Living Language appears to be no more

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desafiar
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Living Language appears to be no more

Postby desafiar » Tue Aug 09, 2022 1:34 am

I received an email today stating that Living Language is now Preply. Sure enough when I try any of their URL's I'm redirected to preply.com.

Without investigating much further, I unsubscribed. I'm not surprised at their demise, given how incredibly horrible their online offering was, it had been nothing more than a dim shadow of what was once a good grammar based hold-in-hand package. RIP Living Language.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby kanewai » Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:13 am

Just looked at the new website. I hate it.

Living Language went from a solid choice for Indenpendent learners to “not so great but good for the price” to “kind of expensive for what you get” to “internet junk” - all in the short time since I’ve been studying languages.

Are there any more of those single paperback Teach Yourself / Colloquial Language / Living Language type courses left? They were flawed, but I liked them.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby sirgregory » Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:20 pm

kanewai wrote:Just looked at the new website. I hate it.

Living Language went from a solid choice for Indenpendent learners to “not so great but good for the price” to “kind of expensive for what you get” to “internet junk” - all in the short time since I’ve been studying languages.

Are there any more of those single paperback Teach Yourself / Colloquial Language / Living Language type courses left? They were flawed, but I liked them.


Last time I browsed the language section of Barnes & Noble (in the USA), the ONLY full course/package I saw available was LL complete edition. I never tried that generation personally (I know Speakeasy was not a fan) but in terms of format it was the typical book plus CDs and was very reasonably priced at around $30. On Amazon right now, LL complete is only available through third party sellers, so it does indeed appear to be discontinued. Teach Yourself Complete series is still available directly from Amazon and it's a traditional book + audio for around $35.

It's weird because you'd think there would be a significant market for an affordable beginner package. In the case of LL, I would be curious to how much money they sunk into developing the newer online stuff. Building out online apps and a tutoring platform and all that and doing it well is going to cost money, and unless they were really going to invest a lot it was almost inevitable they were going to end up with something half-baked.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby Cavesa » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:22 am

Sad, but not surprising and definitely deserved. They had transformed a very solid competition in quality to TY or Assimil into a stupid and highly diluted course, where "Advanced" is something like A2. The only arguements in favour of LL were from the learners of rarer languages, who appreciated having more beginner material.

But as far as the most popular languages go (and those matter a lot for such a business), LL became very bad at the competition. They used the previously built good name to sell trash. So, their end is actually an example of how the market should work.

Plus they also had the era of digital games accompanying the coursebooks, which were actually harmful for learning (I still remember the stupid exercises with putting a foreign word into an English sentence. Something I'd never expect a professional company to make), then they changed the games, removed the apps, etc. Not just low quality, but also high inconsistency in their approach, that's not the way to keep customers.

I think the old and good quality courses are still on torrents. Too bad the copyrights are far too long. Otherwise the old courses would be available for sharing freely and also updating by fans or other companies (like what is happening with two or three FSI courses).

kanewai wrote:Are there any more of those single paperback Teach Yourself / Colloquial Language / Living Language type courses left? They were flawed, but I liked them.


TY and Colloquial are still well alive and popular.

sirgregory wrote:It's weird because you'd think there would be a significant market for an affordable beginner package.

Yes, but it's about the value vs ratio quality. There is a significant market for an affordable good quality beginner package, that doesn't lie (like using the word "Advanced" to label something like A2). However, the market is well saturated. You either need high quality (which LL wasn't), or tons of marketing (and then you compete against marketing giants like Rosetta Stone, or Duolingo). LL didn't have either.

In the case of LL, I would be curious to how much money they sunk into developing the newer online stuff. Building out online apps and a tutoring platform and all that and doing it well is going to cost money, and unless they were really going to invest a lot it was almost inevitable they were going to end up with something half-baked.


The problem was also changing the online stuff several times. I don't think they ever went the high quality path that for example the publisher of my Italian coursebook (Nuovissimo Progetto) went. I don't think they ever made a good full version of the course with added functions. At the point I paid attention, they were creating very crappy app games that were actually harmful for learning. Later, it seems like they did yet another product from the main one, which was a sort of even more beginner (=even poorer) digital platform with no idea what functions (or lack of functions).
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby RyanSmallwood » Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:08 pm

I wonder what the chances would be of getting them to release their old courses into the public Domain like Cortina did. I guess if they've still got some kind of language learning product they're selling it would be tricky to get them to release a free alternative. Shame that there are so many good out of print materials that aren't being made accessible.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby iguanamon » Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:49 pm

The world has changed in every realm, publishing included. I think this is further evidence of that change. I grew up in a small town in the rural US South. Whenever I could get to the nearest big city, I'd go into the bookstore and look at the language selection available. There were many choices of learning material available. The covers and the hype would grab my attention. Now, bookstores are less and less available in this changing world of reading with e-readers and piracy of books.

The language-learning sector was always a small segment of the publishing market even before the advent of the internet and apps. The profit margin has always been small. Now, there is almost no reason to buy anything with what we have available for free. It seems as if the default entry into language-learning today is polyglot videos on youtube and duolinguo. Many of the free alternatives out there are old but surprisingly, still usable and effective. I'm thinking of FSI/DLI/Cortina/Nature Method. Why should I buy a new Living Language course when I have so many free or low cost alternatives available. With such a small profit margin and small market segment, why would a company develop high quality language-learning materials in the first place?!

If the market segment was small before, it is probably minuscule now. This means it is even more important for learners to learn how to learn on their own. They will need to know that there is no "one-stop shop" of a course, an app, or anything marketed as being such a thing.

Most of us here who have been here for a while know this already. Most of the people who are interested in learning a language on their own, do not and will not find us. Don't worry, what we have right now will probably still be useful for another century or so.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Aug 11, 2022 3:09 pm

iguanamon wrote:The world has changed in every realm, publishing included. I think this is further evidence of that change. I grew up in a small town in the rural US South. Whenever I could get to the nearest big city, I'd go into the bookstore and look at the language selection available. There were many choices of learning material available. The covers and the hype would grab my attention. Now, bookstores are less and less available in this changing world of reading with e-readers and piracy of books.

The language-learning sector was always a small segment of the publishing market even before the advent of the internet and apps. The profit margin has always been small. Now, there is almost no reason to buy anything with what we have available for free. It seems as if the default entry into language-learning today is polyglot videos on youtube and duolinguo. Many of the free alternatives out there are old but surprisingly, still usable and effective. I'm thinking of FSI/DLI/Cortina/Nature Method. Why should I buy a new Living Language course when I have so many free or low cost alternatives available. With such a small profit margin and small market segment, why would a company develop high quality language-learning materials in the first place?!
I think Living Language was trying to move to a more profitable area of language learning, subscriptions. It just didn't work out for them.
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desafiar
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby desafiar » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:31 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I think Living Language was trying to move to a more profitable area of language learning, subscriptions. It just didn't work out for them.

A Living Language subscription was my entry point to my Spanish study about a year ago.

It was very much atypical of me to make a purchase given the time investment I knew would be required to learn another language, but based on price and my perceived notion of LL's place in the market, I went forward. I doubt I visited them more than three or four times before I abandoned my investment and began to do the work of determining a more effective path forward.

Signing up for LL was easily the worst decision I made for my language journey. Taking the loss and moving on to other materials was the best.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby BeaP » Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:46 pm

I often have the impression that a lot of courses/methods have lost their integrity and became corrupted. Instead of doing what they think is efficient they do what pleases the crowd. Things are not controlled by the teacher anymore, but by the dumbest and worst students. I have different generations of Teach Yourself and Pons/Langenscheidt courses, and the difference is obvious. The well-built, systematic introductory courses have turned into a chaotic mess of snippets. I tend to choose CEFR coursebooks, because these at least have to please the teachers of the language schools, so they can't really afford to be totally trashy.
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Re: Living Language appears to be no more

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Aug 13, 2022 4:53 am

Looks like LL, which was a property of Random House, got sold(?) to Preply.

I have a few LL courses that I used over the years, I felt it was not the most effective material.
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