Hi Mark, how get we informed about changes in our lessons? Via email? If that works properly, it is ok. I hope so. Does this include lesson notes and translations as well?
Typos:
What about British versus American spelling?
Iāve added some lessons in British English, and I hope they will stay in the British spelling. Maybe some learners are not aware of the differences in the spelling system?
Vera,
Spelling in either is not a problem!
It is only when you mix the two in the same lesson, i.e. where both ācolourā and ācolorā accidentally appear in the same text, that it becomes not very professional.
Yes, itās a weak point of such changes.
Like Vera, I have a lot of shared lessons and I just have no time to look for these āimprovementsā in all my shared lessons!
I think it unlikely that users will make those kind of changes. They will obviously see user hints and dictionary definitions for either spelling so there is no need to make the effort to edit the lesson. I would imagine most editing will occur in Asian languages where word splits need adjusting.
An email or notification is a good idea. We will try and get that implemented. No, notes and translations are not editable by others. Only the text is visible to others for editing.
Talking of making LingQ better, Iāve been making my way through the mini-stories in Italian, and the audio quality varies from usable-but-not-great to bad - I suspect the speaker was just using a mobile phone microphone, and not keeping it at a constant distance from their mouth. If I am able to line up an Italian speaker with some better-quality recording gear, would I be able to submit an alternative set of the audio without massively offending anyone?
I think de-cluttering the user interface would make a huge improvement. The concept is great, but there are so many buttons and tabs, etc. on the page it is difficult to navigate. The meanings of the various buttons and tabs are not clear. This could be an amazing site if it had a streamlined interface. My two cents.
Yes, this is something we are always trying to improve upon. We would love to declutter but we have not found it to be that easy. All suggestions are welcome.
Yes, those need some work. We are actually working at getting them recorded professionally. Hopefully we can start replacing those audio files soon.
Thanks, Mark. I have many suggestions, but here are two:
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Lesson feed vs. Lesson Library. I know what these are but it is not clear to the unitiated what the difference is between the two. Instead of having two tabs, why not have just one āLesson Library?ā Allow users to sort by āNewestā thus eliminating the need for a separate lesson feed. Yes, I know there is a gear there.
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The avatar and its three tabs takes up way too much real estate on the page. I suppose some people might find it cute but it is unnecessary to have it be so big.
Thatās two.
hi, one question: studying Latin I noted that some pronunciations get wrong (example: oratio has to be pronounced /orazio/ but the speaker pronunces /oratio/ or bad accentation): how is possibile to update this pronunciation?
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Echoing what Miznia said above, I donāt see an Edit button next to āUse a popular translation from the community.ā
I saw a definition in Lithuanian that was labeled as English that I was going to move to the correct language, but unfortunately there is no button that says āEditā on the LingQ interface in my account. When I click on a blue word, the only button next to āUse a popular translation from the communityā is the one that says āI know this word.ā
(Iām using the new version of LingQ. I tried logging out and back in and checked it in both Chrome and Firefox.)
Learning the fact that nobody can edit translations is a huge relief for me, because I try really hard finding the best translation & explanation for my lingQs. I want absolutely nobody touches them.
I also have a problem with changing the language. I study French here. I create translations from French to English, but sometimes (maybe 25% of my translations), just to make the translation a bit clearer I might also add a French definition beside an English one. And rarely (less than 3% of my translations), I also add a Turkish word beside an English translation if I donāt know the English translation word of the French word (but nevertheless, I almost always include an English translation). So which language should I choose for these kind of multi-language translations? If I choose a language other than English, I feel that I would be preventing lots of French learners here from seeing my English translations, and thatās a bad thing.
The text to speech is automatic so we canāt control how it reads unfortunately. That is a third party text to speech engine. You will just have to rely on the original audio recording for the lesson to get the pronunciation.
Is that even wrong? I thought that /oratio/ was the Classical Latin (i.e. Julius Caesarās time), with all cās pronounced like our k, all tās pronounced as hard t, all gās as hard g, all vās pronounced either as the vowel u or like our w, etc, and the /orazio/ was the Mediaeval / Church Latin pronunciation, after the language had undergone a series of sound shifts.
Thatās not to say that there is anything wrong with preferring to learn Latin with the Mediaeval pronunciation rather than Classical pronunciation, especially if you are Italian 
ā¦but the producers of the text-to-speech program have also made a valid choice.
Iām very sorry. There does seem to be an issue so these controls are not showing for most users right now. We will get these controls working shortly.
Thanks for the suggestions. I donāt think itās quite that simple though.
- Iām not sure this solves the problem. The Feed doesnāt show you newest lessons. It shows lessons most recently liked or completed by other members, in addition it includes Media posts from news sources and some Premium lessons. It does not include any lessons you have already taken. The Library, on the other hand, is a static list of all lessons available and really is only useful when you search it.
- Some people like the avatar and others donāt. You can, however, choose which of the 3 tabs, Avatar, Achievements or Statistics, you want to see. I would suggest that those not interested in the Avatar would still be interested in their Statistics and we feel these elements are important in order to help keep users motivated. If we hide these elsewhere, they will not get seen by a majority of users.
Having said that, we will continue to experiment with these elements to find out how to improve the information that is presented.
I can understand why you are adding multiple languages in your translations but, of course, this does limit the number of users who could benefit from them. In the cases you describe above, I would recommend that you choose English if the majority of the translation is in English with some text in your target language French. But, when adding Turkish, I would change the hint language to Turkish since anyone who would want to use this translation will likely be Turkish speaking.
Unfortunately, when many users see languages they donāt know in the translations, they see this as a bug in our system and assume those translations are not for them. I hope this helps!
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OK, well, could they be combined as suggested? I didnāt even know that about the feed (I thought I didā¦ which demonstrates a problem). Allow one to sort the library into a āfeedā by clicking a checkbox or pull-down menu item.
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I didnāt suggest hiding them. Iām suggesting that the avatar takes up too much real estate. Statistics are a separate issue. Highlight them. Iām just sharing with you, as a user, what I find annoying. Have you done User Experience Tests?
Again, great content and great concept. Messy interface.