I studied Swahili at the Uni for some time and as I wanted to continue learning this beautiful language i thought about learning it on LingQ. I basically imported one of my swahili books into Latin course, set ‘private’, so I could benefit from all the advantages of this side, such as keeping track of my vocab etc. Sure, everything is reagrded as a Latin vocab, but it doesn’t matter to me and I hope it doesn’t affect other peoples Latin courses or dictionaries as well. I highly doubt that anyone here learns Swahili or chooses to learn some other language using Latin, but you never know. I hope my method is 100% harmless and to student’s benefit only, but it’s important for me to know if you, LingQ Staff, don’t mind me doing it. There’s a chance that it’s a violation of some rules and in that case I’d just delete this ‘Swahili-Latin’ course of mine.
However, if you don’t mind it, I think it could be very beneficial for people like me, learning less popular languages (at least among the students), to introduce some kind of ‘Set your own course’ possibility, completly ‘clear’, private course, which one could set up as he pleases. What I try to do now with my Swahili is sometimes frustrating, as formally I’m learning Latin and not Swahili and therefore Google Translator translates everything from Latin, translator’s pop-up window displays Latin translation as well and I have to manually set it to Swahili-English very time i check up a new word.
It’d be just great to have this possibility to make some adjustments on one’s own, perhaps it’d even take LingQ into another level and would make at least my life a lot easier time is money, and even such things like changing dictionary settings make entire learning process less effective.
Thanks for your attention and have a nice day!
Sławek
I completely agree with this, I thought about doing the same with Bulgarian (setting Lingq with Russian for example). I don’t really see why it’s so complicated to add new languages, since Lingq could only give the possibility without providing any content, it would be better than nothing…
Hi Slawek,
No problem, you can use an existing slot to study an unsupported language to help track your vocabulary and learning progress.
Let me know if you have any additional questions.
That sounds like a really good idea. I’d like to continue my Indonesian in LingQ.
The ability to set appropriate dictionary settings would be pretty necessary, both setting the existing selections like Google Translate to your language, but also adding in links to optimized dictionaries. It’d take a degree of work, and presumably some space on their server for the community translations.
I have no problem at all with the idea of having the option for languages that have no pre-defined content; the stuff I import is more interesting anyway… It’d certainly be better than nothing.
Would it be difficult on the LingQ end to set up “naked” language areas like this?
In the meantime, Slawek, you can always keep Google Translate open in a separate tab (translate.google.com), so that you don’t have to use pop-ups nor manually re-set each time. You can copy and paste back and forth, depending on device used.
Oh, and turn your pop-ups off in the dictionary setting if you like.
'Would it be difficult on the LingQ end to set up “naked” language areas like this?"
I’ve suggested this several times as well (as I’m sure others have too), but to no avail. It would seem somewhat trivial to allow an “Empty” slot and allow users to set the Language variable to be used in Google Translate queries (and other dictionaries that offer multiple languages: Glosbe, wordreference, etc.).
If they put a disclaimer: we don’t support unsupported languages, but allowed a minimum of functionality for generic dictionaries, LingQ could be a wonderful tool for learning all sorts of languages.
And it occurs to me that people importing their own content into these “naked” languages would be gradually helping work toward the minimum content requirements that LingQ currently requires for a new language ( New Languages on LingQ ).
Certainly most of the things people upload for their own use will be copyrighted, but if the language slot is available and in use, then eventually somebody is going to upload whatever free-for-use materials are available for that language. At some point crossing the line that makes it no longer one of the “naked” languages.
Preparing the full 12 hours of content required all at once is nearly impossible, but spread it out among multiple users and it sounds easy.
“Preparing the full 12 hours of content required all at once is nearly impossible, but spread it out among multiple users and it sounds easy.”
A few of us managed to do it for Greek: we pulled together a bunch of material and finally got enough attention to have it added as a beta language. You can search the forums to see how it was done.
LingQ clearly says “Beta languages will no longer be added, but you can access the existing beta languages here”
The problem is that people always complain when things don’t work in the way they want them to. Not bothering with languages that don’t work well quite simply means less complaints.
The scenario described above doesn’t really fit into the category of a “Beta language”. Pres is pointing out that the required material to become a supported language on LingQ could be (partially) furnished by people using the hypothetical “Empty” slot, if it were created.
I have my doubts about the feasibility of acquiring material in such a way, but we’re not talking about setting up another Beta language.
time is money, and even such things like changing dictionary settings make entire learning process less effective.