It will be obvious that I am new to LingQ.
As a native speaker of English I am aware that many other native speakers of English do not necessarily speak the language with correct grammar and vocabulary.
If any member of LingQ can make lessons available to others; what guarantee is there that the language is correct?
WE make our lessons with the language that is existinh nowadays.
Of course, the language is constantly developing, some rules are becoming oldfashioned, some new traditions are asppearing.
Nobody knows what English, Russian, German< French etc languages we will have in 50 years.
But it isn’t so important.
The learners must learn languages which are really spoken now, even with some stylish or small grammar mistakes.
I often make my interviews with German and English native speakers. And sometimes I (non native speaker) see that my native speakers make some mistakes, but I mostly not correct such mistakes when they don’t change the sense of the phrase because it is the “living spoken language”.
Another example: Six months ago I made an interview with one person from Switzerland. It was a very interesting interview about the lifestyle in this country, but I couldn’t publish it to our library because my partner was unsatisfied with some his phrases. We tried 3 times to repeat this interview and every time he found that some words he spoke not very correctly (but he is a native speaker!). Finally I was tired with this fastidious man and refused this interview allthough it could be very interesting for all German learners.
We all are not perfect. But we live and we speak our languages and these languages must be given and taught; otherwise like in this example with a man from Switzerland we never could speak not only foreign languages, but also our native language!
I don’t think a few grammatical mistakes in a lesson is a serious thing. The main things are that the lessons are interesting and that there are a lot of them. I find artificial sanitised academic style learning material to be very boring usually and also harder to understand than the real stuff. It also usually comes in such small quantities that it is not very useful.
Hi Mary, there is no guarantee that the language is correct. Even native speakers make errors. If you want to judge a lesson you can check the profile of the provider or the source of the content to make up your mind. That is what I do when I choose material here from LingQ.
@Evgueny: While speaking it can happen that you start with a long, long sentence, and forget how you started when it comes to the end. But well educated people which are used to speak in their jobs rarely make many errors when they speak. It happens rarely to me for example. When I’ve transcribed the GermanLingQ podcast with Jolanda and me, and I came across this problem I try to eliminate it from the recording, or I add a note about it to the script. It is a difference between errors and “living spoken language”. Living spoken language is fine, but lessons are intented to help learner. Errors can’t do that.
Personally I think that lessons should have a high quality especially according to grammar, style and audio quality. Also I prefer native speakers because in general (beside not well-educated speakers) their language is better.
@ColinJohnstone: I think grammatical mistakes matter. I expect that lessons give me correct examples of how to speak. If they are interesting too, this is a bonus. But I don’t want to learn wrong language, and adopt wrong habits. I’m struggling enough with the languages and their rules, and don’t need further confusion 
But artificial academic style is definitely nothing I would appreciate too.
This is my personal opinion but I know many of my friends on LingQ share it. Quality is something which students could expect if they pay money for a service.
@ Vera
I guess it depends on how people study. I go through a lot of material and pay very little attention to grammar, or to the usage of words. A mistake in a sentence has almost no effect on me since I probably won’t notice it, and since I am unlikely to see such a mistake many times. On the other hand, a correct grammatical structure will be seen by me over and over and over since they are reproduced all the time.
“Quality is something which students could expect if they pay money for a service.”
We don’t pay that much money for the LingQ service, and as I understand it, we don’t pay at all for the lessons.
Native speakers of a language tend to all make the same mistakes. I think its good for a learner of a language to be able to recognize them.
I generally don’t consider it a mistake if a large number of native speakers do it regularly. I want to learn the real language, not what some linguist has decided the language should be.
Of course, all providors would like to make good lessons, the quality-lessons, the lessons without obvious mistakes.
But sometimes we can omit something, and we (at least me) are always ready to correct some mistakes if someone found them in our lessons.
It’s all good.
I like literary and antique language, as well as correct and incorrect modern language.
Does you really?
In view of evgueny40’s ‘helpful’ comment below, I’d better stress that this is a joke!
Maybe better: Do you really?
THat’s shows very well that some mistakes we can make automatically, of course, Sanny knows, that with ‘you’ we use ‘do’.
@evgueny: It seems to me that you do not quite understand British humour. It is a joke! Perhaps it might be better not to be so quick to correct others.
Oh, British humor is aso in the breake of the Grammar rules?..
It’s interesting.
This I really didn’t know…
Then thanks, Sanne!
Monty Python has some very funny skits premised on violating rules of grammar.
They make so many linguistic spoofs. The “Italian lesson” is quite good.
And if you need to learn a new phrase, here are some expert techniques to try.
THanks, Creimann! It’s interesting for me.
We have some similar in Russian, but they are very informal…