kikenyoy Posted August 15, 2013 Share Posted August 15, 2013 LingQ is a free site (also with various paid memberships) that currently supports about 10 languages including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, but not Thai. For those who aren't familiar with it, here's a short demo: The first step to getting Thai added is for it to get 1000 votes on this poll and then it will be added as a beta language: https://www.facebook.com/questions/10150249705278786/ I don't know the owner or have any financial interest in the site. I just think it is a great tool for learning other foreign languages and I want to see Thai added. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosmono Posted August 15, 2013 Share Posted August 15, 2013 Great idea! I added my vote... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kikenyoy Posted August 15, 2013 Author Share Posted August 15, 2013 (edited) Thanks for voting. I've made posts in a few other forums and contacted a few people about it. Brett from Learn Thai From a White Guy has pledged his support: he put a link on his facebook page and said we can use all of his videos/transcripts if we can get it going. We were at 41 votes when I learned about it a few hours ago and we're up to 54 already. 1000 here we come! Edited August 15, 2013 by kikenyoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sustento Posted August 15, 2013 Share Posted August 15, 2013 I voted too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leosmith Posted August 16, 2013 Share Posted August 16, 2013 I voted too. This is a great tool; I'm currently using it to learn 4 other languages. I'd love to get Thai there. I copied and pasted your first post to the packman forum http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?44026-Trying-to-get-Thai-added-to-LingQ per our discussion, but haven't been able to get them to turn on the links yet. I pm'd their admin, but if anybody here is familiar with that forum, your help is appreciated. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted August 17, 2013 Share Posted August 17, 2013 I voted as well! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted August 26, 2013 Share Posted August 26, 2013 It's now to 122 votes. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leosmith Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Wow - Thai is about to move into first place, with over 300 votes. I think it was in 16th or so when we started this push. We need to reach 1000. If you haven't voted, please do so now. Thanks for your help 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post desi Posted August 30, 2013 Popular Post Share Posted August 30, 2013 There's 530 views on this post and only 373 votes overall. If you haven't voted, then please don't complain about a lack of decent resources for learning Thai as compared to other languages. Don't have a FB account? I'm sure you know someone who does. Note: I don't have a financial interest either. Plus, LingQ isn't the end of the line for this type of resource (more on that later). But I am interested in seeing how many will get off their duffs and vote Thai. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 Please help me understand about LingQ and how it would work for Thai. The introduction says that that the system does not want the learner to speak, just to acquire lots and lots of vocabulary. For Thai, which is not Roman-letter based, how does the learner acquire "words" without being able pronouncing them? I can see how this words for Spanish English or German. How does it work for Thai, Chinese, or Lao? Thanks for your thoughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 David, there's a whole lot of information online about how to use LingQ with languages such and Chinese (similar concept to Thai). Start at Steve's YouTube channel here: Learn Chinese online with LingQ: #1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 (edited) David, there's a whole lot of information online about how to use LingQ with languages such and Chinese (similar concept to Thai). Start at Steve's YouTube channel here: Learn Chinese online with LingQ: #1 Thank you, Desi. Edited August 30, 2013 by DavidHouston Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kikenyoy Posted August 30, 2013 Author Share Posted August 30, 2013 Please help me understand about LingQ and how it would work for Thai. The introduction says that that the system does not want the learner to speak, just to acquire lots and lots of vocabulary. For Thai, which is not Roman-letter based, how does the learner acquire "words" without being able pronouncing them? I can see how this words for Spanish English or German. How does it work for Thai, Chinese, or Lao? Thanks for your thoughts. The owner of the site, Steve Kaufman, believes that the way to learn languages is through massive input. Lots of reading and listening, and a small amount of grammar and vocabulary study. The great thing about LingQ is that you don't have to use it that way if you disagree with his methods. For me, I find that spending more time on each lesson, trying to learn the vocabulary and understand the grammar works better. Each lesson has audio so users will learn to pronounce the words through reading and listening to the lessons and then talking with a native speaker. Steve has said that LingQ might not be suitable for an absolute beginner and recommends going through a beginner program like Teach Yourself first to learn the alphabet and basic grammar. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldChinaHam Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 (edited) This is a very useful learning tool I think. Of course I voted for Thai. Thanks for the post here, I had never heard of LingQ. I will try it with Chinese as a test, and then wait for Thai. This tool takes the best approach, which is to recognize the fact that vocabulary building should always be the learner's highest priority. There is nothing magic about this, but some "teachers" still do not recognize the relative importance of vocabulary, and then foolishly waste time trying to get students to speak even though they do not have enough vocabulary to say anything. The priority should be on listening, listening, and vocab, vocab, vocab. More teachers really should understand this. So stop with the magic, the classroom "games", and follow more proven science based strategies, the science of linguistics, to assist with second language acquisition. Edited August 30, 2013 by OldChinaHam 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 Thang you, Kikenyoy. That was a very cogent and helpful explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bunnydrops Posted August 31, 2013 Share Posted August 31, 2013 Is there a link to vote on their site. I couldn't find it.. I went there to vote since I really don't want to sign up with Facebook Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted August 31, 2013 Share Posted August 31, 2013 The voting is done via Facebook (I couldn't find anywhere else to register a vote). A pain, I know. I refuse to join anything to vote or leave comments on a site, but I already belong to FB so no problem. The only alternative I can think of is to ask someone to vote for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHouston Posted August 31, 2013 Share Posted August 31, 2013 I already added my name too. I think this is a great innovation and I certainly hope that the Thai language becomes activated. If it were to be, who would add the language information? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kriswillems Posted August 31, 2013 Share Posted August 31, 2013 ok, done. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kikenyoy Posted August 31, 2013 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 31, 2013 I already added my name too. I think this is a great innovation and I certainly hope that the Thai language becomes activated. If it were to be, who would add the language information? Most of the content is created by users. Brett from http://learnthaifromawhiteguy.com/ and Andrej from http://thairecordings.com/ have agreed to let their material be used so we will have over 150 lessons with 10+ hours of audio to get it started. Other possibilities are VOA, Tweet Yourself Thai, and the dual language articles from the Bangkok Post. As part of their paid service, they have tutors to correct writing or do conversations and many of the tutors create content for the site also. Hopefully some of the Thai Skype tutors will be interested in contributing. Material that is public domain or used with permission can be added to the site's library but there's also an option to import lessons for private use only so it can also be used with copyrighted materials. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted September 1, 2013 Share Posted September 1, 2013 399 - waiting for the turnover vote is messing with my head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMavec Posted September 3, 2013 Share Posted September 3, 2013 Added my vote, now 410. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kikenyoy Posted September 8, 2013 Author Share Posted September 8, 2013 We're still slowly trudging along. Up to 472 now. If you haven't yet, please vote and tell your friends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted September 11, 2013 Share Posted September 11, 2013 Thai has now reached 487 votes. Not too shabby but many more votes are needed! While we are waiting on LingQ to add Thai, we are also working on a Thai parser to use with FLTR (similar to LingQ, but free). Volunteers are needed. You don't have to be a programmer. You only need to find Thai, run it through the parser, and then send the results to Rick. More about what's needed can be found here: Thai Text Reader - Parsing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post leosmith Posted September 15, 2013 Popular Post Share Posted September 15, 2013 We are finally over 500! Keep voting - lets finish this off! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted September 19, 2013 Share Posted September 19, 2013 Thai now has 514 votes - going slow and still needs your help! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted September 29, 2013 Share Posted September 29, 2013 Thai is at 541 ... it's slow going but still moving up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bifftastic Posted September 29, 2013 Share Posted September 29, 2013 542 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desi Posted October 1, 2013 Share Posted October 1, 2013 543 :-D If lurkers would vote we'd knock Thai out of the ballpark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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