Infinitives + thoughts on meaning description

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The main feedback I’d like to give here is that I wish the default definition of verbs was given in the to-infinitive form. Many verbs in English can be both nouns and verbs. For example “call” can mean “a phone call” or “to communicate via phone”. AFAIK in Chinese 叫 is just a verb, so it would be more clear if the default meaning was “to call”. And in cases where the verb can be both a verb and noun, it would be cool to give both.

Also I do see that the alternative definitions are “calls, called, calling”. Personally I don’t see the point in listing out the different forms of the verb in English, when the to-infinitive form is already the well established “dictionary” form of a verb. Some other things to consider:

  • Even listing the to-infinitive as an alternate would be awesome, because currently I have to manually add it for every verb after cross referencing with Wiktionary.

  • In the lesson you could have word class details that are not expected in reviews. Ex. you could have the lesson text for 叫 be “call (verb)”, “verb: to call”, "(to) call). A lot of options here.

  • the previous point applies to all parts of speech, I wish I knew these details in the lesson, because right now I have to look it up for every word that’s not a noun. Especially would be nice to call out measure words.

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Thanks for the feedback.

Personally I don’t see the point in listing out the different forms of the verb in English

We do that because some users may type in “calling” instead of “call”. I.e., remember a particular verb form for whatever reason. We try to be as flexible as possible.

to-infinitive as an alternate

Good idea, I don’t see why we can’t do that. I’ll see if I can find some time for going over and backfilling this soon.

parts of speech, I wish I knew these details in the lesson

I can see us having that information in the lesson or on the card eventually. One tricky thing here is that many characters have noun and verb meanings that are equally used in practice. E.g., 画/畫 means both “to paint”/“to draw” and “painting”/“drawing”. We’ll want to associate the part of speech per answer, perhaps.

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