Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

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Cavesa
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jan 01, 2017 9:13 pm

Serpent wrote:I tried out bliu bliu and liked it, but I hated how they were sending emails like "Why have you stopped learning Spanish?" which is patronizing and very ironic given that their Spanish materials were too basic for me.


:-D Yes, I hate those too, and there are many apps or websites doing this.
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About readlang. For now, I am using it more for the dictionary function than for the flashcards. I opened the flashcards once so far. But I am learning with it just like I usually do with books:a lot of extensive reading. But now, it is simply more comfortable to look up a few words here and there, which is good at the advanced level. Gonna try it with the flashcards function for German.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jan 01, 2017 9:39 pm

Stefan wrote:The creator of Readlang, Steve Ridout, has an interesting post about the development between 2012-2014. Sadly it seems to be difficult to make a living within language learning ($1045 in 16 months) and now he's working for Duolingo. Not much valuable info for your language learning but as a developer, I found it interesting to see how it slowly grew into the current version.

Trying to email Steve from Readlang was a deadend, but you have explained why: Steve moved on.
Steve's blog clarified for me why he charges for translating phrases. For some languages you could get by translating very few phrases and could avoid the monthly fee.
Of course, Steve would still have to eat, I suppose. Having played this game for a bit in my career, for me developing + coding + marketing all together just by me myself alone took up more time than I had available.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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Seneca
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby Seneca » Sat Jan 07, 2017 2:51 pm

What happens to Readlang now? It still has functionality. Does it just exist until the current domain rental fee runs out and then disappears? It would be a shame if there was not a way to leverage the time spent in some way going forward.
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Stefan
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby Stefan » Sat Jan 07, 2017 2:58 pm

Seneca wrote:What happens to Readlang now? It still has functionality. Does it just exist until the current domain rental fee runs out and then disappears? It would be a shame if there was not a way to leverage the time spent in some way going forward.

No, it's not shutting down. SteveRidout got a post about it (2016):

I was in no mood to abandon Readlang, not least because January was shaping up to be its best month yet (it ended at $3200 revenue). But being a huge fan of Duolingo I had to learn more. A couple of chats with founders Luis and Severin, a programming challenge, and a bunch of emails later… and I’m due to start work in a couple of weeks.

Don’t worry — Readlang isn’t going anywhere. I designed it to be easy to maintain so there’s absolutely no reason to shut it down. I’ll fix bugs, ensure smooth running of the service and may think about ways to reinvest some of the revenue to improve it. But I’m not good at focussing on many things at once, so for my own sanity I’m considering it feature complete while I get started at my new job.

If anyone paid a subscription to encourage future development and feels cheated by this, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to refund you.
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Seneca
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby Seneca » Sat Jan 07, 2017 3:11 pm

Stefan wrote:
Seneca wrote:What happens to Readlang now? It still has functionality. Does it just exist until the current domain rental fee runs out and then disappears? It would be a shame if there was not a way to leverage the time spent in some way going forward.

No, it's not shutting down. SteveRidout got a post about it (2016):

I was in no mood to abandon Readlang, not least because January was shaping up to be its best month yet (it ended at $3200 revenue). But being a huge fan of Duolingo I had to learn more. A couple of chats with founders Luis and Severin, a programming challenge, and a bunch of emails later… and I’m due to start work in a couple of weeks.

Don’t worry — Readlang isn’t going anywhere. I designed it to be easy to maintain so there’s absolutely no reason to shut it down. I’ll fix bugs, ensure smooth running of the service and may think about ways to reinvest some of the revenue to improve it. But I’m not good at focussing on many things at once, so for my own sanity I’m considering it feature complete while I get started at my new job.

If anyone paid a subscription to encourage future development and feels cheated by this, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to refund you.

Nice. I have a subscription that runs through August. I just canceled the auto-renew, but am happy to not ask for a partial refund. We should encourage the development of such things!
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ddich
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby ddich » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:58 am

This might be a bit pointless or irrelevant and too long, but I'll just add my own experience with LingQ.

I first found it years ago when I was looking for ways to learn languages, and thought it was brilliant. Small conversations with audio and all the parts that I liked about it were free. What more could I want. I did pay for it for few months mainly just to support the project, but in the end I just didn't think it was worth it. It's not a lot of money, but I would've expected a bit more LingQ created lessons and a bit more structure in their system.

I also found it extremely difficult to find lessons. Years ago it was like a huge database of lessons and they were all in a completely random order, and a lot of them didn't have a description of the lesson in English. How on earth was anybody supposed to find where to start? If I want to start learning Chinese, and the description (that is 3 sentences long) of Lesson 1a, level 1 is in Chinese, I'm not going to understand it. Then when I did find a lesson, it had a horrible audio quality and/or didn't even have an English translation of the text.

I just went back there a few days ago because I might (or might not) start learning Norwegian next and I remembered they had some Norwegian lessons. I opened one of the beginner lessons (was easier to find this time), pressed play, the audio kept going after the text stopped on the page, I clicked that green arrow guessing that was to turn the page and...*poof* I, apparently, knew 86 Norwegian words now. Why they would do that I do not know.

I also checked their Japanese lessons because I might (or might not) start learning Japanese next and that, at least at the beginning, didn't seem too bad, but I do wish they had proper translations of the lessons. Having to translate sentences one word at a time seems like such a waste of time to me, when they could've just spent 3 minutes writing them down.

All in all, if they had more LingQ created lessons, more frequent updates from LingQ and not just users, proper translations, better structure so it would be easy to know where to start and where to go next I might subscribe to it. Currently I just don't think it's worth it. Also, I think the website is a mess, always has been.

And as a side note as well, I once found myself in the middle of an argument with Steve Kaufmann on their forums. And why? Obviously you're just hearing my side of it, but basically I said I like spaghetti and was then promptly told I was wrong. Of course the subject was language learning and not spaghetti, but I could not believe it. They had a discussion going about Benny's claim to become fluent in 3 months. I thought they were being a bit harsh towards him, so I, very gently, defended him (not because I'm a Benny fan, but because they were being harsh...like Manchester Utd. fan vs. Liverpool fan kinda harsh). This then started it all and apparently I was wrong to have different opinions to theirs. Well job well done, they did get rid of me from their forums.
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Vedun
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby Vedun » Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:33 pm

Does anyone else have issues with Lingua.ly's mobile app?
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jsega
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby jsega » Fri Feb 10, 2017 1:38 am

Vedun wrote:Does anyone else have issues with Lingua.ly's mobile app?


From their Facebook page( https://www.facebook.com/Lingua.ly/ ):

''Lingua.ly
October 31, 2016 ·
Dear Lingua.ly community,
We recently decided to make a big shift in our company’s direction. As a result, we will no longer be able to maintain our current line of products. This was not an easy decision, but as a small team we don’t have the resources to maintain products outside the company’s focus.
We would like to thank all of our users for your support and loyalty over the years!
All the best & keep on learning,
Team Lingua.ly''
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smallwhite
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby smallwhite » Fri Feb 10, 2017 2:17 am

ddich wrote:I opened one of the beginner lessons (was easier to find this time), pressed play, the audio kept going after the text stopped on the page, I clicked that green arrow guessing that was to turn the page and...*poof* I, apparently, knew 86 Norwegian words now. Why they would do that I do not know.

See if this helps.
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Dialang or it didn't happen.

ddich
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Re: Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

Postby ddich » Fri Feb 10, 2017 4:01 pm

smallwhite wrote:
ddich wrote:I opened one of the beginner lessons (was easier to find this time), pressed play, the audio kept going after the text stopped on the page, I clicked that green arrow guessing that was to turn the page and...*poof* I, apparently, knew 86 Norwegian words now. Why they would do that I do not know.

See if this helps.


Works. Thanks!
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