We are constantly asked (you know who you are :-)) when we are going to add new languages to LingQ. Well…we are finally ready! And, we want your input. Tell us which language we should add first.
Pick the language you would like to see added to LingQ. Whichever language receives the most votes by June 1, 2010 will be added.
Want us to add Korean or Dutch? Vote and get your friends to vote! Anyone can vote. Talk it up and spread the word.
Korean seems the obvious choice seeing as they are probably the most tech savvy nation in the world. Their broadband is ranked as fastest in the world. Also they are crazy about education and English.
I tested this vote. It seems everybody can vote as many times as he wants. So, the results will not be reliable I think…
I think so too… seeing as everyone on the forum so far expressed the most interest in Korean, yet Czech has more votes, despite no-one talking about Czech here…
I’ve had a look at Serbian, am equally interested in the other varieties of BCMS/Central South Slavic, and yesterday I read some interesting thoughts about Slovak on another forum:
"Once I was on this two week language thing in Germany, and I remember having met a two Slovak girls. We found we could understand each other quite well, if not every single word, but at the least the context could be deduced, otherwhise English would be thrown in (or German, rather, which the camp was about).
The coolest thing I found though was that the Slovak girls could understand another Polish person, almost at the same level as they did me. I suppose Slovak and Czech are kind of a middle ground between these sub-groups (at least it would make sense with their geographical location)?
I keep thinking of Slovak as a language that bridges all slavic languages, I don’t think it would be too far off either."
and:
"I’ve definitely encountered a fair bit of anecdotal evidence from other Slavs (not necessarily Slovaks) who also consider Slovak to be a bridge language (not Czech though since it sounds too different compared to other Slavonic languages). Who needs Slovio when you can use Slovak?
Slovak’s reputation as a partial bridge arises from the fact that it is on one hand Western Slavonic (therefore genetically closest to Czech, and relatively close to Polish), but its development didn’t move in the same ways which ended up reducing intelligibility with the other Slavonic languages as had happened in Czech, Polish and Sorbian (e.g. Slovak has no nasal vowels unlike Polish, and no widespread narrowing of the original vowels unlike Czech)."