It has been a long time since I posted a list of updates. I do apologize. I can’t believe how time has flown by. This is by no means a comprehensive list as it’s simply not possible to remember or identify all the multitude of things that have been done across all our apps.
At any rate, this gives a good idea of the bulk of the significant changes you should be looking for. If you have specific questions after reading this list, please let me know.
I haven’t bothered to list the multitude of things that have been done to optimize performance or to fix issues.
Let me know any thoughts!
I will do better with this going forward in terms of posting more regularly here!
Web App and Backend
Chinese Whisper Transcription
Increased maximum lesson size when importing
Added enhanced Japanese word splitting using AI
Migration to new forum software
Enable uploading of m4a audio files
Hover to see translation of lesson titles in Library
Added Slovenian, Afrikaans, Georgian
Enable Furigana option for Japanese
Enhanced feed sources for News Feed shelf
Added Chat GPT full text translation
Localization of grammar tags
Added more local payment options
Add setting to show/hide transliteration in card widget for Japanese and Chinese
AI Simplified Lessons
Pinned shelves in Library
Added Icelandic
Whisper transcription for YouTube videos
Audio tracking underline in Page view in Reader
Support timestamping in Traditional Chinese
Enable transliteration editing for individual words in widget and reader
Enable Generate Timestamps feature for Slovenian, Cantonese, and Belarusian
Active Playlist size limited to 50 lessons
Sentence Translation refresh feature
Show blue words with suggested meaning in Sentence Vocabulary list and enable LingQ creation.
Enable Whisper transcription for Cantonese.
AI word splitter used for Japanese news feed imports
Pending tab added to Continue Studying for lessons being processed by AI
Added Khmer and Vietnamese
Android
Added Vietnamese and Khmer
Pin shelves in the Library
Performance improvement in the Library
Reader audio progress highlight while playing full lesson audio
Simplify lessons with AI
New coins, activity and streak designs
Lesson vocabulary list UI and functionality improvements
Import page improvements; added import by file and scanning
Added upcoming Macedonian language support
Setting to show related phrases in reader
Improvements to dark theme in the Reader
Added Furigana and Latin superscripts
Added Afrikaans and Georgian
Improvements to tablet mode
Create phrases that contain numbers
iOS
Play video for playlist items with no audio
Add total words count to course details screen
New stats screen
New lesson complete screen
Pin shelves
Simplify lessons with AI
Lesson performance improvements
Added Afrikaans, Georgian, and Slovenian languages
As far as I know, it only works in Japanese. Are there normally multiple readings to choose from for Traditional Chinese characters? In Japanese, all readings are shown in the widget and you can choose from the different readings for the character in that context.
Yes, there are. For example, I keep coming across 給 transliterated as “ji” when it should be transliterated as “gěi”
Here are some more:
假 jià or jiǎ
會 huì or kuài
難 nán or nàn
相 xiāng or xiàng
都 dōu or dū
降 jiàng or xiáng
處 chù or chǔ
血 xuè or xiě
朝 cháo or zhāo
薄 bó, báo or bò
散 sàn or sǎn
傳 chuán or zhuàn
著 zhe, zháo, zhuó or zhāo
為. wèi or wéi
了 le or liǎo
好 hǎo or hào
看 kàn or kān
教 jiāo or jiào
行 xíng or háng
少 shǎo or shào
的 de, dí or dì
長 cháng or zhǎng
應 yīng or yìng
得 de, dé, děi
與 yǔ or yù
藏 cáng or zàng
空 kōng or kòng
調 diào or tiáo
便 biàn or pián
假 jià or jiǎ
And many others. To the point that whenever I encounter a new word, I cannot trust the pronunciation provided, but have to always look it up elsewhere - sometimes I take the trouble to note the actual pronunciation in the LingQ but usually I just can’t spare the time to do that (or energy) so all I can do is I try my best to remember. Or just keep looking them up again and again. If I could change the transliteration as needed in context, that would be really nice.
I haven’t worked on my Japanese in a while. Do I need to reimport the lessons to benefit from the improved word splitting? It says “Web App and Back End” so if I read on my iPhone do I get the benefit? (I always read on my iPhone)
There’s an Audio Transcribe option when you click the import button. I assume it uses Whisper technology to transcribe the audio. It hasn’t worked for me a while either though. I just tried uploading a minute and a half of audio in Korean and it seems to have transcribed it (I’d have to double check that listening to the audio) but the audio is a total mess. It doesn’t match up to the text in any way and it’s butchered so you can’t just hit the play button to listen to the whole thing without the text either.
As @kraemder said, when you import a lesson, there’s a button at the bottom that says “Generate automatic transcript.” For me, it has worked well when I upload MP3 files from various Italian podcasts. If you can’t get it to work for you, there are other websites that will create a transcript from an MP3 file, which you can then cut-and-paste or upload into LingQ.
Oh thanks for the answer, but my question is about how to get a mp3 file from spotify (not premium). Till now all app (from spotify to mp3 file for free) no success. My only chance is Audacity software , but it takes same time as spotify podcast lenght to generate an mp3 file and you cannot use your pc meanwhile to listen to other Lingq lesson , as it may result in an second input sound source that will be mixed together with spotify while Audacity is recording.
I have Spotify premium so I can’t address downloading from Spotify. However, have you tried other sources such as the podcaster’s website, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, etc.? You could also try a different app such as Pocket Casts to see if it will allow you to download the MP3. What is the name of the podcast?
I suggest consider the option of LLM (large language model AI ) for text to speech within LINGQ itself as voice options.
This would be a game changer. Better do this soon before other language platforms step on it first.
something like this…
amazing!
i currently use for chinese, mainly for simplified lessons or only text lessons but i have to pay monthly… what a pity not yet integrated within lingq. Maybe in the future?
Thanks again for your effort!! 加油 !!!
I want these AI voices to be added to all my apps haha. Voice Dream is one (the best TTS app for iOS). It used to be a buy once own for life license for the app but after 15 years (ish) the author wanted to retire and sold it to a corporation who immediately tried to implement monthly fees. It would now cost more per month than what I paid just once way back. Yeesh. That TTS voice sounds really really good though. I’m still focusing on reading with Korean but once you get past a certain threshold you can consume tons and tons of content just listening. I’d probably subscribe to this service too then.
No, you don’t need to reimport. Just click to edit the lesson and find the Re-split with AI button in the sidebar. This option is only available on the web right now but once split the lesson will appear with the updated splits on all platforms.
