LingoLark glossary

Short definitions of ideas the app uses. Meant for orientation, not implementation detail.

Selection

Text the learner highlights on a page before saving. It might be a single word, a sentence, or anything in between.

Surface word

One French piece in reading order after the rough cut-up step: the kind of unit you would feed into a “what does this word mean?” step one at a time. Often matches one dictionary word; sometimes it is a short form that still behaves as one unit in French (for example forms with an apostrophe inside).

Phrase chunk

Several surface words treated as one learnable unit—what you might save as a single card because it behaves as a fixed expression, a tight verb phrase, or similar. The app can group adjacent surface words into a chunk so the learner does not have to memorize it as separate cards.

Vocab row

One entry in the learner’s vocabulary: the French side, a place for the English gloss, and a sense of whether the gloss is still loading. Before anything is stored permanently, the app can build the same shape of row as a draft; after saving, the same idea is a row in the saved list with stable identity and time.

A vocab row is always that same kind of record; only the French text on the row changes shape—from one surface word to a short phrase when chunks are merged.

Single-word vocab row

A vocab row whose French text is exactly one surface word (no spaces inside that text). This is the usual starting point right after cutting a selection into pieces.

Merged vocab row

A vocab row whose French text can contain spaces—several surface words joined into one line of French the learner saves as a single unit.

Grouping (merge)

The step where the app asks, in effect: “Should the next few surface words be one card or separate cards?” Grouping follows rules about window size and not repeating the same chunk; an optional smart step can suggest larger spans when they act like one expression.

Translation gloss

The English wording shown (or filled in later) for a vocab row—the answer to “what does this French mean?”

Saved list

The learner’s collection of saved French items and their glosses, with links back to pages where they appeared.

Local assistant

The idea that help with grouping and translation can come from AI running on the learner’s own machine, rather than from a distant server—so privacy and setup stay under their control.