Some of the English prompts are definitely weird. but it does make it easier. So once we are aware that the reason is that they’re mirroring the German structure, why not keeping them? 
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It’ll be a question of whether the English mirroring actually helps you think in a more German-word-order way, or whether it’s a shortcut which will make it more difficult for you to speak in German when you don’t have your prompts… (either way don’t worry - if we think it’s the latter we’ll change it and you’ll adapt to it quickly even if you’ve become used to the funky English)
The main aim of the mirroring was to make the phrases more similar to each other so that the chunks come out more useful and therefore phrases are better quality… Word order doesn’t really matter for that!
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Not all sentences mirror the German, so there’s already chances to practise both.
As a general reflection, I have to say that in my experience, one of the main advantages of the SSiW is that I soon forget the prompts and just have the target language stick (vs translating word by word for a very long time as with “standard” learning).
So I don’t think having more hints in the prompts now will really make a difference in my ability to speak later.
But it is better if chunks come out more useful rather than just random words, and if phrases are better quality!
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Yes! You can never learn too many languages! 
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Hi Rich, has this release gone through yet? I thought it was fixed when I deleted and reinstalled but now it’s gone again. It just gets stuck spinning around then the app closes. Could it be my version of android is too old or is there something else? It was working ok to start with but then the loading times got gradually longer and more frequent until finally this. I desperately want to keep up my french!
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It is space/ speed related so older phones or those with smaller smaller memory will suffer more but the changes will stop this situation.
There are two parts to the solution - the first part has now been approved by both stores but we are just trying to coordinate the Web version to the same point, before making it available …that should appear today however - all being well. This part improves responsiveness via a change in settings…
The true solution which will cut the amount of progress data substantially, is going well. It should move into testing next week…fingers crossed for a release a week today.
Rich 
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Brilliant, thanks for the reply. It’s working again this morning. Looking forward to the updates!
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I’m enjoying lots of the courses!
Just for the Spanish, I’m noticing a few things that could do with being corrected, e.g.
“Yes, I do” = “Sí, quiero”
“So that I can” = “Para que puedas” (first voice only)
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My Spanish is rusty these days, but I don’t see that the first one is necessarily wrong. It seems OK to me (depending on what question it is supposed to answer). I haven’t spoken Spanish with anyone for 8 or 9 years, so maybe I’m wrong.
The second one is definitely “you”, I agree.
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Looking forwards to trying the improved Swedish course - I was already enjoying the previous version
Regarding the Spanish translations, yeah, you’re right that in some circumstances, the first one can be a valid translation, but to me it seems like it’s a very specific situation. I totally understand that it works in the SSi approach for the purposes of teaching a particular sentence, but it just doesn’t work in the majority of instances.
By the same logic, “Sí, juego”, “Sí, voy”, “Sí, vengo”, and actually all first person singular verbs mean “Yes, I do”. I guess that to me it’s just a bit misleading 
But anyway, so long as nobody is going around saying things like “Yes, I do swimming” as “Sí, quiero la natación” or something, it’s A-OK! 
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Just thougt I’d give everyone an update on all languages, since we’ve been slowing down on updates (and new languages) recently - instead I’ve been working in the background on applying what we learnt from Japanuary.
I’m very close to finishing two major upgrades to the course creation process. They’ll first apply to a new version of the Japanese course and the Irish course, but we’ll then run all the existing courses through the same system to give them an upgrade as well.
One of them will systematically and completely remove all variations where you have multiple possible answers to an English prompt, as well as add explanations to some new item introductions (yes - we’re doing it!).
The other will drastically improve the quality of phrases in the courses. We’ll have more variations, using more stuff from earlier on in the course, and also reduce the repetitiveness (and funky grammar) caused by overusing “and”, “I want”, “I think” etc.
The second update is ready to go and working pretty well based on my multi-language tests! The first I’m still struggling with, but I feel like I’m not far from cracking it. Hope you’re as excited as I am!!
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Definitely highly excited to try the upgraded courses 
Just to be absolutely sure where we’ll be after the updates, does it mean that soon Japanese and Irish will be the most highly developed courses, surpassing even Welsh and Spanish?
While I want to try every course ultimately (if that’s even possible in a human lifespan!), I’m hoping to focus on the most developed courses along the way until others catch up, as that seems to make the most sense to me and be the most efficient use of time!
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I don’t think they’ll be better than Welsh anytime soon, but we’ll have to try them to find out. They’ll be much closer to the Welsh courses’ quality than the early beta languages are at least
Welsh has had so much time and effort put into it, with so many people testing and giving feedback over many years. I think other courses will also need a lot of attention individually to get the quality that high. But of course we have learnt a lot from the Welsh, so the other languages won’t need quite as much time to get right I think.
The new courses are quite a lot longer than the Welsh is, which I think will make up for the slightly lower quality - you can just keep learning for a bit longer and you’ll get to the same level we’d expect from the Welsh course. 
But yes, after the update I think Japanese and Irish will pretty much be up there with Welsh! (Spanish is in the same boat as the other beta courses)
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Thanks for the info!
It’s great to know where the courses are in relation to each other.
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This all sounds excellent news. Will this be an update to the Gwyddeleg trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg course, or the Irish (demo) through English?
Either would be great!
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Irish (demo) through English first, but I don’t think it’ll be too long until we can update the Gwyddeleg trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg then
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I’d really appreciate this. I have dipped into several beta languages as they came out but now my progress in these seems stuck/all over the place. Would love to be able to reset
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Something I would really, really love to see on SSi is British Sign Language as one of the available languages.
Logistically – thinking about it – it probably wouldn’t be possible to use LLMs to mix and match words and phrases into longer sentences as you can with spoken languages, and incorporate those into the app, but having pre-recorded sentences in video format should be more doable (as the old courses were, before the new app and new languages were launched).
As a language to learn in evening classes, Welsh is pretty much untraceable in the UK outside of Wales, and BSL (I think) encounters a similar barrier in getting new learners, but here it’s simply because it is a visual language and relies on in-person tuition and interaction. That then, of course, carries additional barriers of cost and time constraints.
I understand it’s unlikely to come around anytime soon (if at all), but just letting you know – if it did, you have someone here who would sign up in a flash!
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Just an update on the v2 courses - after some pretty bad luck with a couple of the scripts and taking much longer than I expects, I’m now officially finishing up the Japanese course… So, unless something explodes, the new version of Japanese should be out this week or next week!
Irish will follow a little later, as a big chunk of it will be manually checked before it goes out, but it’s also progressing well.
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Japanese is in testing!!
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