche Lorraine:

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When was this feature offered?

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All the definitions / hints that you see are contributed by users. I assume that would be the same for picture hints. I think the only way to handle such a feature safely would be to have them private to the user who adds them in the same way that notes are currently.
I can certainly see the value in it potentially sidestepping the translate-in-your-head trap, and I can still recall some of the picture flash cards that I made when starting Russian I in school many years ago.

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Hi David, I didn’t say that pictures are not useful, what I said is that not all words have meaningful pictures.

I honestly couldn’t say. I will get back to you on that. Ever since I’ve been working on LingQ (16 months) it has been phased out already.

That’s fine. :slight_smile: However, just giving the option to add picture hints doesn’t mean you have to use them. so for words that don’t have meaningful pictures just use text. And as someone else pointed out, you could make picture hints private, so that only the person who added it can see / use it, this reduces the clutter, and stops people from adding rude images etc.

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@Khardy: indeed. I didn’t even think about share pictures. In fact, in my previous suggestion above (see link) I thought about it as private pics.

Personally, I use the notes section to explain things like: “It’s raining cats and dogs” - i.e heavy rain. In Portuguese it would be “Está chovendo canivetes” (“It’s raining pocket knives” - ENG). A picture of cats and dogs falling from the sky wouldn’t really make sense.

Great idea!!

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“It’s raining cats and dogs”

The picture to depict this would simply be a picture of “much rain falling” - a downpour - rain lashing down

Easy as pie!

Although, I agree, there are many idioms where the use of a simple picture won’t convey the meaning as easily as in the above example :slight_smile:

@tiago: thanks for explaining how your ego thinks everybody should use Notes.

Yellow Double Hibiscus.

yeah it connects a new language into its own world rather than translating back to ones mother tongue

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I agree! We’re creating content /courses for refugee learners we work with. Many cannot read in their own language and this would make it more accessible for them.

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