Basic patterns in different languages. I will pay by the hour

I want to develop a list of the basic structural patterns of different languages as basic lessons that people can refer to when they start a language, and revisit often to refresh their grasp of these structures. These lessons will consist of audio and text, as well as very basic explanations and a video for each lesson. The videos will also be published on my Youtube channel.

I am looking for collaborators and will pay by the hour. I will attach a start I have made for English in a separate post. I want this English list completed. Ideally this will become 20 or 25 lessons, both for LingQ and as something I could use in instructional videos. I welcome suggestions and questions.

Eventually I want the same for French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian, in fact all of our languages here at LingQ.

Normally I would post this on Odesk, an outsourcing website, but thought that I would first see if there was any interest amongst our members.

I have always found grammar explanations, grammar rules and grammar tables difficult to digest and difficult to remember. My own preferences in language learning, as many of you know, is to concentrate on listening and reading, and to refer from time to time to examples of the basic structures of the language with a minimum of explanation. I need to visit these examples often, at the beginning and at various stages of my learning. That is the purpose of these examples.

Please let me know if you are willing to participate, for English or for other languages. Obviously we want native speakers, and we want the patterns to be relevant for each language. That means that the focus of these examples will vary according to the language. However, to some extent the concepts covered will be similar.

The following link gives access to my first draft of examples in English. Please let me know if you are interested in working on this project and for which language.

http://bit.ly/1nR5GH2

Do you want this for any language?

Edit: I will be willing to help with the English portion as well

The problem is that there is sometimes no translation with exactly the same meaning.

I would like to start with the major languages but am curious to hear from members as to for which language they could do this.

Yes, Vera, you are right. I am not looking for translations. I want each set of patterns to be natural and relevant for that language. Furthermore, there are issues in some languages that don’t exist in others. The English patterns may be a guide, but they should not just just be translated in to other languages

This idea reminds me my draft version of tables which could help to learn languages comparing them one to another.
http://ress.at.tut.by/poluglot/preposit.htm
It is a very draft version, it has a lot to do, and it works incorrectly in IE.

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I may help with Russian, Belarusian (hope it will be added one day) and Esperanto.

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That will be great, and I would personally interested in seeing the Belarusian. By the way, any helpers, please keep track of your hours. Thanks.

@Ress- I’d greatly appreciate the Belarusian :wink:

Should we translate the document provided? Will somebody review the translation?

That’s a very interesting idea. I can help with Russian if you want.

It would be useful to know the user names for each language to share the work. For example, I will be away from internet for a week soon.

I am not necessarily looking for translations. We need natural sentences that illustrate issues in each language. This means, for example, that verbs of motion, or aspects of verbs, or different cases are important in Slavic languages, whereas tenses may be a bigger part of the English version, or for Romance languages. The use of pronouns is also an issue in many languages. i don’t want this limited to the issues that are raised in my list. My English list needs to be expanded and improved.

At some point, however, I would like to look for some relationship between the different lists, common sections, so that a person can easily find those aspects in a language that are of particular interest at various stages of learning that language.

Bautov, thanks. Now the problem is how to coordinate everyone’s help.

Once we are satisfied that a we know what we want, should we then let people develop their own lists for the different sections, or should we all edit one common list per language in google drive or something? I think it may be best to let people prepare their own lists, editing, and changing as they go. We can occasionally share what we are doing to make sure we are all going in the same direction. These can all be added together later. Or will that be a mess?

In a way, the more pattern sentences, and the more voices, (assuming all have good sound quality), the better for the learner.

To make sure we are all on the same page, it might be best for people to post a few examples of pattern sentences in various languages, here on this thread. We won’t be recording anything until we are satisfied with the pattern sentences. We can always allocate the recording later. First lets see how good a collection of pattern sentences we can create, well adapted to the needs of each language, and yet with some overall unity of form, so that people can easily refer to it when they need to.

I have also tried to make the phrases flow from easier to more difficult so that they are more accessible for beginners, although I see this list as a review resource for learners at various stages on their journey of discovering a language.

This is very much , in my view, a support resource for the main activity of discovering the language through meaningful and interesting content.

Sergey, I presume you mean that those participating should identify themselves and the language they are going to work on. We can begin by having people identify themselves here on the thread. From time to time I will update with a list. Perhaps I will keep a list in a google spreadsheet or something.

I’d be thrilled to help in French :slight_smile:

That is great Serge!

Each language is different and we need to address the problems that learners face in each language. That is sometimes difficult for native speakers to know. Once we have some preliminary lists in each language, we may want learners to comment on where they need help.

BTW the original idea for this comes from a book I bought in Moscow two years ago,
Учебная грамматика русского языка. Базовый курс. 53 модели

http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/146558/

53 patterns is a lot. I am hoping we can keep it to 25 or 30.

Hi Steve
You didn’t mention European Portuguese, but I can help with it, if you want.
If I remember well, there are already some lessons in the library about language patterns. How different is this new project?

Fernanda

Hi Fernanda,

Yes we would want a section for European Portuguese. Thank you.

This is an extension of this idea. We can use those patterns, and we want to add more. We want to make sure all sentences are really natural and for each language. I know there were some inconsistencies in what I did previously which you pointed out.

The patterns need not be the same for all language, and there can be more in some languages than in others. I am hoping that the overall headings or names of sections can be common in most cases.

Steve

I think that the project is very interesting, but I also like figuring out the patterns of my own and, for example, when I read French texts with unique patterns I’m amazed by their uniqueness and structure because they are very interesting to me, because I really like to find out new thing, I’m highly curious and accepting person. :slight_smile:

(Le_Jr) , Chase has brought up the idea of having a separate section for each tense in English. I prefer to keep the sections as simple as possible, but that may not work for all learners so I am looking for input.

I prefer, in the case of tenses, to have just present, past and future, and then to show examples of how the tenses work with different trigger words. For example, "“now” usually triggers the continuous form of the present, whereas “every day” triggers the simple present. To me, the fewer grammatical terms we use, and the more the patterns can stand on their own the better. It is also true that often different tenses are equally valid in different situations. If we can illustrate the usage through patterns rather than rules and explanations, I feel that is more useful.

In any case, these patterns cannot hope to teach anything definitively, they are just a resource, a reference, for occasional or even frequent review. The learner has to look for similar examples elsewhere. It cannot be exhaustive. It cannot cover all possible examples. These are just hints of the structures, and at different stages in the learning journey, learners will notice different things, and remember different things.