Since Latin is a thing here on LingQ, I’m wondering if there might be any interest in Old English? I realize it’s probably more important to add some of the bigger languages (e.g. Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian, etc.) first, but I think it would be awesome if Old English had a place here on LingQ. No other language-learning website (not even Duolingo) has attempted to offer Old English.
From “The Battle of Brunanburh”:
Her Aethelstan cyning, eorla dryhten,
beorna beag-giefa, and his brothor eac,
Eadmund aetheling, ealdor-langetir
geslogon aet saecce sweorda ecgum
ymbe Brunanburh. Bord-weall clufon,
heowon heathu-linde hamora lafum
eaforan Eadweardes, swa him ge-aethele waes
fram cneo-magum thaet hie aet campe oft
with lathra gehwone land ealgodon,
hord and hamas.
That’s a pity. Is there no way to “Field of Dreams” it - i.e. “build it and they (i.e. the Old English scholars) will come”?
Personally, I don’t enjoy the mini-stories all that much. And since it’s so easy to import stuff, that’s what I usually do.
There are plenty of dictionaries online, and I can imagine there would be a lot of interest if some sort of beta version (i.e. without the mini-stories) was created, with just a few texts to start, from Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, and stuff from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Battle of Brunanburh etc. The potential is there to start learning simply from user-imported stuff.
It’s such a pity we can’t have stuff like this in LingQ:
The reality is it takes resources on our end to support these new languages and there are still improvements to be made in how LingQ handles its existing languages that we wish to address.
For now, we will only be adding new languages when volunteers have produced all the necessary requirements.
Well, that’s kinda why I’m suggesting that maybe there should be some way to “open source” the creation process. Surely, if users could start the process to a sort of pre-beta stage, it would kill three birds with one stone:
1, it would get the ball rolling faster on new language additions;
2, it would reduce the amount of work the developers needed to do on new language additions, freeing them up to perfect what’s there already;
3, it would show which languages have the broadest support among the userbase, which would also make the developers’ jobs easier.
It seems to me that LingQ has this huge resource available - i.e. the users - but LingQ is not exploiting that resource. It just strikes me as a lost opportunity.
First, you’ll have to allocate your resources to almost create a whole separate agency who’s work would be to create and issue “franchises”, or, in this case, to develop an extended and safe interface for contributors to partition storage space for added languages and things like that and still carry the burden of responsibility for the content being uploaded in your project.
And, though YMMV, my experience tells me, that when it comes to the point of actual donation and contribution, the excitement and activity of the public tends to fade away usually. Especially, when paying rather high price for the service membership and having to put up with critical bugs once in a couple of weeks or months.
You can definitely go ahead and become a Librarian and create the content for the Old English. Other users are creating content for less requested languages, so if you have a real interest in this language, you can go ahead and do the work.
You can create the mini stories and find the first material to make it happening. Nobody is stopping you.
I have no interest in that at all, but I have written a ton of definitions in the vocabulary for the languages I use that a lot of other users are using for free.
FYI, someone started a New LingQ Languages Public Project for people to contribute. There is already an Old English tab available, which is awaiting content.
