I suppose they will promote Dutch, Czech and hopefully Polish when they (finally) launch the new beta-language policy. So the question is: when are you guys launching the new policy?
@all - Thanks for the heads up. We still have to vet the content ourselves to ensure the audio is high quality, and we also have to get our beginner courses translated and recorded before anything happens here.
I would love to get Dutch up soon, but we’ve been busy preparing the 90-Day Challenge, continuing to update other parts of the site, working on our mobile apps, responding to support emails and forum posts, and continuing to make marketing efforts to help grow LingQ’s revenue (which allows us to continue to grow our team). I will see what I can do to get this done sooner rather than later!
Cool! Having an advanced level of German, I would love to start with Dutch and know that I wouldn’t face so many hurdles since it’s closely related to German. Nice job silviad!
@VeraI - I hope to have the major pieces in place by Friday next week, then I’ll work on getting any remaining beginner lessons transcribed and recorded. Will do my best!
@mikebond - Sorry for the delay with this. Some other projects (such as our update and the 90-Day Challenge) have taken priority over this. I can’t give you a timeframe for when the new language system will be ready to go. Right now new languages are lower on our list of priorities as we look to continue to improve the experience for new LingQ members. In addition to improving the functionality for existing members, improving the experience for new members is one of our top priorities and will help drive more growth to the site than we believe adding new languages will at this time. It was a difficult decision for us to hide beta languages by default, as we know many people worked hard to get these languages added, but we hope this decision will help us to focus more on the key aspects of the site, including the Lesson page, the mobile experience (both on the site and through the apps), and more. That being said, we can hopefully redirect some effort to the new language interface some time soon!
@VeraI - Just as a heads up, we’re making the final preparations for Dutch and should have it added soon. We’ll send out an announcement when it’s been added
@OzzyHellBack - Not planning on any new beta languages. Instead, we’ll leave it up to members to organize enough content to meet our content requirements then we’ll add it as a fully supported language.
Keep in mind they haven’t actually made any official announcement on how that content will be organized and presented. I imagine that will happen when they eventually update the beta language system. Like Alex said in response to Michele, there is no timeline on when that update will happen.
“Not planning on any new beta languages. Instead, we’ll leave it up to members to organize enough content to meet our content requirements then we’ll add it as a fully supported language.”
Alex, do you mean members will have to create or found so much content without anybody being able to use it (even in “hidden mode” like now), thus without ever receiving any points or gratification for their hard work? If that is what you mean, I suppose we would never get any new languages at LingQ, other than some of the current beta languages and maybe Thai (see previous threads). That’d be disappointing…
“Not planning on any new beta languages. Instead, we’ll leave it up to members to organize enough content to meet our content requirements then we’ll add it as a fully supported language.” Terrible news!
That is what I was exactly worried about when I read firstly the announcement of the future of Beta languages. I guess the LingQ database is horribly planned. Otherwise it would be a single click to add a new language slot without any dictionairies and other refinements if the language has a known script (like Latin). When I hear the complaints from LingQ how difficult and much work it is to add another language this is the only conclusion. At my job I work with a multilingual software too and they have simply a language field in each relevant database table.
I see no chances that any other language will ever reach the limits if LingQ does not at least offers the option to add the content to LingQ. You have to work for month (full time !) to get so much content, and you have to do this without any feedback! That could not work in my opinion.
Hooray for Dutch (and everyone who has contributed content). I definitely want to study this in future to get in touch with my Dutch heritage.
I too would like to advocate for the expanding of Beta languages on Lingq. It doesn’t bother me if they are hidden, but right now the range of languages at Lingq is limited and if there are users who are passionate about building up other languages, then we should let them! I am particularly keen to see Cantonese added. I am perplexed at the purported technical difficulties as surely there are ways around these and users who have these expertise.
Thanks for your support, mountainash (I couldn’t find your real name)! I am on the same wavelength as you. I have been studying Polish since it was added in July 2011. I have provided lessons in Latin, Esperanto, Polish and Romanian (my texts corrected, recorded and shared). It doesn’t bother me much, because I mostly use my private content, and I suppose it doesn’t bother the other beta-language users, either.
I spent several months of 2013 inviting Catalan speakers to vote for Catalan on the Facebook poll and to have a look at LingQ. Some of them even joined LingQ. But all my effort was vain, I wasted my time. Nobody will create even a few lessons if they cannot get some tangible reward or feedback. I am more and more perplexed, too.
