How can we get more languages on LingQ

I am learning Arabic right now, and it is going fairly well. Due to the fact that Arabic is a Beta language here on LingQ, I choose to use other resources to learn the language due to a lack of quality content for Arabic. As you may all well know, Arabic influences many other languages in the Middle East and Africa. Farsi, Pashto, Swahili and Urdu are some examples. (And Urdu and Hindi are very similar.) As you all well know, these languages are not very popular for Americans and other nationalities that are trying to learn foreign languages. However for these people trying to learn these languages online, and find it difficult, how can we make LingQ a place where these languages be taught? And not only Middle Eastern languages, plenty of other languages are not on here as well. So basically, the whole question is, Can we get these “not as popular” languages on LingQ, and if we can, how can we do it?

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I guess there are three criteria…

  1. How profitable a language seems to LingQ
  2. How many native speakers are willing to provide content
  3. Steve´s interest in a language (for example, a few weeks after Steve started learning Ukrainian, it was added as a beta language, even Ukrainian doesn´t meet the first two criteria IMHO)

How profitable a language seems… meaning how many people invest money to learn it on LingQ?

Yeah,exactly.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing though, isn’t it? If there’s limited content, people won’t join. If people don’t join, LingQ won’t create content. If LingQ doesn’t have a lot of members from a language group, it probably isn’t going to get a lot of content. It seems to me that it would be better for LingQ to be a bit more proactive when it comes to soliciting/finding content, at least when it comes to the major languages like Arabic.

LingQ takes the, “If they come, we will build it” approach. But I suspect people interested in studying or teaching Arabic or other unsupported languages will just go somewhere else. On the other hand, one dedicated Arabic-speaking member of LingQ could make the difference. Some langauges on LingQ seem to just have 1, or maybe 2 or 3, driving forces behind them.

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"It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing though, isn’t it? "

Yeah!

j:-(

Here is what I said on another thread with regard to this subject.

The issue of new languages comes up often. Personally, I would like to see lots more languages at LingQ.

On the other hand, for Mark and the gang, adding new languages has little benefit, because there are so few learners of these languages. If the language is not properly supported it can cause disappointment among learners, and make us look bad, again, for relatively little benefit.

Here are the conditions for adding a language that were decided some time ago.

"New Languages on LingQ

We are regularly asked to add new languages to LingQ.
We would love to have all languages on the site but we find that without a certain critical mass
of content, new languages are not successful on the site. Therefore, we have decided that we
will add new languages only if members can provide that solid base of content required for a
language to be successful.

"We require the following to add a new language:

2 audio hours of Beginner lessons

5 audio hours of Intermediate lessons

5 audio hours of Advanced lessons

These lessons may be original content or third party content for which permission to share
has been obtained. Only courses with high audio quality and matching text along with
quality images and descriptions will be accepted.

If you believe you have gathered enough material to meet these requirements please contact us.

If a language qualifies to be added we will translate and record our
LingQ beginner courses and add the language as a supported language."

…

I would like to suggest the following, using Hungarian as an example.

  1. If you want LingQ to add Hungarian, try to find new learners who are prepared to sign up for 6 months to study Hungarian.

  2. For every new member who signs up for 6 month to study Hungarian, I, Steve, not LingQ, will put $60 towards transcribing audio, or creating and recording interesting content. 5 new members, $300, 10 new members $600 etc. But email me, steve(at)lingq.com, on this, and not LingQ.

  3. Note that all members who are studying Hungarian, or any language, can use the exchange to pay points to our native speakers to translate, correct or record in Hungarian. They then can add this content to the library and earn points.

By all means let’s have Hungarian and other languages, but let’s see if we can make sure to have enough content and enough learners to make it worthwhile.

Finally a good suggestion about new beta languages, Steve! :slight_smile:

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Steve that is a very good idea! Does anybody know how we can get into contact with these people to try to make LingQ more known, so that LingQ can be translated into many other languages with quality content?

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Indeed, Jake, the difficult part is to convince people to pay for a language that LingQ still doesn’t offer. Steve, how are we supposed to find these people and have them join LingQ?

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Some users dont need library here at LingQ (I dont know how much people, LingQs team know better). For me its enough to have many language slots - I`ll add my own content for my own use - we live in Internet-era!
It would be better to increase an amount of new empty beta-language.

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Look how Steve learn Ukrainian by his own material not included at public LingQ`s library.
I do the same way.

I agree with @sdom.
Just give us an option to select (or type-in) the name of the language, select the language for the Google Translate dictionary (or select other external dictionary) and we are good to go. I don’t think it would be very complicated for programmer (I can be completely wrong :).

Right now I’m interested in learning to read (only read) Estonian and I don’t need any courses just option of importing to Lingq, creating lingqs and hopefully seeing other peoples’ hints.

There may be dozens of people learning Estonian on LingQ by using e.g. Finnish or Hebrew language slot and all the hints are unavailable to other learners of Estonian unless they also use the same language slot and know that that hint is for Estonian.

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I agree too. Before this beta language policy change, I was actively advertising LingQ in order for people to take part in the Facebook poll and vote for the languages I wanted to study. I managed to collect more than 1,000 votes for Romanian, which was added, and 5-600 for Catalan.
I am no longer using LingQ to study languages, since Catalan was not added and for Russian, I prefer to get a solid basis outside LingQ first.

@Mikebond: “I am no longer using LingQ to study languages, since Catalan was not added and for Russian, I prefer to get a solid basis outside LingQ first.”

Mikebond, what is the reason you do not learn Russian here at LingQ?

@jviktors: “Just give us an option to select (or type-in) the name of the language, select the language for the Google Translate dictionary (or select other external dictionary) and we are good to go.”

Jviktors, it sounds right. Let`s ask Steve to give us that option. Wonderful idea.

Sounds good to me. For my languages, I don’t need content in a library for me to learn a language on this website. (Although it would be nice.) I can just import text and audio from other websites to make LingQs. In one of Steve’s videos, he said that he has to import lots of his lessons on his own because Ukrainian is not a supported language. And he met his Ukrainian goals just like that. It would just be easy to have the language on LingQ, but no one needs to work hard to get content for everyone on that language. Everybody could just get their own interesting content, and people would still be successful. Personally, I vote for Farsi, Hindi, and Pashto as I am currently learning Arabic.

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Please re-read my post on this subject a little earlier in the thread. That is our conclusion on this subject and it is not going to change in the near future. I am sorry. There are many things I would like to have, and other members would like to have, but we have to decide where we are going to concentrate our efforts.

I can say from experience, that nothing is as simple as it seems. We need to stay focused. Sorry.

If LingQ can not add new languages: With “LEARNING WITH TEXTS” you are able to learn ANY language. Try it!

@sdom: I am not able to learn a language with such a rich grammar as Russian just by reading texts. I have a more academic approach to a language that doesn’t ignore grammar. I am studying Russian with Assimil and copying the texts is proving very useful, as I seem to be remembering more than I did when I just read and listened to the dialogues. The tools offered by LingQ don’t help me get a solid basis. I will probably read some LingQ lessons later on.

@a7826089: I have installed Learning with Texts but I don’t seem to be able to start learning Catalan there.

@Steve: fair enough, LingQ is your business and you are supposed to make it as rentable as possible. I suppose I will no longer renew my paying membership, though, since I have different goals and needs.

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