Language Fixes for New Courses

Thanks! :slight_smile:

More updates - in the brown belt levels of Chinese, the English prompts seem to break down into pidgin or similar? Might be intentional I guess. Also the male voice gets lost or is just odd sounds sometimes for short prompts, this happens from about orange belt I think.

In Korean, I keep hitting phrasing that seems off but I’m not sure why. I can only run it through Papago, and I’m not sure Papago is always right either, and there’s a couple of different ways to say things. It feels like it really needs a listen through from a Korean speaker with good English, apologies if you’ve already done that.

1 Like

Armenian - shat lav means “very good” and it can’t be used with pvordzel for “trying very hard”. You could say “shat pvordzel” but Armenians actually have separate verbs for “try” and “try hard” - technically you’d use janal for “try hard”.

Also there’s a pronunciation (and spelling) error for the accusative form of “me” which is indz - dz is one letter in Armenian and is pronounced as such, but the AI says something like “induz” and has that spelling, too, with the separate letters for d and z.

1 Like

I saw there were 2 learners of Armenian, one putting in 98% of the hours – must be you. :slight_smile:

I myself am half Armenian (we are Western Armenian whereas my spouse is from Armenia and speaks Eastern Armenian). Very happy to see someone learning Armenian on SSi!

Do you speak Armenian or are learning it for travel/friends/partner?

e: @aran if it’s possible to add Western Armenian (might require volunteers – I have plenty!) to SSi, that would be very beneficial to our declining dialect (can be extinct as early as 2,100).

e: also, I can help with transliterating from Հայերեն to English.

2 Likes

Thanks Meredith, thanks Greg - no, we’re not in a position to afford to get full proofreading done for the free courses at the moment - it’s going to be a race between selling enough English courses to afford that, or getting our Popty ready to have volunteers help catch issues :slight_smile:

1 Like

I don’t have a specific reason, I just find it to be a fascinating language, but I’ve never done more than dabbled in it before. I’ve always wanted an excuse to have a proper go, and this has given me it :slightly_smiling_face:

Because I do have a rough understanding of the structure, I can sometimes see when things don’t seem quite right, and I do have a native Eastern Armenian (from Artsakh) friend who I can run them past if I need confirmation, so everything I’m posting is generally confirmed by her.

If you managed to put a Western course up, I’d definitely give it a try, I’m curious to see how the differences are in reality (as opposed to examples on Wikipedia) :grinning_face:

2 Likes

I’m curious to see how the differences are in reality

The differences can be quite pronounced. In fact, I had almost no interaction with EA speakers until 5 years ago and their accent and grammar was difficult enough for me that I could not understand them. At the most basic level, the grammar has differences. Example:

քիչ մը հայերէն կը խոսիմ / kich mu hayeren gu xosim
մի քիչ հայերեն խոսում եմ / mi kich hayeren xosum em

Both translate as I speak a little Armenian, but the grammar to conjugate the verb խոսիլ (WA) / խոսել (EA) differs, even the word order for a little քիչ մը (WA) / մի քիչ (EA). We even spell the word for Armenian language differently, հայերէն (WA) / հայերեն (EA).

If you ever have any questions DM me :slight_smile: I can also help with the alphabet if needed. Fun fact: the Western and Eastern Armenian alphabets are different but easy to adjust one to the other.

2 Likes

Today’s Chinese, in the brown belt sections there is the following English prompt ‘You can return money no’ and the Chinese is just the question ‘can you return money?’

The Korean introduces ‘mianneyo’ for I’m sorry - this is a bit of an English problem, because in Korean you really only say mianneyo (or chesonghaeyo) about things you are personally responsible for… but on the other hand it’ll probably lead to an interesting conversation with any Korean you use it on, e.g.
Korean person: My father died.
SSiLearner: mianneyo!
Korean person: Why are YOU sorry? what did you do?!

Might be better to translate it as ‘I apologise’

1 Like

Assuming you can speak Armenian with your spouse now, did it take much effort for you to pick up Eastern? I can definitely see there’s a difference, but it doesn’t look insurmountable :slightly_smiling_face:

I may well take you up on your offer, shnorhakalutyun!

1 Like

For sure not insurmountable! Just a matter of exposure. When a mate came to visit me in the Northeast of Scotland, he had no idea how the Scots here speak and how different it is. After some time, that eases and the unintelligible becomes even passively intelligible. Same idea.

My spouse speaks English fluently (moved here when she was 6), so we primarily speak English together. With her mom especially it took effort, but within ~6 months I started feeling quite comfortable.

2 Likes

Just to ask a frivolous question, if I can find native speakers willing to listen to the Chinese/Korean courses on a voluntary basis, would it be possible to set up access for them to listen to those courses without subscribing? Or would you prefer not to do that but wait until you can specifically hire people? I’m thinking of teachers I know, rather than random native speakers :slight_smile:

1 Like

I’ve had this exact conversation in English in China, Indonesia and quite recently in Vietnam.

1 Like

Something I have noticed is that in the Armenian course, it gives indirect translations that I guess do work, but that aren’t the exact words. Case in point being “amboghj bany” for “the whole sentence”. More correctly, that would be “the whole thing” with sentence being more accurately translated as nakhadasutyun. Is that deliberate?

Also, it should be “bolory” not “bolorin” for “everyone”.

2 Likes

I’ve noticed general discrepancies in SSiArmenian. I think it’s good to highlight them as SSi can revisit this language once they focus on the general app rollout. :clap: I’m currently Orange belt for Lithuanian (I used to live there and have some top mates who I knew before) and I’ve also noticed some discrepancies.

Բայց դուն ի՞նչպես ես այսոր։

e: spelling

1 Like

To clarify, I mean Chinese/Korean for English speakers learning Chinese and Korean, not English for Chinese/Korean speakers.

1 Like

Oh, yeah, I knew that. I was just sharing an anecdote that the confusion can work the other way too. Even quite advanced learners of English can often have the false impression that “I’m sorry” always means apology.

I think (someone please correct me if I have got this wrong) that there was even a diplomatic incident between the US and China at one point where the Chinese thought the Americans had apologised for what had happened and the Americans thought they had merely expressed regret.

1 Like

Greek - Purple - Difficult to be sure of seed (Driving mode says round 388 of 398) - a few errors. Details a bit sketchy because I was actually driving, and am now relying on memory.
One is αλήθεια (feminine noun, ‘truth’) being introduced as a neuter adjective - clauses such as είναι αλήθεια “Is that (the) truth?” being translated as “Is that true?” (like saying ¿Verdad? in Spanish) lead on to Δεν νομίζω ότι είναι **πολύ αλήθεια “I don’t think it is very the truth” (intended to be “very true”, but you can’t use πολύ with a noun like that).
“I hope to go” (I think) is translated as “I hope we can go” rather than “I hope I can go” - that works with the verb ‘meet’, of course (Where do you want to meet = where do you want us to meet) but is misleading here: ελπίζω να πάμε should be ελπίζω να πάω.
One sentence completely doesn’t match the prompt - “I am familiar with a young woman who…” is translated as something totally different (includes the word ενθουσιασμένος ‘excited’ IIRC). The Greek is consistent with material covered so far - it’s the English that doesn’t match.

1 Like

Ah right, now I get you :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Thanks everyone, all hiccups passed on!

@meredith-cane I think we’ve got a broad idea that we will aim to pay for extra proofreading/fixing for the paid-for languages (beyond what we’ve already done) while we aim to make editing possible for non-paid-for languages for volunteers (although in an ideal world if we could get through to growth with our English courses, we would want to put lots of that back into course production for the free courses as well).

We’re not too far off having the structures, but we’re nowhere near having the cash!

2 Likes

I decided to try the Irish course yesterday. After the speakers finish with the first prompt, it doesn’t auto advance to the next one.