Very little content

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I really love the idea of LingQ. Since Steve Kaufman speaks Swedish I was pleased to find this as a resource and that there is material available.

That said, there is very little actual content.

  • much of the news feed is behind paywalls, imported articles are sporadic and the most recent is over a year old
  • about 20 courses that are all very basic language
  • when I click anything under “Browse Library” it says " There are currently no courses available"
  • I can only find 2 books - a children’s book and a biography

I tried it out using the reading system using one of the two available books Pippi Långstrump and really like how it works. That said, the time I could use it as a trial was so short I can’t determine if the work I have to put into it is worthwhile.

I installed the browser plugin and tried it on a few sites but it is very, very slow (gigabit internet here) and using it means constantly searching for content. I tried to find Swedish books I could import but after reading many posts about resources and repositories I only found very old novels that don’t use modern language or were really not my taste. I don’t mind reading some classics but I am looking for modern, colloquial language also. Is it possible to buy modern content and import it? I don’t want to pay for all that and it doesn’t even work.

I am not trying to criticize LingQ. I learn best by reading and I love how LingQ seems to work. But I can’t really give it enough of a trial to even determine if the custom import feature alone is worth it.

Am I missing something? Am I using it incorrectly? I realize Swedish probably isn’t the most in demand content.

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Hi, I know what you mean.

One source of news articles you could use (not high quality exactly but nevetheless useful):
https://www.aftonbladet.se/
I used to use the great newspaper dn.se, but as you said, they have built in a paywall now.
Outside of LingQ I can recommend Sweden’s tv network svt.se. They have lots of programmes with subtitles, importing those as lessons into LingQ doesn’t work, though.
In order to buy Swedish e-books online, many Sweden-based online shops want you to have a Swedish personnummer to even open up an account.
This one is open for everyone outside Sweden:
www.bokus.com
I found both the electronic and the audio version of “Flickan som lekte med elden” (part 2 of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy) there, so I can use the former to build up my vocab and the latter to 1) be entertained 2) improve my listening abilities.

Looking for content can be frustrating, but you could also see it as part of the fun of learning a new language :slight_smile:

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Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the sources.

My problem is I’ve had the “fun” of looking for content for almost 2 years. For Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German there is so much available. Swedish - not so much. I am in Sweden now (got stuck due to many of the travel restrictions so I’m here indefinitely. FWIW I can’t imagine a better place to be during crisis)

As you suggest, I do watch SVT with subtitles and read 8sidor every day.

I have found physical books when I come here. I do make my way through them. When I found Lingq I was excited to see their import/reading model. It removes the constant writing down unknown words and looking them up. The ability to flag unknown words and then use those marked as flashcards is brilliant. In the tiny amount of time the trial works I think this would work really well.

I guess I’m not missing anything in what Swedish content is available on LingQ. IMO it would be best if they didn’t claim to support it. I have more resources saved on Google drive than everything I can find here - and it is just as random content and chaotically managed Would have saved me the time learning it and figuring out something that is more work than value for Swedish. I really wanted to use (and pay) for LingQ.

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I’d highly recommend that you spend the $10 for at least one month of the site, so that you can play with how it really works with book imports etc. I’m not surprised to hear that there is little Swedish content that’s available, but the thing is, having learned 4 languages on here, I can tell you that it’s really books that I imported that made the difference and not the content that was already here.

If you haven’t yet imported a book and started working through it, then you haven’t really experienced what this side does best.

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Thanks. Any tips for finding, importing books? What formats worked best?

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I’m not sure what e-book services you have available in Sweden, but this is something that you’ll have to play around with. You need to find a source, then figure out how to remove DRM from their particular books. You will want to use Calibre software to remove DRM and turn it into .txt files and copy and paste it into the LingQ import lesson window.

This will take some research and trial and error, but it’s worth it.

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Hi t_harangi, the link I posted (bokus.com) sells e-books in epub format without any DRM issues :slight_smile:
Forgot to mention that, thanks!

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The site is what you make of it imo. I’m using it to learn German (and relearn/add to my Spanish). Even though both of these languages have a good deal of content, I’ve used mostly outside content that I’ve imported into Lingq…Assimil, Nachrichtenleicht.de (easy german news), Dino Lernt Deutsch books/audio, and many others. Most of this has not been a simple import…Assimil I had to grab the subtitles and audio and load it myself into Lingq, Nachrichtenleicht has the import extension ease, but still I had to grab the audio, Dino Lernt Deutsch I get on Amazon so I have to copy and paste each chapter (listen to audio outside of lingq). I’ve also used an OCR program to import text from other books. I’ve imported other articles, audio, etc.

ANY program or learning application is going to maybe have some basic stuff…but it’s NEVER going to be enough. You need to eventually find interesting content. No program I know of has truly interesting content. That’s the beauty of LingQ…you bring your interesting content here. Or if you are lucky enough to be learning a popular language maybe some others have uploaded articles or content that they’ve produced (I have found some interesting content for German that others have produced on here…but it’s not usually of topics that I’m interested in in general).

You haven’t said what level you are. Presumably if Swedish is a supported language there are the mini-stories to read. Those should get you through a Beginner level. Have you gone through these?:

Login - LingQ

I went to browse library and I see tons of content…Do you have the filter on? Or maybe it’s because you are just on free trial? Here’s one with 4000+ new words (from a start from scratch like me):

Login - LingQ

Or are you expecting a “course” (as in follow a certain progression path)?

Here’s easy swedish news (this is the site where I think the course I linked to is getting articles from).

https://8sidor.se/

Here’s the Harry Potter books in Swedish (download the epub…you can import that into LingQ without constraint as there is no DRM)

Pottermore Shop - Pottermore Publishing

Here are the audio books in Swedish (I wouldn’t bother to import these INTO Lingq…just listen outside):

Pottermore Shop - Pottermore Publishing

That’s just what I could come up with in 15 min. You mention you have some resources downloaded on your computer already? Why not try to import them into Lingq? Or do they have DRM? You might still be able to finagle with copy and paste and/or OCR. There are also services that will take a PHYSICAL book and scan the whole thing to a file. You could then import it. I’ve not tried this but someone mentioned it. I think in some cases they essentially have to destroy the book to do it so I probably wouldn’t do such a thing except for novels, but that’s another approach.

As t_harangi points out, to really get an idea of what LingQ can do for you it’s best to buy a month. If you like it continue on, if you don’t then cancel. I’d also watch some of the LingQ videos on youtube or from this site to see how to use it best. I’d also listen to Steve Kaufman’s videos on the subject of reading/listening to further ones language abilities. I think most people feel like they need to be guided by some structured course, but my language ability exploded at a much better pace when I found LingQ and just started reading/listening.

My two cents.

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I’m learning Norwegian right now which probably has a similar amount of content to Swedish or even less. I originally thought I would have trouble finding content but I’ve been able to find more tv shows that interest me in Norwegian than when I was learning Spanish. I have been using NRK TV which has a lot of good shows and documentaries with subtitles. I think SVT Play is basically the same thing in Sweden.

You can use a free command line tool called youtube-dl to easily download subtitles and audio for whole seasons of tv shows at once. Here’s all the sites it works with.
https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html
It should work with SVT and probably some other Swedish websites.

I haven’t started reading books yet in Norwegian. I doubt I’ll be able to find free ebooks but It’s worth it to buy them in my opinion. Reading novels is where you really start to make serious progress. As long as you don’t get them in the Apple ebook format you should be able to use them with LingQ.

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I think you’re missing the point of LingQ. You don’t use it for the existing content…although it’s great that it does have content. LingQ is a tool to aid in the process of learning a language through reading and listening. It aids in reading material that would otherwise require you flipping through a dictionary either online or manually. Ingrained into the tool are numerous online dictionaries or the “popular translations” that have already been provided. Reading in sentence mode provides a one click sentence translation. Yes, you can do this with the google translate browser extension (which is also invaluable imo). The great thing about LingQ though is that you are able to keep track of your progress and everything is integrated.

I’m not sure if it was mentioned here but you can also import content from youtube…for me this is somewhat iffy if it’s only the autogenerated subtitles as there is no sentence demarcations, but maybe you can find some content with provided subtitles. Also you can import content from Netflix if it has Swedish subtitles.

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I agree with Eric. The problem is that it’s very hard to make content that will appeal to everyone. Actually I think it’s impossible. Maybe I’m the wrong person to comment, since I don’t really use any of the content in LingQ already (except for Persian, because I’m not good enough reading the script to find anything useful). The beauty of LingQ is that you can find content you are interested in. There are several Swedish ebook stores, not sure if they use DRM, but you can remove it with calibre plugin and then just start reading whatever you want.

No one can give you the list of content that you will like, because we don’t know what you like. Obviously some suggestions can be made, but if you don’t like them, there’s not much we can do.

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