Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Lemmatize is a reading and flashcard app focused on language learning. While reading texts on Lemmatize, you can instantly translate any word and add it to your collection to track your knowledge. After reading, you can generate spaced repetition system (SRS) flashcards from any sentences you've seen your collection words in, allowing for focused study of words you want to learn.

Lemmatize is a web app, meaning is fully usable on both mobile and desktop by going to lemmatize.com using a web browser. Because of this, there is no separate downloadable mobile app at this time. A dedicated mobile app may be added in the future so that you can open Lemmatize with only one click.

Lemmatize currently supports German and Spanish, with more languages to be added once Lemmatize is out of its Beta phase (see below for explanation of Beta). One thing that separates Lemmatize from other apps is that it is aware of grammar in order to enhance your learning experience. For all of the extra grammar features available in a particular language, please see our languages page.

Note that all translation and interfaces are currently in English; neither monolingual dictionaries nor arbitrary language pairs are supported at this time, although they may be added in the future.

Lemmatize has a voting system for users to improve the website, so please sign up and head to the Voting Dashboard to vote to add your language(s) to Lemmatize!

The main goal of Lemmatize is to build the best reading tool for the language learning community through user feedback and two-way communication. To this end, Lemmatize has an entire voting, feedback, and bug report system so that you can guide the development of the website, even suggesting your own polls and features for others to vote on! You can also interact with the creator of Lemmatize and other users, as well as learn about updates, on the Lemmatize Discord or by messaging the creator on Reddit.

Another core value of Lemmatize is valuing learning and user experience over profit, leading to the following:

• Offering a high degree of display and learning options so that you can customize your learning experience to be as effective for you as possible
• Striving for the free version of the website to be fully usable so that students and those from poorer backgrounds and countries can still effectively learn at a normal pace using Lemmatize
• Being against frequent marketing and/or reminder emails, unless you opt in because you find them useful. Our marketing emails will be limited to describing new or changed languages and significant features
• Being against ads, popups, and non-essential services that require cookies and a cookie consent banner.

Lemmatize is interested in building a long-lasting, global platform and community so that as many people as possible benefit from this tool.

Lemmatize is currently in Beta, which means that the core features and looks aren't finalized yet. All features will be available for you to test and provide feedback on via the Voting Dashboard and the Lemmatize Discord channel.

During this time as a new website, Lemmatize may encounter server issues, features may frequently change, be added, or removed, and signup may be temporarily disabled at times. Additionally, expect to find bugs and for some things to feel slow and/or rough around the edges.

Once the Lemmatize community has given feedback to shape Lemmatize's features into a more stable form, the website will exit its Beta phase and be officially released. At that time, Lemmatize will switch to a freemium (rather than free-only) model. This means that most core features will remain free, with a paying membership option called Lemmatize Plus becoming available for those that want to take their learning to the next level with all of Lemmatize's features. It also means that if you use the website while in Beta, some features that you're used to will become limited or restricted once the Beta is over unless you subscribe to a Plus membership.

Once you've selected a text to read and have it pulled up, you can start reading as if you were reading a book. To make use of Lemmatize's features, you should know the following:

• Words you've never encountered before on Lemmatize will be colored orange
• To translate a word, click on it, or navigate to it using the keys specified in the keyboard controls window that you can open using a button below the text
• For every orange word, if you already know the word, set it to Learned and the background of the word will stop being colored so that it blends in and no longer sticks out to you
• If you instead don't know the word but want to learn it, set it to Learning and the background will become green
• If you don't know the word and don't want to learn it, set it to Ignored and the background will blend in so that it no longer sticks out to you
• If you don't want to have any words have background colors at all, then go into your Reading Settings and try out the features that disable some or all highlighting. If you're not sure how to do this, please see the FAQ below about customizing your reading experience.

You should also know the following to understand what the above things are doing in the background:

• Setting a word to either Learning or Learned is what adds a word to your Collection and makes it appear in your flashcards
• All of the actions above that affect a word's level also affect all other forms of that word. This saves you time, since you only need to mark each word once and the rest of the forms are marked as well. It also means that you can more accurately track your knowledge using the number of root words (lemmas). This is one of the main features that separates Lemmatize from other tools

After you've been reading for a bit and have added enough words to your collection to represent your true knowledge in the language, then every time you turn the page, the colors on the page will give you an accurate picture of which words you know, which words you don't, and which words you're actively learning.

Many reading settings are available to customize your reading experience. They can be accessed via the Reading Settings button below the text while reading. After you change settings, you will need to press the save button. The page will then refresh with the updated settings applied. Tooltips are also provided to explain each of the settings.

For new users, we recommend the default settings, unless you are not interested in all at the knowledge tracking or word coloring aspects of Lemmatize, in which case you can disable some or all highlighting via the reading settings

Yes, reading is fully usable using keyboard only, touchscreen / mouse only, or a combination of both mouse and keyboard. To see the key mapping, select the Keyboard Controls button below the text, or hover over each of the buttons on the Reading Assistant or below the text.

Note: while Lemmatize is in Beta, these controls may frequently change based on user feedback until a stable, agreen-upon mapping is settled upon.

At this time, the keyboard controls can not be changed, although this can be added as a future feature. If you want this feature, make sure to vote for it on the Voting Dashboard.

All flashcards on Lemmatize are currently cloze a.k.a. fill-in-the-blank flashcards. The sentences used to generate flashcards for a given word can be any of the sentences that you've seen that word in while reading.

Unlike on other websites, when you play a flashcard on Lemmatize, all of your progress is tied to the root word of the correct flashcard answer, rather than to that specific word or flashcard. This means that while studying a word like "to eat", you may see flashcards whose correct answers are "eat", "eats", "eating", "ate", or "eaten", and for each of those words, there may be multiple possible sentences. This means that you can study a single root word by studying its child forms in all sorts of different contexts. This provides a more complete learning experience, and prevents your brain from cheating by simply memorizing individual flashcards. If you come across a word that you do want to study flashcards for independent of the root word, then mark that word as Unique while reading or via the Manage Collection page.

To play flashcards, you start a flashcard session using any of the three choices on the Flashcard Dashboard. XP is rewarded after every correct answer. Once you're finished, a window will pop up that will take you back to the Flashcard Dashboard so that you can start another session, or continue learning elsewhere

Lemmatize has a spaced repetition system (SRS), which means that each root word (lemma) or unique word in your collection will be designated to be "up for review" after a certain amount of time has passed. The more you've studied the word, the longer between reviews.

Lemmatize currently has three types of flashcard sessions:

• Review: review words in the Learning level that are currently up for review, in order of when they came up for review. This session counts towards reviews, meaning that correct answers will push back the time that the word will come up for review next.
• Random: review words in the Learning or Learned levels, regardless of if they're up for review or not, and in a random order. This type of session does not count towards reviews and so doesn't affect the review schedule of any words studied during it
• Custom: review the words of your choosing, choose how many to study, and decide whether or not the session counts for reviews or not. If not counted towards reviews, then any correct answers will not affect the review schedule of any words studied during it. Also note that, using Custom sessions, words in the Learned category can also be studied using the spaced repetition system in a way that coutns towards reviews, which is not possible in the other two session types.

Yes, playing flashcards is possible using keyboard only, touchscreen / mouse only, or a combination of both mouse and keyboard. The key mapping for each answer is the number of the answer in the list (i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4). To see the key mapping for the Exit button, Skip/Next button, and the 'automatically skip' setting, hover over each of them. These key mappings can not be customized at this time.

Note: while Lemmatize is in Beta, these controls may frequently change based on user feedback until a stable, agreen-upon mapping is settled upon.

Lemmatize awards experience points (XP) for correct flashcard answers, allowing you to level up within each collection. This is another way to track your progress in learning your language, and for many, provides a sense of accomplishment as you gain more and more XP. Note that XP is currently tracked on a per-collection basis; XP in one language (or collection) will not count towards any other language (or collection). This may be updated in the future so that you can view per-language and overall XP and levels.

The amount of XP per answer varies, but follows these guidelines:

• Only correct answers give points; no XP is given for incorrect answers or skipped cards
• You get double the points if you get the answer correct on your first try
• The more times you've reviewed the word already, the more points you get, up to some maximum amount which may change while Lemmatize is in Beta
• A bonus is awarded if the word was up for review and the session was configured to count towards reviews

Currently, the system only serves as motivation for yourself; no rewards or extra features can be unlocked using XP. There are no public scoreboards, either, although they may be added in later with the ability to opt out of them.

Underneath the Custom Flashcard Session window on the Flashcard Dashboard, Lemmatize provides various statistics about the flashcards you've played for your active collection. Many find this useful for motivation and feeling a sense of progress. A description of each stat can be seen by clicking or hovering over the tooltip provided with each stat.

More statistics may be provided in the future if there is enough demand from the community. If you have any ideas of statistics you want to see, please vote for them or suggest them on the Voting Dashboard.

As part of giving a customized learning experience, Lemmatize allows you to disable both the flashcard statistics and the XP / level system, which are part of a larger gamification aspect of Lemmatize. To do so, go to the Profile Settings page via this link or by clicking on your username in the navigation bar, selecting 'Settings', and then unchecking the 'Enable gamification' setting. The page will then refresh and you can proceed with learning without any sort of gamification. Disabling this setting does not stop Lemmatize from tracking your progress in the background, so that if you re-enable it, no progress is lost.

You can complete your registration manually by emailing support@lemmatize.com using the email you signed up with. Please use a title of "Signup Help", or something similar, and allow a few business days for this to be completed, as this must be done by a human. Alternatively, you may sign up with a social provider (e.g. Google or Discord) using an account linked to a different email address. No email verification is needed for signups through social providers.