NoaLingua Glossary
The vocabulary of learning vocabulary
Fourteen terms that come up constantly in self-directed language learning, each defined in one sentence before any nuance. Where a term relates to something NoaLingua does, that is stated separately rather than mixed into the definition.
- Anki
- Anki is a free, widely used spaced-repetition flashcard program with a large ecosystem of shared decks and add-ons.
- Comprehensible input
- Comprehensible input is language you can mostly understand but not entirely — the level at which exposure teaches you something new.
- Dual subtitles
- Dual subtitles show two languages on screen at once — the original and a translation — so you can check comprehension without leaving the video.
- Frequency list
- A frequency list ranks the words of a language by how often they occur in a large body of real text.
- i+1
- i+1 describes material containing exactly one unknown element beyond your current level — the theoretical ideal for acquisition.
- Immersion
- Immersion is spending large amounts of time with material made for native speakers, rather than with material made for learners.
- IPA
- The International Phonetic Alphabet is a notation in which every symbol stands for exactly one sound, regardless of language or spelling.
- Lemma
- A lemma is the dictionary form of a word — the entry you would look up, as opposed to the inflected form you actually encountered.
- Morphology
- Morphology is the study of how words change form to express grammatical meaning — tense, number, case, gender, person.
- Sentence mining
- Sentence mining is collecting sentences you encounter in real material and turning them into review cards, rather than studying isolated word lists.
- Shadowing
- Shadowing is repeating speech aloud immediately after hearing it, in the same rhythm and intonation as the speaker.
- Spaced repetition (SRS)
- Spaced repetition is reviewing material at increasing intervals, timed to arrive shortly before you would have forgotten it.
- Speech recognition (ASR)
- Automatic speech recognition converts spoken audio into text.
- Text-to-speech (TTS)
- Text-to-speech is software that reads written text aloud in a synthetic voice.
Try it on the next video you were going to watch anyway.
Free, with every feature. No account, nothing to cancel, and your deck stays on your machine.
Add to Chrome — Free Add to Chrome The Chrome Web Store still lists this as LinguaCue — same extension, rename in progress.- Free, and not a trial Every feature on the free plan — both PDF modes, shadowing, all 30 practice formats.
- No account, no email Nothing to sign up for and nothing to cancel. There is no login screen at all.
- Two dropdowns to set up Pick what you are learning and what you want translations in. That is the whole setup.
- Your words stay yours Export to Anki, CSV, a spreadsheet or a full JSON profile — free on every plan.