Modern Greek on LingQ, who's in?

Every once in a while, someone talks about getting Greek on LingQ. After having tried unsuccessfully to get people to read Ancient Greek texts in order to make content for that language, I thought I’d move to Modern Greek, where there are presumably enough native speakers whose arms we might twist to get them to read some basic texts (such as the Who is She text that Steve wrote).

I’m going to go to italki and see if I can meet up with enough native Greeks to find some people to make content for us. But before hand, I have two questions:

  1. Who’s interested?

  2. How can we get LingQ to make us a “playbox” of sorts, where we can upload and test content before Modern Greek becomes an official language here? I’d like to have Google Translate and a couple of dictionaries working for Greek, something I can’t do by just uploading texts to the Esperanto slot.

Finally, how did Ukranian become a supported language here? Was there enough content to make it an official language, or did Steve just make it happen?

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I should mention that I’ve already read the page that lists the requirements for introducing a new language on LingQ. I suppose I’m trying to see whether LingQ staff would be willing to provide certain people who really want to see a language supported on the site with a sandbox of sorts, where we could edit the dictionary settings, upload texts and audio, etc., before the language goes “live” to everyone in the community.

Having to scrounge up several hours worth of content before being able to access anything on LingQ doesn’t help motivate people to produce content. Perhaps some kind of middle ground can be established?

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For that stealthy insertion of Ukrainian, he kicked around and cried his lung out evoking his contribution and what people owe him so far, etc., repeatedly, for a period of time. You could try come over and do the same.

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I’m BEGGING Steve to BEG the LingQ team to add Farsi! :)~

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Hey gregf, I love the idea and I would definitely be interested in learning modern Greek! I would be really excited if you could make this happen!

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I wonder if FSI’s Greek course could be legally imported here. It’s pretty comprehensive: FSI Greek Basic Course

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The problem with the FSI content, if I remember correctly, is that there is a lot of English in the audio. Otherwise I think it is public domain material.

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Actually I just listened to the audio, it’s pretty good, very little English. The problem with the Greek would be 1) cutting up the audio to just get the Greek dialogs (and not the repetition drills, for example), and 2) typing up the Greek text into a word document. Neither are trivial, and would probably require more effort than volunteers are willing to make… :frowning:

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I just looked at the exchange page and I don’t think that there are more than maybe 10 more or less active members from Greece on Lingq. :frowning: So we probably would have to find people to create/translate/transcribe/record content outside of Lingq, which I think might prove difficult…

I just posted this on italki, we’ll see if I can find someone who might be interested. I also have a good Greek friend I might be able to hit up. :wink:

http://www.italki.com/entry/464263

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Seeing as I have a proper recording studio at home with plenty of audio editing facilities, I could probably do the audio part, but it would probably take a long time.

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Hi! Adding new languages requires time from our developers, even for a temporary holding slot, so we aren’t currently able to do anything on our end to better facilitate this. Instead I might recommend Dropbox or something similar where you can organize files collectively.

OK, I had my first nibble of a response on LingQ from a native Greek speaker. We’ll see if I can get her to record/translate something.

Any one else have any ideas?

Ok, you’re signed up. :wink: If you make audio blocks for the dialogs, with just the useful information (Greek-only dialogs), I’ll type up whatever Greek texts needs to be done.

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When I have some free time, I’ll give it a try to see how much work it will require.

You can post texts at Rhinospike.com and have them recorded, or upload audio files and have them translated. I may be interested in studying modern Greek at LingQ some day, but not very soon, and I’d rather have ancient Greek added…

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Found the motherload! According to my calculations, there’s about 10 hours of all-Greek audio here, with copy-and-pasteable text transcripts. Combined with a few novels and short story collections of varying difficulties I’ve found on Project Gutenberg, it should be enough material to cross the threshold for adding a new language. (!!) I’m getting in touch with the people at the Hellenic American Union to see if we can share their content. And might see if I can get “Where is she” translated and then read on rhinospike. Good news!

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This is awesome news! Thanks for doing this!

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Permission granted! One step closer! :slight_smile:

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Updates: Alex wrote to say that he thinks we can add Greek as a language on LingQ this month! In the meantime, I’ve found a couple more sources for Greek materials with audio and text:

and

http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/login/index.php

Though the latter might have a bit too much English to make it useful. I’ll get in touch with both sources to see if either can be imported.

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