Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! :]
This is a question for the admins/staff at LingQ but I think there are many people here who are thinking the same thing.
It is my understanding that there are several languages waiting to be uploaded to LingQ and a few of them are languages that I’m very interested in using LingQ for myself (such as Vietnamese, Tagalog, Cebuano, Thai, Khmer, Burmese, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Georgian, Maltese, Albanian, Afrikaans, Swahili, and Amharic).
It is also my understanding that the main reason why these languages are not yet on LingQ is the fact that good quality audio has not been acquired for them and the mini stories for them have not been written.
I do not know what everyone else does, but I mostly import videos from YouTube which are made for native speakers and which have captions in the target language.
I import these videos using the LingQ extension in my internet browser.
I have found that this gives me more than enough text and audio material for whatever language I am learning and, since the videos themselves already have their own audio, it does not bother me when LingQ’s audio is not perfect.
I would like to know if we can get those other languages uploaded to LingQ within the next month or so (since those languages are already waiting anyway) and have them be classed as Beta status or something until the LingQ staff get the audio, mini stories, and whatever else up to the standard that they want.
In the meantime, those of us who want to learn those languages in LingQ can do so using our own imported material.
I noticed that Icelandic was just added, which is very cool, but I also noticed that the original post from the guy who sent the Icelandic materials to LingQ was posted 1 year and 4 months ago.
If at all possible, I would prefer not to wait over a year to start using LingQ for a new language and I am ok with the audio not being perfect when those languages are first added to LingQ because I can find my own materials to import.
Frankly, I’m ok with LingQ not having any audio for those languages at all when they are added because, again, I can find my own audio.
I can even do without the grammar guide, news sources, etc. for a while until the LingQ staff are able to get those things.
As long as I can import materials, create LingQs, and export those LingQs to Anki, I’m good.
It is really all about being able to create LingQs and being able to import my own materials (mainly YouTube videos with captions in the target language).
I could just do it on my own, but I would rather use LingQ because it saves me a lot of time and I like seeing the number counter for how many words I’ve learned.
This is not a criticism, it is only a proposed solution to something that seems to be a problem upsetting many people.
I really love LingQ as my main language program and I would love to be able to use it with all of my languages instead of only a few of them, even if that means that I have to do most of the work importing materials and finding definitions/translations of words and phrases on my own.
I look forward to seeing the replies and best wishes to everyone out there!