Language Fixes for New Courses

Are you using an Apple device? We’ve been having some problems with iOS, but we think they should be fixed now :crossed_fingers::slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Ah! I am indeed! I’ll try it on a PC later. Thanks!

1 Like

I’m sorry, because I know you’re all already thinking about all these things, it’s just time, money and work hours as ever.

The Korean government spends money to educate Korean descent kids outside of Korea (as it would like them back due to the birth rate issues, also offers University scholarships etc which are dependent on fluent Korean), so there’s money around, it’s just directing the flow… There is also a worldwide shortage of Korean teachers apparently, so you’d think an app would be a good answer.

I do have to say that I think the English to Korean needs some work, just due to the nature of Korean and its tendency to do everything structurally rather than using individual words or collocations. But that might be my own low level of understanding.

Todays corrections:
Purple and black belt: The prompt with I don’t mind waiting (etc) - prompt and response often don’t line up for the prompts which use only part of the longer phrase
‘I don’t know why you’re not happy’ - this should be an -eunji construction I think - ‘why you’re not happy-eunji I don’t know’.

Actually, there are a couple of prompts where the correct conjunction structure seems to be missing, but I don’t know if this is a spoken language feature. For example there’s a prompt with ‘I know xyz’ where ‘I know’ is given at the beginning of the sentence. As far as I know, this is an unlikely structure, and it should always be ‘xyz I know’.

2 Likes

Always very grateful for your input, Meredith! I wish we could respond a bit more quickly - that’s certainly what we’re going to be putting any increase in turnover into!

I still feel as though we could probably improve the Japanese course, and there are some similar ‘just works in very different ways’ issues in there to what you’re describing with Korean - so we definitely want to be able to put some more time and money into that. We’ve got some new ads running which aren’t doing dreadfully, so fingers crossed, and we’ve also got a new offering for English teachers coming soon which we hope will be valuable :crossed_fingers:

1 Like

Firstly, I’m so grateful you started this, and for the whole team really :slight_smile:

Yes, I don’t know much Japanese outside of the app, but I am getting that feeling as I work through it. Sometimes it’s more of a ‘prompt doesn’t line up with the answer that we had before’ thing, but sometimes it does feel like the structure is not quite right.

Japanese and Korean have some structural things in common, but I don’t know enough Japanese at the moment to really explain.

Korean usually runs in the opposite way to English - not just because of the SOV structure (The people marched in the street because they wanted to support the new ideas of the government = People government’s new ideas support do wanted-because/so in the street march did), so this app practice is so useful for training the brain to rearrange quickly.

And yay, English teacher offerings! Looking forward to that.

2 Likes

That’s so kind of you, and hugely appreciated - it really makes an enormous difference to us when we hear that it’s helping and valuable. Makes all the various headaches worthwhile!

I’ve got great hopes for the English teacher stuff. I think it might be a perfect combination of support plus a bit of extra income - a good way to support the TEFL focus on teaching through the medium of English, and the inevitable challenges with that.

:crossed_fingers:

2 Likes

Few more from Armenian - “aysor yereko” is wrong, should be ays yereko, “vets zhamin” is wrong, should be zhamy vetsin, “kankarnal” is wrong, should be “kang arnel” and “ushtov” is wrong, should be “aveli ush”.

@naltun lav em aysor, ashkhatatsi amboghj ory u hima hognats em. Du vonts es?

2 Likes

And today’s queries

Korean has a purple and black belt prompt ‘we want to know can you tell me’; unclear in English, doesn’t seem to make sense in Korean.

In Chinese the prompt is ‘like people who speak Chinese’ which is translated as something like xihuan ren shuo zhongwen (like people speaking Chinese) - if this should be ‘I like people who speak Chinese’ then it’s ‘wo xihuan hui shuo zhongwen de ren’ with apologies for the toneless pinyin. If it’s ‘in the same manner as people who speak Chinese’ that’s more complicated…

1 Like

lav em axpers, yes al kich hoknadz em payts ameninch lav e.

Each of the examples you brought up are wrong and I encountered some of them myself. :+1:

2 Likes

Thank you very much everyone, all passed on :slight_smile: :folded_hands:

Actually I was wrong - heard the prompt again today and it’s ‘people who like speaking’ which is misrendered as xihuan de ren shuo hua (people who are liked, speaking) when it should be xihuan shuo hua de ren. But there’s an equivalent phrase that’s correct later, so it’s not clear why that one has gone wrong

1 Like

Passed on :folded_hands: :slight_smile:

1 Like

There’s a thing on the Irish (in the app, not the new PWA) where it messes up lenition/gender (Mae’n camdreiglo…) Gaelic does stative verbs in a way that e.g. distinguishes ‘standing’ (being on one’s feet) from ‘standing up’ (getting to one’s feet) by saying “I am in my standing/sitting/lying etc.” But inevitably this means that 3sg forms are gendered - if Welsh did the same it’d be the difference between Mae o’n ei eistedd and Mae hi’n ei heistedd.
But when the Irish for ‘standing’ (ina sheasamh m. vs ina seasamh f.) is introduced, ‘she’ gets the masculine version instead, and the feminine isn’t mentioned.

ETA Related query: I’m wondering how different the Irish content on the PWA is/if it’d be relatively straightforward to jump to from c 4% of black belt on the previous iteration (?)

5 Likes

I’ll ask @Kai to answer that - I’m not sure which version is which any more!

Otherwise, passed on, diolch!

Icelandic, orange belt, seed 35.
‘To be quiet’ is introduced as ‘tow bay quiet’, i.e. Icelandic pronunciation of the English.

4 Likes

That kind of sounds like something so lovely we should keep it in there :wink: :joy:

1 Like

Amazingly, I understood all of that :grinning_face:

Some more from Armenian - “nranic anuny” is wrong, should be “nra anuny”. “araga” is wrong, should be “arag”, “mardiki” is wrong in two places, it should be “mardik” in nominative and “mardikanc” in the incorrect sentence “mardiki het”. Armenian takes dative/accusative with prepositions (or at least it seems to in the examples I’ve seen).

To add to my previous correction of “kang arrnel” for “kankarnal”, my friend has since told me that “kang arrnel” would be used in the context of stopping something physical, like a car, and if you wanted to use the example “stop talking” it would be better to say “dadarel xosel”. She said they’d understand, but it’s not right.

Finally, it has started to add words that it hasn’t introduced. So far, off the top of my head, we’ve had “inchu” “araga” (which is wrong) and the third person present tense conjugation, which appeared with “mardiki” in the sentence “mardiki uzum en hayeren xosel” or something similar. Not a big issue, but still.

2 Likes

Amazingly, I understood all of that :grinning_face:

Brilliant, well done mate! :fire:

If you ever want to practice, DM me :slight_smile: I also know a handful of Discord servers where Armenians practice, etc.

2 Likes

Shnorhakalutyun! Once I have a higher level, I will probably take you up on that.

Another - introduces “sksel” with the correct translation (to start) but the very first example sentence of “I’m going to start speaking” has the incorrect Armenian of “xoselu em sksel” instead of “skselu em xosel”. I’ve seen this error before on other verbs - can we not fix it?

3 Likes

Japanese: In Blue Belt at around the 44% mark there seems to be a prompt with no answer.

Today’s Korean correction: bogo shipossjiman hajiman - so far as I know, you can only have one verb+jiman (but, although) in a sentence. The prompt is also a little clunky.

1 Like