I enjoy LingQ very much so far!
I love that there is Hebrew and Latin on LingQ, and was wondering, is there any possibility of getting Greek up?
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jerem18h, there’s a possibility, but it isn’t a very likely one at this point. Another thread was started today that discusses this and has some links to older threads that also discuss it: Hellas - Language Forum @ LingQ . The thread title is Hellas.
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oh okay, thanks!
Any language must reach 1,000 votes on this poll https://www.facebook.com/questions/10150249705278786/ to be added. I am now campaigning for Romanian. If someone else started doing the same for Romanian of other languages, it would be much easier to have them added!
Hi, you are right, but I’m quite sure that wording has been there since I joined LingQ in 2010. Meanwhile, the language addition policy changed, but that text wasn’t updated.
I share your frustration about Greek not being available at LingQ. There are two separate entries in the Facebook poll, Ancient Greek (130 votes) and Modern Greek (249 votes). If I were you, I’d start asking people to vote right now. When Romanian is added, I will probably start campaigning for Greek as well.
We asked for a LingQ-based vote several times, but the answer was always no. So, I decided to play according to their new 1,000-vote rule, and I’m getting closer and closer (703 votes for Romanian right now). You can do the same for Greek, even if you are not on Facebook yourself.
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It’s really a moot point, w/ so far to go to 1,000, whichever way one counts, but I agree w/ IT. Label the lessons by the sort of Greek they are, and there would be no problem. Vocabulary differences would be no greater than for Latin, and I think that the punctuation and accent marks would work, w/ Modern Greek just being a subset. Pronunciation is very different, but that too would be covered by noting the time period. Combining all periods might get Greek to the big M faster, too.
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@IT: I do agree with you, but the LingQ admins won’t change their minds on the poll. Anyway, it would be good to have LingQ cards, even if I have realized that people need to be explained what LingQ is about in order to appreciate it. A mere card may not be enough.
And, as I always say, there should be no competition among languages, since the goal is to have a language reach 1,000 votes, not to be more voted than another one. I voted for over 40 languages, including a few I am not going to study, just to help some friends.
I think the debate one slot vs two slots is a bit premature. It would be good if both Greeks were added at the same time, but the number of slots is secondary in my opinion. I would be for separate slots, as Ancient Greeks had many varieties and Modern Greek has at least two: katharevousa and dhimotiki.
Just to clarify a couple of things:
(1) The reason we chose to use Facebook and not something internal is that the main purpose of the poll is to spread the word about LingQ and potentially attract the interest of people interested in learning a language we don’t yet offer.
(2) It was discussed some time ago whether to keep Greek as a single language or split it up into Modern and Ancient. When we reset the poll some months ago, the consensus still seemed to be to split them up.
(3) As far as combining the votes, we won’t be able to do that since people could easily have voted for both Modern and Ancient Greek, which then means these people will get two votes for the same language.
(4) Once Greek reaches 1000 votes and it’s added, then we can look at some issues specific to accents, variations, etc. I think the first thing to do is rally more support and get more votes so it’s added sooner rather than later. Our friend mikebond has almost single-handedly rallied support for Romanian which is now already past 700 votes, so it’s definitely possible.
@Imyirtseshem - Regarding “Hint-Rot”, we’ve just recently added a feature to flag incorrect hints that we will be announcing shortly. Hopefully this helps to get rid of any incorrect hints that are floating around.
My goodness, Imyrtseshem, you sound so dramatic.
You make a good point. But as I said, there’s small difference from Latin. Actually, from English, either. And the difference between ancient Greek and modern Greek in regard to the diacritical marks would make it easy to tell one from the other for most words.
However, since I don’t use the flashcard facility at all, that matters little to me, anyway. What would be nice (to my mind) is to have Greek texts and sound files easily accessible, and modern Greek would be easy to tell apart from ancient Greek under the current system of noting the “accent.”
@Imyirtseshem - Ah, I see what you mean. Thanks for the clarification. That isn’t something we’re looking to address for the foreseeable future. User Hints are a core part of the site, but users still have the freedom to search the dictionary and create a hint that they like or that fits the word they want to save.
As long as the thread is alive, one humble question: what is the big deal about this facebook vote anyway?
So, it does not really matter whether these people are really interested? It does not even matter if these are real accounts? One could just make 1000 fake accounts and vote for all languages on the list and they would be added?
Or is it OK to ask your x-hundred facebook friends to go and tick necessary options on a facebook page and that will do?
I mean, I want Romanian, Serbian/Croatian, Ukrainian and a couple of other languages and I think I could organize friend-voting pretty quickly. Would it be OK for LingQ?
Disclaimer: This message is not to criticize anyone at LingQ, I just want to understand the sense of it and the game rules.
@Imyirtseshem - Actually it’s not so much about “good” versus “bad”, but rather about weeding out any hints that are incorrect. In my case, if I see a hint that I don’t like then I just go and create my own. I assume others do the same. Hints are there if you want them, but they have always been optional.
@Axel_V - As I mentioned, it’s to get exposure. If you’re telling 1000 people about our poll, that’s exposure. Not everyone will sign up, but some of them probably will and more people will have heard about the site. You could make 1000 fake accounts if you really wanted, but (1) that’s probably not the best use of your time and (2) we can see who votes, so if we see 200 guys named “john smith” with no picture then we’ll probably figure it out.
@Axel_V - The fact is, there is very little benefit to us in adding less popular languages. Few people will study them and even fewer will pay us to study them. Therefore, we need some incentive to add languages. We have decided that asking people to drum up support and get facebook votes is the way for LingQ to derive some benefit. Obviously, finding ways to game the vote is not what we had in mind. However, if you are telling 1000 friends about LingQ in order to get them to vote for your language, that is good publicity for us.
Thanks Alex and Mark!
On the hint issue: I translate into Russian and I pretty often see translations from third languages into English which someone falsely marked as translations into Russian. These are flag candidates, right?
P.S. Are these to-be-added languages going to be “beta”? Are the languages which are currently beta ever going to be upgraded to “normal”? Can this be triggered?
@Axel_V - Yup, that’s exactly why we added it 
These languages will be beta. For more about this see the original announcement: http://www.lingq.com/forum/3/11401/
@alex - Good! So, they will stay beta forever till the end of time?
@Axel_V - Some probably will, but we hope that some will eventually generate enough users to garner full support!
@alex - Let us all hope for the better!
I’ve been to the facebook page, but I do not see polls anywhere. How do I find the place to vote for new languages?
@Dmlyum - Facebook changed their platform so there is no longer a very prominent place to link to the poll. You can find the poll here: http://on.fb.me/pcZaZS