Using Asian Slots for European Languages

Hello all,
I would like to use the slots for Arabic, Chinese and Japanese for European languages such as Slovene, Croatian and Danish.
Is it realistic? Are there any technical issues I have to consider to make it work properly?
What I want is to have google translate set up correctly for relevant language pairs and to have correct statistics to measure progress.

Thank you!

Cheers,
Alex

@Axel_V - Technically this will be possible, but you may have some trouble using the dictionaries on the site, as they will be set up for that specific language slot. What you can do is keep another tab open for your dictionary, then use that to look up the words you want to LingQ.

@Alex,

Thanks for the reply. So, I will not be able to set up a dictionary for the language pair I want? :frowning:

You probably hear this question for the millionth time but why don’t you offer more European languages as beta? I mean, it will not incur almost any costs offering them as beta languages. They all use either latin or cyrillic alphabet and you only need a slot and google translate as a default dictionary…

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@Axel_V - That’s correct, the slots are set up for a specific language.

Regarding beta languages, we’re not looking to make any changes here. Beta languages haven’t shown to be used much, and overall have performed worse than we originally expected. For now we’re focusing on other aspects of the site that we think will provide a greater benefit to larger sections of our user base.

For those interested in having new languages added as Beta languages, here is the link to the Facebook poll: https://www.facebook.com/questions/10150249705278786/. Any help for Catalan (and the other European languages) would be appreciated!

@Alex

“Beta languages haven’t shown to be used much”

It is because there are a lot of technical problems!

The LingQ system is not able to make LingQs from vowels in Arabic and Hebrew. And if you study for example this course :

It would be fine if LingQ could use the different script (characters,letters)with vowels and without. so we will be able to use this languages!And Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left! It would be really nice if some of you would find the time to change this settings!

It is working for listening and reading but not for LingQing.

You expect more students on the beta languages!! but how can we use it ,if it is not working?

Das ist ein Teufelskreis!!! ohne Ende!! ??

It seems I’m the only one, how constantly try to tell the problems !!!

I see 138 persons had open this Hebrew lesson but nobody tells that it is not possible to make LingQs!!! I do not understand why people are not interested in improve the system!

j;-)

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I agree with Jolanda on the fact that some beta languages like Arabic and Hebrew cannot be fully enjoyed because they don’t work correctly, hence there are few people studying them at LingQ. It would be great if you could invest some time in making them “usable”.

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I’m not personally learning Hebrew, Arabic, languages using cyrillic alphabet or pictograms but I can understand the concern of people interested in acquiring such “exotic” languages. Do technical issues represent a crippling obstacle?

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@serge

Es ist nicht möglich LingQs zu speichern, sobald in der Schrift Vokale verwendet werden.

Sprachen welche von rechts nach links geschrieben werden “sollten” rechtsbündig sein.

Für Europäische Sprachen ist der technische Aufwand sicher um einiges kleiner.

j:-)

If the lingq system can’t recognize vowels in the semitic languages, I really don’t see why the languages are even offered. For those of you who don’t know, these vowels, which are under the letters, are what change a three or four letter structure to have several meanings. It is the basis of the language.

If I ever work on my Hebrew again, I’ll have to see if LWT can handle it…

Why don’t you guys just fill the slots with languages that the system can handle?

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@all - We recognize that some issues exist in certain beta languages, yet even in the beta languages where no obvious issues exist (Czech, Polish, Norwegian, etc.) we have not seen a level of activity that in our eyes justifies the time spent implementing and maintaining these additional languages. This was a large reason behind our switch some months ago in the voting structure for beta languages.

When we started the beta languages project, I too was keen on adding as many languages as possible, thinking that it would be great to open the system up to all languages. However, one of the main issues that cropped up with beta languages was that it is difficult to communicate to new users that a language they may want to study (Norwegian, for example) is in the beta stage and is not fully supported. Instead, they will come to the site looking to study this language and only afterwards realize that the content is severely limited. As the user probably will not understand that this language is beta, instead in their eyes it can serve as a reflection of the overall quality of the product we offer. As it stands, the beta language experience is often inferior to that of the supported languages, and to make it comparable requires significant effort and resources on our end. We do want to continue to offer new languages, and are looking at ways in which we can do this better.

What was first - the hen or the egg? As long as the interface doesn’t work well, people will not study these languages. As long as there is no content students will not study too.

You have to find at least one or two native speakers of these languages that are willing to support these languages. But the interface has to work well too!

When I came to LingQ more than 5 years ago most of the German content was created by Irene. There were only a few students. I’ve added a load of podcasts and created a lot of lessons on my own what made German a much more popular language on LingQ. This process took years! A lot of patience was needed on my side to continue creating lessons because only a few members studied German, and I often thought if it was worth the time to create these lessons.

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I agree with Jolanda, Vera… go for it! please

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Vera, I wish I had the same patience you had, but when it comes to creating Italian content, I often wonder if it’s worth it. I would need to be more motivated, and the same is certainly true for other tutors and content providers.

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Vera, mikebond, you’re quite right. I also often wonder about the opportunity to create new content in Portuguese; it is very time consuming and it seems that every month the number of views of the lessons is decreasing, so motivation from my part also decreases.

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I don’t have any experience with language which do not use vowels, which are written from right to left and so on. I agree that it would be great if it was possible to study these languages with LingQ without any problems, but at the moment I’m not sure if there are decent online vocabularies for the languages. Well, of course there is. Somewhere. Google translate is probably not the best one. For all of you who have (or know people who have) some experience with the above mentioned languages, which electronic dictionaries work?

@mikebond
I enjoy the couchsurfing tales a lot. I would love to see them in every language here.

Some ideas: How about providing two months of free LingQ basic level access to people who translate information about beta languages and/or provide ten lessons or more for the library in beta languages.

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Iri, I love your idea about beta language content providers! And thanks for your compliments about my Couchsurfing collection. I will try to add a new lesson today.

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great idea Iri!

A super bonus for content providers and maybe the same for a technical provider for the beta language, but I think the salary for a technician would be higher :wink:

I’m not so familiar with the technical business world.

j;-)

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