That is very exciting. It’s what I’ve been waiting for! But it’s not showing up yet on my list of available courses. I’ve tried checking if the app needs updating, but it says it’s up to date.
What do I need to do to access this, please?
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Hi @Catriona - it should be there - Italian (Beta). I can see it even if I’m not logged in. Does it not look like this for you?
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Close your app by swiping up from the app switcher. This will make it refresh.
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@rich In the Italian Beta, the prompt “if soon I will learn more with you” (possibly “if I will soon, &c.”, not sure) is translated without the “if”, ie starting from presto = “soon”.
For the prompt “the Italian for ‘since’ is,” the female voice sample is borked - static/wind noise, no voice at all; the male voice says something like chi da, while the on-screen transcript just says da.
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We’re not far from a point (may already have reached!) where fine tuning the prompt choice architecture further will be a job for down the road next year - I’m not generally fond of things like ‘if soon I will’ but they are non-interruptive for the neurological process.
We should have a dozen or so new languages (including some English-for-x-speakers) published by the spring, and then it’s all going to be about whether or not we can reach the user numbers that will let us do a fresh build of the app (to catch a multitude of small/medium points that have accrued over time) and to build an interface for course production that will let us start to produce courses for languages that don’t have strong LLMs.
We can and will catch and kill individual examples like this, though, so diolch yn fawr iawn 
Yeah, wasn’t critiquing the prompt so much as hitting ‘Pause’ as soon as I noticed the missing ‘se’ and then finding myself unable to remember the precise phrasing of the English. Just trying to help with snagging 
Mond yn trio helpu efo’r snagio??
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And just had a few odd glitches starting with “the Italian word for ‘at’ is” - extra words in the generated audio, now for one speaker, now the other. Sorry not to be slightly more precise.
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Diolch! I’ve got it on my tablet now, but not in my phone which is what I usually use. No matter - I’ll figure it out!
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Reporting all these glitches is very helpful. What we find now is that a new course has something like 30-40,000 audio files in it, and so there are bound to be a few errors.
Alpha testing is all about making sure the course ‘basically plays ok’ but it’s not about fixing any audio issues.
Beta testing is all about identifying any glitches with the audio and/or issues where the logic appears to be awry.
Italian was created using V8 of our CourseProduction system and we’ve already moved on to V9 for the Chinese/Portuguese/German courses that are in Alpha testing at the moment.
It’s VERY much a work in progress, but we are confident that the error rate will not be interruptive to the learner.
So, knock yourselves out. Learn some Italian. You’ll be interactionally confident in no time…
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I’m looking forward to the Chinese in particular, and still enjoying gradual progress through Gwyddeleg dros Cymraeg.
There are quite a lot of errors of sequencing in the Gwyddeleg course, where a new word is introduced, and then a phrase is asked for involving another word or two that I haven’t heard before. I know it’s not just me forgetting what I’ve covered as often the already used vocabulary is presented as new a bit later on.
As I usually listen while out for a stroll, it’s quite hard to remember the errors in order to report them (especially as I prefer to just plough on and assume I’ll pick up the wrongly sequenced bits ok anyway, which seems to be working ok).
Would a “flag an error” button be at all possible for beta courses?
Separately, a different kind of error:
This morning I was told the Irish for “peth” was “rud”, and then asked to produce “mae e’n peth dda” in Irish (all of which was new, so I only knew “rud”), followed by the female voice offering just “rud”, followed by the app telling me it was having trouble generating audio and would retry in 10 seconds. It is still having this same trouble some time later, after a phone restart and trying to switch to another course in case that helped…
Thanks again for all the work that’s gone into all of this!
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This is the problem I had - I thought it was solved, but I was a bit confused by having covered some of the same ground through the medium of English.
I’ve clearly finally caught up with myself again in the Welsh version, and had the same thing happen again - a couple more prompts after ‘rud’, and then ‘thoisidh mé ag foghlam mí ó shin’ followed by “Error generating audio.” I did wonder if that just meant we’d run out of demo, but @rich said that wasn’t the case.
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Hi @RichardBuck and @mintonman
There is a huge amount going on in the background with an amazing pace of change. In this area there is a newer version of the Irish for Welsh speakers - which corrected (and has a checker, for) the type of issue Richard raised…
…and secondly - and more significantly in terms of the overall situation - a later version of the course production system which will produce it.
We are aiming to get the Irish course upgraded this week - which is also a new process - everything is new! We are checking all these things in the background - and fixing the odd bug as we go.
It is interesting to note that whilst the courses have been changed substantially, and our back end systems have been tweaked to correct particular issues, as it stands the App remains thee same version as the launch date on 3rd Oct.
The App has done good!
Having said that there are a small collection of things that have accumulated and will appear in a new release in about a week or so…
Rich 
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I keep coming on here being helpy about the snagging, and it’s true that there are occasional sequencing issues and sound glitches; but I don’t want that to make it look like I’m not hugely enthusiastic about all this sudden (from the user side) expansion. When I was first learning Welsh with SSiW I used to say that I wished every language I wanted to learn could be taught that way, and this is a real step closer.
I’m a false beginner with the Italian: I’ve learnt (and mostly forgotten) some phrasebook phrases, I’ve learnt (and mostly forgotten) some grammar in the past; I grew up on a musical diet of Verdi, and I can speak French & Catalan. That still leaves me very impressed with judicious skipping ahead having got me as far as Non so come dire quello che vorrei dire perchè non so ancora abbastanza parole (I don’t know how to say what I would like to say because I don’t know enough words yet) in the - what? - three days since it launched.
So that’s a huge congratulations & thank you to @aran, to @rich, to @thomas-cassidy, and to everyone involved in the development; and a hope that once things are out of beta the hard work will see the degree of deserved commercial success that will support all the exciting plans for the future.
(And in the meantime I’ll keep posting helpy bug reports.)
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I’d love to help out as an alpha tester for Chinese. (Mandarin).I’m at HSK 6 level in reading skills, and currently studying to be a Chinese - English translator. However ,my speaking and listening skills are much lower, so the course would really help with that. Looking forward to it so much!!
Regards Ingrid
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Heard and understood, sir!
Your help with this has been hugely, hugely valuable. We love you. 
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I’ve thought lots about ‘flag an error’ buttons, and every angle I think of comes up with complicated ways it might go wrong. Which is, er, frustrating 
But we do have another solution in mind, which I think will help enormously - we’re going to build a neat little algorithm to compare results for any particular phrase to that user’s average (and to global averages) and when things cause ‘huh what?’ we’ll see a spike - and that will let us flag issues automatically - it won’t be perfect, but it will be a big step forwards, I think
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Oh, you’re going to be a brilliant trial for the approach! Can’t wait to hear what you think of it
Italian through English: ‘the Italian for it is’ - female voice ‘lo’, male voice ‘creo’ (or similar, possibly ‘cree’).
Perhaps the wrong language crept in for a second?
Jaffa, kree! 
Thanks for the encouragement! Yes, the beta versions are definitely not perfect, but they do work. We are so very grateful for all your support and feedback. Keep doing what you’re doing!
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