I have been studying the syllabics(letters/charachters) of Inuktitut and Cree. They are very similar but also have differences. I have extreme respect for these languages and I would love to do my part to help preserve the languages, and to just help learn culture/life. Please even if you could leave an empty canvas for the community to build, I know you lack material to do it propperly, but the entire language is lacking material in general. Please If we could create the Lingq section for one or both of them them, i can find the resources for myself and make them public, and the userbase will aswell will build it.
While your at it you should go wild make empty canvases for a whole lot of other indigenous languages from across the world
Why? It cant be that hard just to make an empty section for the language? Even if theres no lingq made lessong, its ok, the community of these languages lack resources in general. The language NEEDS people to build resources themselves. Its difficult for them to teach their own children because there is soo few resources. The languages could really use this big time. Seriously just leave the languages blank, and users will build it
The thing is. If we wait, then its too late. It just needs the empty canvas NOW, there is no time to wait for the native speakers and resources to fall at your feet. Because it never will fall at your feet. And it will be to late, the languages will be just a shadow of the past and are no longer naturally spoken. Right now there still exists Cree and Inuktitut speakers
We would love to add some indigenous languages as you suggest but it isn’t as easy as adding some kind of blank slot. Our commitment is to try to add languages for which Mini Stories and our other requirements have been fulfilled. This should be possible for those languages as well and the requirements are not that onerous. It will take effort from volunteers like yourself though. There may be organizations out there already working on these languages, I’m sure there is government money spent there. If you can enlist their help in fulfilling our content requirements, that may be your best bet.
Our commitment is to try to add languages for which Mini Stories and our other requirements have been fulfilled.
That is exactly the point. What is the purpose of Mini Stories in these particular cases? If you are interested in non-mainstream languages, you probably already have enough experience with language learning to be able to search for content on your own. Mini stories are not necessary for this.
We require the Mini Stories. If there is enough will, they can be created quite easily. We will not put up blank slots for any language since we need a variety of things in place including content to set up languages. Not to mention that despite the best of intentions, those slots will likely remain empty of content and unused. That is why we have the requirements that we do. If the community can organize and fulfil our requirements for a language, we commit to then doing our part to make it work in our system. This approach is the same for all languages is not likely to change.
I very much doubt that LingQ would make any noticeable contribution to halting the decline of minority languages. It requres determination and effort on the part of people in the areas where they are spoken, and political will. Hebrew was resurrected as a spoken language because a community wanted to speak it. Breton is dying because the French state has suppressed minority languages.
If the users aren’t even capable of creating the mini-stories, why would you think the users could build a useful library for that language? With polysynthetic languages like Inuktitut, there would also have to be a really good AI program or online dictionary for it that could translate all these sentence-like words, especially for “extrernal” lessons that had no sound, for LingQ to really add any value to the materials provided.
If you really are passionate about adding certain languages to LingQ, consider just paying some natives to create the mini-stories out of your own pocket or finding a way to crowd-fund this or get a government grant. Eventually, I had to spend a tremendous amount of time and quite a bit of my own money to get my native Icelandic into LingQ. It looks like I will be doing the same for Faroese as well.