I have a bold suggestion to boost the already impressive number of languages on this website. In addition to the supported languages with a substantial amount of content and the beta languages with just the Mini-stories you could also offer a third category of “unsupported” languages.
This would be just an empty slot, with a connection to the appropriate dictionary, that people could populate with their own content
While I think it is generally pedagogicaly sound to offer some precreated content for new learners, I also think there is a big group of people, who would be happy just to be able to use Lingq with any language of their choice and to import their own material, rather than to hope for ministories to be created at some point in time and it is always better to offer the language slot with nothing, than not to offer the language at all.
I for example have exclusevly used content, that I have imported myself and then enjoyed the ways Lingq facilitates reading and tracks your progress.
I wonder what the Lingq-Community thinks about this idea.
Also, instead of using imported content privately it is better to make it public so that future customers/learners have a chance to dabble in a language to see if a particular language suits their preference.
Hi
Great idea, long overdue! … it would give a clear ‘place’ for users to gradually create/import/collate material etc, sharing content to encourage others - is this maybe what is envisaged for v5.0?
I have seen the ‘Contibute’ tab, and at the bottom of that tab it has the following … ???
Are you passionate about a language that we do not yet offer? Add a language and let the LingQ Community discover something new. Start by adding content to a language in its incubation stage and watch it evolve into a beta language and eventually into a fully supported language on LingQ.
I think as long as it isn’t advertised as a fully supported language, or even a beta language there is no harm. They even have an explanation on what a “supported language” is vs. a “beta language” already.
No false advertising
You could have another category that explains this “not even beta language”…i.e. it allows imports, maybe it needs to support some online dictionary at the very least…google or whatever. It won’t have lingq provided content, but will allow importing of articles and video, if there are subtitles.
Most of the languages beyond the beta ones here, you probably can’t find any content, app or application that even supports them, so to have a facility where you can at least allow for importing of articles for that language would be great.
The bread and butter of LingQ in my opinion isn’t the LingQ provided content, and or mini-stories anyway…it’s the ability to import YOUR own content. The pre-provided content is a great starter, but that’s all it is…a starter.
I would dearly love to have this done. I don’t use any of the LingQ-provided content. I simply use LingQ to read my own content smoothly with the dictionary function and harvest the vocabulary for myself.
I would be thrilled for LingQ to support more languages even without any Lessons or Mini Stories available.
Do people really come for the mini stories? Isnt the point of this whole approach here that you learn wth what ever content you are interested in. Also these new languages could slowly grow into supported languages with content.
Some languages that will (probably) never get miniStories but (perhaps) might interest some people:
Classical languages (Classical Greek, Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Old English…). In fact Latin was launched without ministories! (And I am really grateful for that)
Artificial languages (other than Esperanto): High Valyrian, Klingon, Elvish, Belter Speech etc (not my cup of tea, but there’s a niche there)
Endangered / minority languages (Australian Aboriginal languages, native american languages etc)
Regional languages and/or dialects (if you know French you might try Provençal, or if you know Italian you might want to see what Napoletan looks like, etc). People may not sign up for a course in Napoletan, but they already know Italian they could try it and if it is easy for them, they might actually enjoy it and decide to pursue this interest further.
Really any language that is not currently available
Pros:
Many of these languages have very few resources. Depending on how much work it is (I do not work at Lingq so I cannot really tell) this could provide an opportunity to venture into languages where no other option is available
While many of these might not be extremely popular, if the cost of providing these “language slots” is slow, it could gather several “niche communities” of people interested in these small languages and enlarge our community.
There must be some advertising / marketing advantage in this. That is why Duolingo includes Klingon, even though they know few people will come (or stay) for Klingon… it’s still cool to say you offer an option to develop your interest in such uncommon languages.
In many cases, it would be a good deed: it could actually help save some endangered languages
People can already use Esperanto’s slot to read Irish with the current system. But this does not fully exploit one of Lingq’s advantages: pooling the learners’ time by sharing translations for each word / sentence, so that somebody else may have looked it up before and written a good translation.
I am sure there are many more pros, these are just the ones I could come up with right now…
Cons:
Obviously, the cost (time, money, people, resources…). It may be low in relative terms, I have no idea, only Lingq’s staff would know.
Lingq may be concerned that it could generate false expectations and/or false advertising as readis_good points out, but I agree with Ericb100’s answer. If properly explained and kept as “beta” or “unsupported” languages, there would be no false advertising.
Plus, if a certain amount of people gathers around these new unsupported languages, it may gain momentum and eventually they could find volunteers to actually create ministories and upgrade them to fully supported languages.
I guess there is no chance of this happening anytime soon, since Lingq’s staff is busy with Ling 5.0. But one day perhaps?
"People can already use Esperanto’s slot to read Irish with the current system. "
For a while, I was literally doing just that. I chose Esperanto only because of its green flag. Unfortunately it was too much trouble without a dictionary so I’ve kept my Irish learning off LingQ. Hopefully someday soon it will be here!
