TheLinguist Logo

We have decided to change our policy with regard to Beta languages, after much discussion. Here are the main points.

Even though Cantonese won on our recent poll at Facebook, we regret that we will not be able to add Cantonese. Our present text splitter only works for simplified characters. After much research on the web, and in Japan and Hong Kong, we have found that to enable Cantonese, we would have to buy a new splitter for traditional characters, with no guarantee that it will work properly with LingQ. It could require a fair amount of work for our programmer. We are not prepared to do this at this time. We have more important work that we want to do, improvement that will benefit the majority of LingQ users.

The language that came second to Cantonese on the last poll is Hebrew, and it will be added.

We have noticed that only a small number of learners actually study Beta languages, and the number is dwindling for each Beta language added. In future, we have decided to only add a Beta language if 1,000 votes are registered on our Facebook poll in favour of that language. We are resetting the Facebook poll to zero and encourage you to vote again for the language of your choice. As soon as we have 1,000 votes for a language, that language will be added.

On the positive side, we have some exciting developments in the plans that we are sure all of you will enjoy. We regret this change but have found that the Beta languages are a distraction from our main goal, which is to continue to improve the learner experience for the languages that most people are studying.

My family.

Hello,I am Evita.
My favorite animals are dogs and cats and birds. I love animals, but I don't love snakes. My family is good. I love my family. My mum's name is Dalia and my dad is Arturas and my sister is Emilija.My sister is one year. My dad is thirty-six.

Describe your family, your job and where you live.

Hello,

My name is Anne-Marie. Today, I am going to talk to you about my family, my job and the area I am living in. Let's first talk about my family. I have lived alone for the past twelve years. Actually, I am not totaly right by saying that, because I am living with my dog. Her name is Croquette. She is a pale Labrador and is about three and a half years old. My parents and brother are living close to Montreal city, which is in the province of Quebec, in Canada. My mother is a teacher. She owns a learning center and helps students who are experiencing academic difficulties. My father used to work as a human resources director, but he has been retired for a few years. On the flip side, my brother, who is not retired, is a landscaper.

Let's talk about my job. I have been a guidance counselor for about fifteen years now. I have worked at different places: a community organization helping young people to find out what kind of job they would like to do, a college and a high school. Unfortunately, I am now unemployed and have been for the past seven months. I am currently looking for a new job, and I hope I will find one soon.

I am living in a small city called Thetford Mines. There are about twenty-five thousands people living here. The city got its name, because it used to have a lot of mining industries here, which is not the case anymore. I have been living in this city for about two and a half years now. Before that, I was living in Chisasibi, which is located in James Bay, Quebec, where I worked with the natives.

Success means different things to different people. Why is it difficult to define? What constitutes real success to you? When we talk about success very often we think about money. Perhaps it happens because money pays a big role in our life. In other words, we can say if someone has money this person is successful.
For some people the word success means being famous, for others it means being great at some specifc career. Yet for other people the word success means all together: having money, being good at one's professional life, personal life, romantic life, health life and so on.
It is a very complex task to start looking for a definition of success, because in fact it can have many different meanings. Puting it in another way; some people can see themselves doing great at some time of their life, the same goes for their professional life for example. Where every one else could accept the fact those people had achieved great success in their life. Let us have a look at the life of a public person.The Oprah show, Oprah Winfrey is a very powerful, influential woman recognized over the world. She is greatly admired, She is convincing, persuasive, she learnt very well to get the public´s media love and appreciation with her speeches. This appreciation comes mostly from women. Oprah has built a huge fortune and has been a millionaire since her thirties. Having said that, most people consider her as a super successful woman. Most people do not even know about Oprah´s personal life. She has been being strongly criticised about her performance during the show and also about things concerning her personal life. Here we arrive at the point where we understand why success can have such a huge difference of meanings and interpretation for different people. Real success is a never endless process. It is a process of self knowledge,self awareness. You can not stop learning, the knowledge you have is never enough. Real success is also about creating value. It is all about creating opportunities.

How many words do I learn every day?

I don't know exactly because the depth of knowledge of each word varies. Actually, I have some difficulty with remembering people's names or place names, etc.
It takes time to learn new active words. Generally speaking, the more special terms we learn, the less we have the opportunity to say them in a daily life.
Plus it is very difficult for me to work out how many words I remember every day although I realize that "I got it" with Flash Card because each word has various meanings in different contexts.
When I find different usages of known words, I always realize that my previous decision might be only provisional.
In my experience, it is better to learn new phrases including unknown words than to learn each word separately, especially when we learn how to use basic words. Because native speakers say these phrases very fast without consider separating words too much.

The truth behind learning languages

It has been 12 years since I started learning English and only a few years since I realised that my journey towards mastery will never end. To never stop honing my skills and practicing what I have already learnt will always be my highest priority. These days I cannot imagine my life without using English, since it pervades all areas of my everyday life; every single day I read articles and blog posts in English it, I speak English to foreigners and I teach it to my students. I think in English and it has become part of who I am today. Or maybe rather a big part of me has started to think and live in English. Because I have learnt a foreign language, my life has changed irreversibly and now I simply cannot imagine living without this knowledge. Goethe said “You live a new life for every new language you speak” and although I have heard it over and over, I never fully realised how much meaning there was behind this maxim. Until now.

People do many different things to stay healthy. What do you do to maintain your health? Hi, my name is Laura, and I like to be healthy, that's why today I'd like to talk about it. To stay healthy I make my own breakfast every morning, with orange juice, some beverage and some carbohydrates, like cereal or cookies or bread. Then I am ready to do some exercise, with the bicycle [note, some crunches and walking. I know that I don't do very much, and I could do lot of more exercise, maybe next month, next year, in my next life!!

A Story

One cold and sunny morning Dan and Mark pushed their canoe into the river. Dan asked Mark where the map was, but Mark had not brought it, because he knew this river well.
Later they stopped to have a cup of coffee. Suddenly [note] they saw a kingfisher. Dan wanted to follow it. They got back into the canoe and started following the beautiful, colourful bird.
A short while later, when they decided to turn around, Dan and Mark saw a waterfall. They were quickly getting closer to the edge, but they couldn't stop.
Just then two fisherman threw a rope to them and pulled their canoe to safety. Dan and Mark were tired, but relieved. They thanked the fisherman . But the important thing was that they were safe.

New Year's Resolution

My New Year's Resolution is to make a firm commitment to the things that I want to achieve within this year.

I usually am a lazy person. I tend to leave things until the last minute if they are not work related. There have been many things that I wanted to achieve but didn't make sufficient effort. I didn't even care about not getting the result I wanted, even though I really hoped for it at one time.

This year, I have decided to focus on only a few things and consider them as my "tasks to be achieved".

Over the holidays, some LingQers seemed more active than ever! We were amazed to see the Honour Roll this month, and want to congratulate everyone who made it into the top 25!

Coming in first place is Jeremiah49, who showed his true language learning prowess with a spectacular Activity Score of 21,557. In a close second, and from all the way across the Atlantic, is pascal30 who also put up an amazing score of 20,102. Closing out the top three, from down under, is rae68.

This is the first time we have had two members over 20,000 Activity Score!

Imagine what would happen if you doubled (or tripled) your Activity Score from last month. Give it your all this month so that you, too, can make it on next month's Honour Roll!