Update on Hindi 2022

Hello everyone. I know that there have been some threads already about adding Hindi. I would love to see it on LingQ. It seems from the previous threads that Hindi will be adding like there are plans to do so. However, LingQ has bigger updates to release and make first before adding it. I recently cancelled my membership. However, if there was confirmation that LingQ would add Hindi in the near future, I would repurchase it in a heartbeat. I really love learning languages through LingQ and it’s been hard finding a similar learning strategy for Hindi on other platforms. I will probably continue using LingQ for other languages anyway. I understand it’s a lot to ask but I just wanted an update.

Not yet sure about the date, can’t promise anything. But I know our content managers are doing their best to get high quality mini stories in several languages and to have them released as soon as possible.

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can you confirm that you already have the high quality mini stories for Hindi? and if you do not have them what is the plan to get them?

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No, we don’t have high quality mini stories in Hindi, so not sure if we will have it added in the near future. Our content team is looking for Librarians and trying to get as many stories done as possible for several languages that are in incubation, not just Hindi.

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please add Urdu

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Any progress with this?

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Ditto from me.

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Zoran
If you are not sure could you find out? I purchased a years subsription nearly a year ago on the expectation that Hind( or Urdu) was going to be added soon after the 5 came out. Is the near future a few weeks or a few years? Hindi is the fourth most spoken language in the world and is spoken in most of the old British empire countries? It is more important than many of the “minor” languages that are available on lingq. Please try to give a definite answer.

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I’m not sure I would say it’s more important than other languages on LingQ but I too have been waiting a long time for Hindi to be added. I second the request for a transparent action plan to be made available for paying LingQ customers. :pray:

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@marlene666 I checked with our content team. Hindi won’t be added anytime soon. At the moment Swahili and Tagalog are making most progress and it’s most likely that those two are next two in line to be added.

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Would also really appreciate Hindi being added.

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I agreed with wwm.

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I agree, too.

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LingQ should use the US military language school to take advantage of its large quantity of learning material. It comes with text ,audio and translation and it is free. You can find it at GLOSS dfli!

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It’s extremely disappointing to read that Hindi won’t be added anytime soon. There are threads dating 12 years back requesting Hindi. In many of those threads it has been said that Hindi would be added after the big update. How did they not manage to get the mini stories in 12 years? I am also disappointed that apparently free translations from community members are needed, so mini stories can be added. So, LingQ cannot just pay a professional English-Hindi translator? Really?
I’d also like to add that I don’t personally use the mini stories anymore. For the existing languages they are usually not high quality. They are not high quality in my native language (German) and I found mistakes or simply weird ways to say things in other languages as well. But it’s not just about the mistakes. Since the stories have been translated from English and have been designed (in English) to try and teach certain grammar points, they often force tenses or other grammar concepts just so the reader can see that grammar point in the text. This can lead to an unnatural use of certain tenses or even sentence structure in the target language. The whole point of LingQ is to read texts that reflect how the language is spoken/written in real life, not to read mini stories that will (for example) use the future tense in German just because that is the grammar point of the lesson, even though no native speaker would use it in that situation (in fact, German speakers almost never use the future tense, not even in written/formal texts). One of the main reasons to read and listen to texts in your target language is to learn when and how to use the grammar in real life. It’s to see grammar in action. The mini stories don’t do that.
Finally, I don’t see why new languages can’t just be added without mini stories. People can just start importing texts and other learning materials that are around for free. I would love to see this happen.
I feel like the LingQ team is always pushing for those mini stories to be there, but is there really a demand for it? I mean, do users really mind if there are no mini stories for a language? I doubt that anyone would complain if a new Beta language was added without mini stories.

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I agree 100 percent.

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That’s disappointing to learn that many mini-stories are unnatural :frowning: Especially in German as was considering using them for that language.

I think if people were just starting off in a language, they would be really useful if they were natural. That or something like Assimil.

I would love Hindi but especially Bangla. But I guess no hope for it.

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I have always thought it odd that they rely on free volunteers to translate and record ministories. I see plenty of people in the forums requesting a single language. Surely if all of those people signed up for a month or a year, it would make up for the cost of hiring a native to do the recordings. Certainly with languages like Hindi, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, where labor is cheap.

As for the ministory requirements, I understand that the average user may want content already present in the app, however, why not just add a third category? Why not make an Alpha Language category that states very clearly, “this language has no content.” Ministories are about the least unique thing about LingQ. I can find videos on youtube, graded readers, beginner podcasts. There is plenty of ministory-like content out there, but nothing like LingQ’s reader. That’s what we are here for.

Maybe I just don’t understand. But it seems like LingQ wastes a lot of time with weird decisions. The process to cancel a premium account is so complicated that there are posts almost daily asking Zoran to close their accounts, one of them has 278 comments. I have to wonder how much time he spends just closing accounts. At what point is it more efficient to just make things simpler for users?

Why not just add the requested languages as hidden “alpha” languages. Folks in the forum aren’t asking “when are the minstories coming?” they are asking when the language is coming. People want the reader functionality. Why waste all the time stringing people along?

It is not neccessary for LingQ to establish short stories for hindi, it could just be enough to implement a touch dictionary! We who study hindi can download texts and audio from GLOSS dfli!

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ditto!

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