Hi everyone. I‘d be interested in learning Latvian using LingQ. However, I do know that this is quite a small language. Are there by chance plans to add this anyway?
Also, I was wondering if maybe there could be some kind of „custom language“ for languages that are not on LingQ yet? I was thinking you choose this „custom“ language like every other language, you can upload material to it that is only visible for you and you‘d have to add translations and definitions yourself (and they would only be visible to you because maybe your „custom language“ is Latvian, someone else is using it for Urdu, and you cannot have the same translations of course). Maybe you could even tell LingQ somewhere what language this is and then you could see definitions and translations made by other people who are also learning your language? These could then later be used when/if the language becomes a beta-language. Of course, until then audio-generating and stuff would not work, but you could at least track your progress in this language, create Linqs and learn more easily.
Just throwing this out there, I don‘t know how much work adding a language actually is. But it could maybe help people who want to learn languages that are not on LingQ yet.
It would be great to have Latvian added too one day, but at the moment it’s unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. Sure, you can use an existing language slot for Latvian if you want so, that’s fine. Just make sure to keep all your imports private.
If using an existing language slot to learn an unsupported language (for example, using the Armenian slot to learn Latvian), can the in-app Google Translate be configured to translate from Latvian rather than Armenian?
I use a desktop computer. On a desktop, if you are repurposing a language slot, and using the Google Translate dictionary within Lingq, you can get something close to the software behavior you want if you are willing to do two additional clicks every time you look up a blue item.
First, make sure that the Google Translate dictionary is available in your repurposed slot. Now click on a blue item in a lesson in your target language. This will usually be a word, if you are studying a language that has spaces between words. Select the Google Translate dictionary from the Dictionaries section of the small popup. Now you can see the Google Translate dictionary popup. Adjust the Google Translate popup window notion of the language in the left-hand side from your repurposed slot’s original language to the actual target language you are studying (Latvian). The right-hand side now shows the translation into a language associated with your Google Translate dictionary. If you want a different language in the right-hand side window of Google Translate, you may choose that different language now.
For me, this is useful enough that I don’t mind the two extra clicks every time.
Note that if you are studying a language with no spaces between words, and repurposing a slot in order to study that language, you must edit your lessons so that the lesson text has at least one space about every 50 characters or less, if you want your lessons to offer the blue color. Lingq doesn’t offer the blue color unless your lexical item is short enough to possibly be a word.
I sent an e-mail to Steve a few months ago about adding Latvian, got a response that basically all that’s needed to do is to translate + record at the very least the LingQ’s MiniStories (but preferably in both male and female voices). Technically I could do that, but don’t really have the time atm.