Perhaps I’ll do similar to Lingq then, just have Chinese (Traditional) / Taiwanese be together and it’s own distinct language from Chinese (Simplified).
If someone was only interested in old Chinese (Traditional) texts, but not audiovisual Taiwanese, they could simply just not use the audiovisual portion.
Edit:
I’d be very hesitant to do this as I think it’d add a lot of complication. If I were to keep all written Cantonese / all the other chinese dialects distinct and separate, would that be an issue?
I’m not an expert on Chinese or anything so take this with a grain of salt but I’m pretty sure that if the written forms are completely identical it would be difficult to tell them apart in books? I think the easiest solution would be just add Mandarin in that case because it’s the most popular dialect and the relatively few learners of the other dialects probably already have some kind of family tie or something that means they don’t really need this kind of site as much.
I am also not an expert in Chinese, but what I’ve heard is that when other Chinese languages are written, it’s not necessarily identical to Mandarin/standard Chinese. E.g. Cantonese (which is typically written in traditional characters) has characters that aren’t used in Mandarin, some shared characters have different meanings, the grammar differences can show up in writing, etc. No idea to what extent that is the case with published literature as opposed to more informal writing, though.
It’s been a while now since the topic has been posted. I’m really curious if mandarin chinese will be added in the future though its tough discussions about the different dialects. It would be a great source to know about if it was on natively.
I believe @brandon’s said that he’d like to at least move Korean, German, and Spanish out of beta before adding more languages, which I understand to mean acquiring a larger core userbase for each language. German and Spanish in particular are still tiny; I think it’s mostly just an advertising and word-of-mouth kind of thing stopping them from really jumping up with users.
Oh, yes I see. It’s still a lot of work it seems. I didn’t read about finishing the beta version. But it makes really sense. I also didn’t want to put any pressure was just curious if there is something in sight in about the next years maybe.
brandon’s latest roadmap update is here; it sounds like for the time being he’s planning on slowly ramping things up again, so unfortunately there’s no immediate announced plan for new languages. New languages are a really popular request, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they pop back up in conversation sooner or later this year, even if only to talk about the planning stages!
Once we’re ramped up, I think the next language to be added would be English (it’s the top request I hear personally), after that finish off the major romance languages (French, Italian).
Chinese books are unfortunately a lot of work, not only due to dialect reasons but also amazon doesn’t have good coverage so couldn’t be our data source.
I will say though, there are a lot of people in our community interested in Mandarin / Chinese (it’s the top result) so it’s certainly very much in mind! If progress is good, next year is might be possible~
It really seems to be a lot of work and I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m the more greatful to hear that you are keeping mandarin Chinese in mind for later, than you brandon!
I think having native users logging books in their language (without grading, like is already in place) would add some value in terms of content discovery. The most popular books among learners are not necessarily the ones native speakers are most interested in, so it would be nice to have the variety and be able to see what native users are doing in the activity feed, too. (Maybe with some sort of flag though saying that the user is reading in their native language )
The biggest issue I could see with adding English is just supporting multiple languages coming into it and the amount of content. Would the site UI and user reviews and everything still be in English for English learners?
Right, the UI being in english is a sad thing for the users, but doesn’t really impact other users, like @seanblue was focusing on (and what I had been previously concerned about).
Native users activities could be a bit of a turn off too. At least, I kinda like having a ‘learner activitieves inspiring learners’ environment, but those sorts of native reviews/activities visibility could be toggleable in the future if people want it.
Regardless, I just get asked about it a lot, so probably would prioritize it if we’re adding languages
I think my biggest concern would be grading coming from native English speakers; there are going to be lots and lots of people who don’t bother to mark their native language and who also feel confident that they can accurately grade relative difficulty of books, even though they essentially skipped the whole learner experience and likely would have a far different idea of what constitutes difficulty than a typical learner, essentially muddying up the gradings for popular books.
well, this is a very fixable problem (if it happens), as we already have the notion of ‘native language’. A one time warning in the grading screen that forces you to confirm you aren’t an native speaker should do the trick
There’s also the case of people like me who’ve been “learning” English for 30+ years (and using it at work for nearly 20). I’m not planning to grade English books (since I don’t think I can anyway), but technically that rule doesn’t stop me from doing so.
Not that I know how to word the warning in a may that is general enough, though.
Right. I think a simple warning like this should do the trick: “Grading is for for language learners only. If you are a native speaker or someone who is fluent enough where you no longer identify as a language learner, please mark yourself as a native speaker in the language settings < link >”
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