Is it me, or hints are kinda useless?

[MonoTranslucido]

The hint button seems quite useless to me, but I don’t know if I’m the only one here with that kind of opinion.

If I don’t remember a vocab, for example in the phrase:

彼が近所の人を______気絶させたと聞きました。

The word I need to put in is “punched”. Sadly, I cannot remember how punched is written.

Well the first clue is:

拳で人やものを強くたたく行為を示す動詞。

A text in Japanese explaining what the word “punched” means. If I don’t fully understand the language, how do I decode that hint? Seems useless. And now, the second clue, in English:

A verb that means to strike someone or something with a strong blow, often using one’s fists.

Well… I know what “punched” means. Giving me the definition of the word doesn’t help me at all. My problem as I said before (and I guess everyone’s problem) is that I cannot remember how “punched” is written in Japanese.

Maybe the hints are designed for people who review only with the blank space, without any other hint… but I guess those are the less in the community, right?

[btluppi]

I think the hint is designed to minimize confusion (for example if multiple vocab or grammar structures can be used to fill the gap) and put you in the right path, not to help you remember how to spell it. If you do not remember, you are supposed to get it wrong so that the SRS will show that point again sooner rather than later.

[Jacob-Bunpro]

Building off what @btluppi said, these hints are meant to help clarify nuance between similar words, especially in cases where context alone may not be enough.

For example, consider this sentence:

Person 1: お仕事は何をされていますか。
Person 1: What do you do for work?
Person 2: _____です。
Person 2: I’m a company employee.

Without a nuance hint, it might be hard to tell whether the correct word is サラリーマン or 会社員. But with a hint like “A katakana word for a person who works for a company,” you get just enough guidance to confidently choose the right one.

Nuance hints also frequently point out differences in formality, which helps prevent mistakes like reading a vocabulary card for 拝見 (which says it means “to look at” or “to watch”) and then casually telling your friend,

「今日映画を拝見したよ」.
Natural? Not at all. Funny? Maybe. But helpful to have caught it ahead of time? Definitely.

They’re also especially useful for higher-level words that might share a common English translation but aren’t interchangeable in Japanese. For instance:

• 樹立 – The act of firmly establishing something abstract like a policy or regime.
• 設立 – Founding a concrete organization or group.
• 設置 – Installing or setting something up physically so it can be used.

All of these could be translated loosely as “establish”, but they’re used in very different situations. In theory, you could rely solely on the sentence context but in practice, nuance hints often help bridge the gap between “I think this works” and “I know this is the right choice.”

No, these hints aren’t perfect. They won’t always capture every shade of meaning. But they go far beyond what the simple vocab card definitions offer, and they also give you a bit of extra reading practice, which never hurts.

[MonoTranslucido]

I see. Maybe it is luck and I keep seeing the “plain definition” hint over and over.

Thanks you both for your intel.

[simias]

What the others say is true but there’s a much more straightforward use of these “hints”: you can tell bunpro that you want to show the Japanese explanation by default and hide all English. This is what I do, so by default my reviews look like this:

(友達たち looks goofy but I guess it makes sense)

It’s usually a bit harder that way but it gives me some reading practice and I stay fully “immersed” in Japanese. On top of that it also usually forces me to read the provided sentence instead of just translating the English and moving on. Here for instance I didn’t know the word 滞納 and had to look it up, but I’m sure that if I had the English translation “rent” or “viewing the cherry blossoms” displayed by default I would just have translated that and not looked at anything else.

Of course sometimes the definition is either too complicated or too obtuse and I switch the English on.

[Fuga]

Hey @MonoTranslucido !

As others have said, one of the purpose for these hints are to provide more context for each word so that our students can learn to differentiate words with similar English translations (as @Jacob-Bunpro has mentioned). This was also added to the site so that students at a higher level can learn without relying on English hints as much!

You could read more about these hints here and here!

[Asher]

@Jacob-Bunpro

they also give you a bit of extra reading practice, which never hurts

Actually one of our original goals with the hints was exactly this. We wanted the hints to feel like reading what reading a learner’s dictionary would feel like for any particular definition of a word. That way people are getting extra practice and constantly working on building descriptive associations to the words that they are doing reviews for.

We felt that this would be a kind of ‘shadow skill building’ where people don’t really notice they’re studying in more than one style until they realize that ‘Hey I can read!’ suddenly.

[Magyarapointe]

And it’s very useful for that. But… could we also get the japanese hint, that is, definition, in the lessons ? For example, when doing lessons, you’ll see 製作 and 製造 sequentially. The main english translation is absolutely the same, you only get a second translation for 製作 (production (of a film, play, TV show, etc.)).

It’s only once you get to the lessons exercises, and then reviews, that you can see the japanese (and english) hints differentiating them.

It would be nice to learn of the difference right at the lesson stage, if the hints were visible (and for later reference too).

[Asher]

We have talked about this quite a lot internally recently. It is in the works

[davebp]

If the code/design of hints is under discussion, I would like to propose more flexibility over the level of hint you see.

At present, you set the level of hinting globally. It would be better if (there was an option for) the hints fell away as you progress with the point.

Either many settings which say that points at this level show these hints.

Or a single setting which says decrease hints by level, and have the code decide what to show. I’d use this, given sane assumptions on the part of the code.

[zekeheling]

I don’t think the hints are the problem, so much as calling them “hints” is. I was confused as to what they actually were. It’s more like “context”. The level and type of “context” changes as you press that button. Hint implies functioning in the way you described you are expecting it to function, so if you are expecting a “hint” in the traditional sense, I can understand why you’d describe its actual functionality as “useless.” I find it very useful, just not through the lens of providing a “hint”.

[zekeheling]

Agree regarding the nuance. I requested this elsewhere. The “nuance” should be visible in the main page of the word / grammar. I ground my learning on the nuance over the translation as translations can change based on context, whereas nuance is usually retained. I’m catching up after years of not studying, and I’ve been adding words I technically already know to my study list just so I can see the “nuance” as it’s not possible to see that in the master write up of the word / grammar.