How to Get Started with Vocabulink

Find Some Links for Review or Create Your Own

Click Latest Links to begin browsing through links. Or you can search for a link containing a particular word by using the search box above.

If you don't find a link that works for you, consider creating your own. The easiest way to create a link is to search for a link containing the word you're interested in.¹

How to Create a New Link

To demonstrate, let's learn the word "lerni" ("to learn" in Esperanto).

Enter lerni into the search box at the top of the page and click Search Links.
Note that at the top of the search results page you'll see a link titled something like 'View all links containing "lerni"'. This means that links with lerni on one side or the other already exist.
We'll ignore the fact that links already exist for this demonstration. Click the next link titled 'Create a new link with "lerni"'.
You'll now be on the Create a Link page and the Foreign side of the link will be pre-filled with lerni.
Choose Esperanto from the drop-down menu next to Foreign.
Fill in to learn in the Native box and choose English as the language.
Because this link is a cognate (see Understanding Link Types), choose Cognate from the Link Type drop-down menu.
Click Preview to see what your link will look like when it's created. Once you're satisfied...
Don't actually do the following, as a link for lerni already exists: click Link. This will establish the link.
Add the link to your review set by clicking the Review button on the page

of a newly created link.

Congratulations! Continue on to see how to review your newly created link.

Review Your Links Regularly

For best results, you should review your links daily. You can review more frequently than once a day, but you shouldn't go too long without a review. If you wait too long, you risk forgetting the link. You also risk having links pile up which discourages you from reviewing (creating a negative feedback cycle).

How to Review

In the header bar you will see "n links to review" where n is the number of links you should review before calling it a day. Click the link and you'll be taken to the link that our algorithm has determined you should review next.

You'll be prompted with the left (origin) side of the link and the right (destination) side will be covered by a question mark. Click the question mark (or press the space bar) once you've remembered the link or are sure that you don't remember it.

After the answer is revealed, you'll see 6 buttons labelled from 0 to 5. Use the buttons to rate how well you remembered the link. You can also use the numbers 0-5 on your keyboard.

5: You remembered immediately and perfectly!
4: You remembered correctly, but not immediately.
3: It took you a while to remember, but you did. Your answer is 95% correct or better.
2: You answered incorrectly, but when you see the answer you slap your forehead because you almost had it.
1: You answered incorrectly. The correct answer seems vaguely familiar.
0: You had no idea what the answer to this was, and you might not even remember reviewing it before.

The important thing to remember here is the cutoff. An answer of 3 or more is considered good enough for now and we'll reschedule the link for review. An answer of 2 or less means that you haven't learned the link yet and we'll move it to the end of the review queue.

Don't Give Up Too Soon!

Do not reveal the destination of the link if you don't immediately remember it. Spend some time calmly pondering what the destination could be. This will give your brain a chance to find the association, or if it's not found it will create a stronger one next time (once you've revealed the destination).

Changing Your Avatar

When you post on the forums, you'll be identified by your gravatar. If you haven't setup a gravatar before, you'll get a randomly selected one. To change your gravatar, sign up at gravatar.com with the same email address you used to sign up here. Note that it takes about 5 minutes for your gravatar to update.

Setting Up Your Browser to Display Foreign Writing Systems

Vocabulink makes use of many different written languages. To take full advantage of the site, your browser will need Unicode support and you'll need some Unicode fonts. Most modern browsers and operating systems already support Unicode.

If you are seeing boxes instead of letters, see this article for help.

1. You can also navigate directly to the new link page. However, using the search page might save you some time if someone has already created a link that you can use.

2. In almost all cases you'll want to click on the "new link" node to the right of the word you're interested in learning.