this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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How do you guys handle disambiguation? That is, when you keep thinking one thing means another thing? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I use Anki and the MOST consistent reason a word lands in the leech pile is not because I can't remember what it means, but because I consistently think it means something different than what it means.

So for, instance, I keep thinking French costaud means, "rib or side", probably because I associate it with *costal" from anatomy class or costilla from Spanish.

What I do in this instance is make a Match Pairs card with:

  • costaud matching "strong, burly"
    and
  • côte matching "rib."

This way I practice differentiating them and simultaneously learn the correct word for rib.

But I do worry that I'm unintentionally strengthening the connection by having them always together like this.

What do you guy do for these situations?

Edit: You may notice that a properly formatted card would include le/la to indicate the gender of the noun, which costaud, as an adjective, would not have but I am inconsistent and also don't like depending on little tricks that only work in index cards, so for the matching card I do not write "la côte" because that way I could guess the card based on part of speech instead of definition.

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[–] emb@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah, these are annoying!

The main thing I've changed that helps with that, is I've started putting the example sentence on the front of the card.

I like it for a few reasons. The point at hand - disambiguation. A lot of times in context, it's obvious which answer I should remember. But also, then I read the example sentences more often. When they're on the back, I tend to skip over them if I'm powering through several reviews. In the case of Japanese, this also gives me an opportunity to try and read the whole sentence w/o furigana.

Downside is that the example sentence can make it too obvious. This is actually totally fine IMO. The whole point of the Anki card is to prepare you to actually use language. If the word is clear in context, great, that's the whole point. It's also not too hard to ignore the sentence if you are in that mood.

But then, sometimes I still mess up similar words even in context. Rather than let it leech, I add a caution note.

Edit: re-reading, I realized that my mind went to a slightly different kind of disambiguation. Still, I think the answers apply all the same.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

If meaning is clear from the context of a single sentence, it probably doesn't even belong in the deck. That's kind of my litmus test for harvesting--if I have a pretty good idea what the word is, I move on and soon find a word I have no idea about.