Thanks for the feedback. In this case, the word is a verb. I’ll add “to delegate” as an alternate meaning in the next update to make this more clear. One thing I want to do in the coming months is to add parts of speech to each item in the UI, as this is a piece of feedback we have received many times now. Or at the very least making the differentiation between noun and verb more clear, as you indicate, by more consistently showing the infinitive form ("to " + verb) as the primary meaning.
Thank you kevin! Yeah, the way WaniKani handles this is by always using “to” before verbs without exception. So this would be “to delegate” (with “delegate” as an alternate meaning). I think this works well, but if you plan to add parts of speech as UI elements it doesn’t matter.
Would it? The English word “delegate” is in fact is both a noun and a verb. Chinese has many words which, like in the language we are typing in, has words that can be multiple part of speech depending on context. In particular, chinese has many “Seperable Verbs” which are essentially verb + object. e.g. 游泳. This can be either an intransitive verb or a noun.
I asked for this in the past, but the issue is if you list something as a verb, people will assume it cant be a noun, adjective, etc. There may be some cases like 合适 vs. 适合, where one is decidedly a verb. But a lot of the time its more nuanced.
Take 结婚 for example. You might say "obviously thats a verb, and 婚姻 is the noun. But 结婚 can act like a noun “你们结婚有日子了没有”. Or it can even separate “结过两次婚”.
I asked for this in the past, but the issue is if you list something as a verb, people will assume it cant be a noun, adjective, etc
Exactly! This is also one of the reasons why we’ve maintained a certain degree of ambiguity for most of the meanings within the application.
Right now the initial plans I have for making some improvements in this area without going all-in and becoming a dictionary ourselves is:
Making the infinitive verb form (with the explicit "to ") the main meaning if that is indeed the meaning we are teaching for the word (as demonstrated by the explanation/mnemonic and examples). Such as in the example in the OP.
Accepting some basic conjugations automatically, but not necessarily showing them in the UI as we do today, which adds visual clutter. E.g., “delegated”, “delegate”, “delegating” should all be accepted in addition to “to delegate”. This can probably be done programmatically, saving me the time of manual input as well.
Continue to list the alternate forms as alternate meanings if the word corresponds to multiple parts of speech. However, not necessarily providing much detail about those other uses. After all, it is not the main meaning for the word we are teaching.
It’s often hard to find a good balance between teaching enough without overloading the user. Hopefully the changes above are a good step in the right direction.
