As a language learner I find it very helpful to know the accent of the speaker. I think that many lesson creators might forget to include this information (as a tag).
Also, speaking of tags, I think it would be helpful to include a tag box in the course edit window in order to be able to apply the desired tags to all the lessons in the course instead of having to apply tags to each lesson individually.
Well written, Paul!
I still wonder how many learners seeing tags like âVenetianâ, âTuscanâ, âAustralianâ or, even worse, âStockholmâ, âGoteborgâ, âEcclesiasticalâ and so on, will understand that they relate to accents or pronunciation varieties. How are we supposed to make a distinction between the tag Stockholm meaning âlesson about the city of Stockholmâ and Stockholm meaning âlesson read in Swedish as it is spoken in Stockholmâ.
It would be necessary to rewrite such tags to make it clear that they deal with accents and pronunciation, e.g. âVenetian accentâ, âStockholm varietyâ, etc. I could do it, at least for Italian, but it would be quite time consuming.
Call me pessimistic, but I donât see a bright future for accent tags in their current form.
And so far all the tags I have seen were in English. I guess there should be tags in other languages as well, including the target language (for non-beginner lessons)?
My last accent-related message for the day is a bug report: I tried to create a tag consisting of two words but the first word was converted into a tag on its own before I could add the second word. This is something you should have a look into.
@mikebond - I think if I were interested in Australian English or Venetian Italian, I would be tempted to click on
australian or Venetian. 99% of what I find will be accent related. Tags can be in whatever language people want to create them in. Make one in English and add the same in Italian. They are much more flexible this way. We may look at allowing creation of two word tags although Iâm not sure itâs necessary.
I was thinking of writing tags like âVenetian accentâ and similar, or content-related tags like âItalian literatureâ, âWorld War IIâ, so it would be very useful to have tags of more than one words. In most websites allowing tags, tags are separated by commas, not just by spaces, as far as I know.
I think it isnât a good idea to have the tags not translated. I found it strange in the âoldâ version too because the tags were in English only. For example if my mother wants to learn Italian it would be difficult for her because she didnât know any English nor Italian. How should she know the meaning of the tags if she doesnât speak these languages? I often think that learners without a good knowledge of English are lost on LingQ ⊠Other language learning sites deal better with this.
I still think tags are a good idea, but I think they are not a good idea regarding to the accent. It is much better to have the accent as a separate criteria for search and classification that content providers and users can clearly see that it is required.
Exactly.
I agree with Vera and others, but letâs see where this goes as we move forward.
Meanwhile, it would be very good if the system could remember the tags from the previous lesson in a course, as it happened to the Type and Category fields before. Also, we should be able to apply tags to a whole course, as we did before with Type and Category.
I see it is now possible to save tags for a whole course, and tags longer than one word, so thank you for that.
However, âcourse tagsâ only apply to the lesson that exist when you tag and not to the future lessons of that course. Moreover, they are not displayed in the Edit Course page (as if they hadnât been saved, while I did click on âChange for allâ).
Thank you also for adding the explanation of what tags are for, even if Iâm not sure that it will be so effective as the Accent field.
Iâm sure it will not be so effective as the Accent field 
In general I like the âlook and feelâ of the new version. I think you have done a good job to make it look nicer for new members. But such things let me feel biased.
We are continuing to refine the tagging system. Please be patient as we continue to improve it. We will make sure those course tags are applied to all future lessons as well.
Thanks Mark, I promise Iâll be patient.
Iâve to come back to this issue again. I had a closer look to the German library. I wanted to search for lessons with an suisse accent. What a surprise to not find a tag âSuisseâ or âSwitzerlandâ.
I think tags needs to be improved urgently.
The tags are hidden under âExtra filtersâ. That makes it difficult to newbies to even recognize that there are these filters.
The tags itself seems to have no special order.
Important tags are missing. See the first paragraph.
Lots of tags seems to be missing.
Here is the list of tags the German library shows:
1. Beginner I
Entertainment
Literature
Nachrichten
Fiction
Culture And Religion
Humor
Member Created
Fairy Tales
Other
Daily Life
Sprach-Bestandteile
Mitglieder Schreiben
GesprÀche Und Interviews
Current Events
Kurzgeschichten
HörbĂŒcher
Education
Short Stories
Austria
2. Beginner Ii
Culture
GesprÀch
Language
Ecology
Podcasts
For Beginners
Vortrag
History
Health And Beauty
Science
Travel
Audiobooks
Poetry
Ăbungen
Lingq
Germany
News
Articles
Business
Danke, Vera, fĂŒr das Beispiel der deutschen Tags: Diese Tags sind ein âSammelsuriumâ. Wenn ich meine Podcast Co-Produkte selbst taggen mĂŒsste, dann könnte ich da gar nichts von verwenden. Es ist auch sehr unprofessionell, wenn manche deutsche Podcasts auf Deutsch getaggt werden, andere auf Englisch und wieder andere in beiden Sprachen durcheinander. Auf HTLAL lĂ€uft es einheitlicher, weil dort nur Moderatoren die Tag-Begriffe creieren und die Einheitssprache aller Tags Englisch ist.
Fasulye
There are certainly issues here but I am not sure what the solution is and when we will be able to get to it. I understand your sense of urgency and appreciate the feedback. I know it is on the list of things to do, (a long list).
@Fasulye: Ich habe das schon vor vielen Jahren kritisiert und um Ănderungen gebeten, wurde jedoch immer wieder vertröstet. Nun ist etwas passiert, aber drch das Zusammenlegen von Kategorie, Art und Akzent ist das jetzt sogar noch mehr Durcheinander als es schon war, sofern das möglich ist. Das schlimmste ist, dass man jetzt noch nicht mal alle Tags sieht und auswĂ€hlen kann! Nach meinem GefĂŒhl ist taggen ist damit absolut sinnlos geworden.
@Steve:
I feel the list gets longer and longer and longer and longer with every update.
I see that you improve the âlook & feelâ of the website, but I think technical issues should be resolved too. The language filter was something that has worked before. You decided to change the way you handle this, and said we should use the tags instead, but they donât work as my example has shown.
Donât get me wrong. I love LingQ, and I still love LingQ but Iâve seen many updates in the past years. What I now really want to see is that you look for working âon the listâ to make it shorter and to resolve known problems instead of creating new ones. After each updates it tooks weaks and months to solve the problems. I know you have not many resources, but then you should think of what is more important: A feature that only is used by a small part of the members (for example Chrom users) and makes âthe listâ even longer, or working on the list of known issues.
Sorry if I probably sound more angry than I feel. I donât want to make a fuss about this, but I think tagging lessons is now a waste of time. And new members who creates content will simply not understand how to tag, and what makes sense.