with new words for which I cannot immediately remember the foreign language translation, I give myself like up to 30 seconds to remember, but for situations I cannot remember at all I would welcome an option to give me a first letter hint instead of revealing the whole word by turning over the card.

it could work on a card-tap, I`d tap a deliniated area on the card somewhere on the bottom and that would trigger the first letter display. tapping elsewhere would turned over the card as normal.