Proposed Solution For Adding New Languages

Open Forum
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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!

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Here is an additional idea: How about one (or several) user-specific placeholder languages for languages that are not available in LingQ yet. Once the real languages are added to LingQ, the users get the option to transfer their material, known words etc. (from the placeholder languages) into the real ones.
I am not sure how complicated this would be to implement. However this could enable some people to start with languages and (!) also benefit when those languages are added to LingQ.

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While I understand Lingq’s desire to quality control their content, and that many languages the more vocal users wish for (ie those who would visit and post on forums) will not see much use relative to the larger languages, I do wish it were easier to study unsupported languages here.

Last year I tried creating a public workspace for unsupported languages (https://www.lingq.com/en/community/forum/content-forum/new-languages-at-lingq-a-publi) but the response and involvement was lukewarm at best, so I haven’t pursued developing it further.

There are several smaller languages that I have highly personal interests in studying or learning. One of them was just added, and I’m grateful for that, but the others range from impossible given the current requirements (ie Cornish doesn’t seem to have news for a news feed), to frustratingly long waits for volunteers for languages that would have a degree of popularity here (Irish). If a relatively popular language like Irish can’t find volunteers, what chance does Sicilian or Maltese have?

I think allowing custom language slots where we can bring in our own dictionary, with the understanding that should that language ever be supported we’d have to start over, is a reasonable compromise. Some languages are unlikely to ever be supported here, but the LingQ system is too good to not offer a way to use it for any language of our choosing.

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I agree, I dont care about a grammar guide, news source, mini stories etc. I can find all of that by myself. I just want to be able to use the LingQ system to study languages of my choosing.

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I would love to be able to import Swahili sources. Since the pronunciation is pretty straightforward and it uses the Latin alphabet, it isn’t critical for me to have complete audio for everything. I often listen to the news in Swahili to acclimate to the sounds.

For me, the LingQ creation count is really valuable and gives me a solid record of how much new exposure I’m getting per day. This alone makes me really want Swahili in LingQ in any form. I’m currently using other avenues, but they just aren’t as all-encompassing.

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“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.”

  • that was because LingQ were still working on version 5.0 at the time and they made it clear they were not adding more languages before it´d be out. I´m sure it would have taken much, much less time to add Icelandic otherwise, 3 months at most I´d think.
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Is there a way to contact the staff to see what they think about doing something like this?

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Sahra said:
…Although in the past we have published some low quality audios for mini stories, we have started improving our libraries and most of them are being done again. So if a new language is going to be added to LingQ the audio should meet our standards…
And
I really appreciate your interest in studying new languages on LingQ and we understand that some users want to have them even in low quality, however, there are other users who will be disappointed by low quality mini stories, especially new users. Besides, most of our revenue comes from the more popular languages that we already have on lingQ so we need to devote most of our time to improving these libraries other than adding more workload to the team…

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Personally I would prefer to see high quality mini stories. If the recording is of low quality for various reasons, I think it does a disservice to the language. As a new user I really would want to have stories that are clearly and engagingly narrated. Having a bunch of crappy recordings just to meet the 60 stories will discourage new users.

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Patrick, you make a valid point. However, I think the main value of LingQ is that it is a platform that allows the user to generate/import their own content, content based on personal interest. I find the mini stories painfully boring. I usually have to force myself through them and never revisit them a second time. Personally, all I want is the language platform to import the audio and text of my chosen language.

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I personally very much appreciate that public workspace project, as the Bengali mini stories that were provided are some of the only high quality (cohesive) Bengali content that I’ve managed to find online. If you don’t mind me asking - did anybody ever end up contributing further to the Bengali stories at all after you set the project aside?

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This is an example of the “low quality” ones though…

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The above audio file sounds quite clear to me. I’d be happy to listen to files of this quality in any of the languages I’m studying or would like to study.

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I had the same experience. The mini stories are not fun. At least I appreciate them because they’re easy to read and I read one every now and then when I’m in a good mood. Otherwise, I import chapter by chapter of a book into LingQ and read that instead.

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Sounds good to me. I could understand a few words even though I’m a beginner in Vietnamese.

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It seems kind of contradictory to say most of the revenue comes from the popular languages but that they wont let the diehards use it even in beta (isnt that what the word means anyway?) by all means–dont put crappy audio on there, but if they only have the text, and not yet the audio, why can’t this simply be what ‘beta’ means??

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I agree wholeheartedly :+1:

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I don’t understand what the problem is.

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Sounds good to me.

1 Like