Good to see a significant expansion of languages, relative to the current base, in a fairly short timescale I would be particularly interested to know how soon(-ish) the SSiBorg will facilitate the availability of āLanguage X through the medium of Language Yā where Language Y is NOT English.
Whilst there is a whole matrix of āLanguage X through Language Yā possibilities, I must confess a special interest in the prospect of [Range of New Languages] trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg. To get right down to the point, I am keen to (re-)learn the French and Spanish which I learned inadequately at school using traditional classroom methods. But if these courses can be expected using Welsh as the language of instruction within any sort of reasonable timescale, I am tempted to hold off doing the English medium versions of the courses so that I can test the effect of using my relatively recently learned Welsh as a learning medium. Hopefully, in the process, I may be able both to learn effectively through Welsh and to establish Welsh even more firmly than at present in my mind.
I think the prospect of being able to learn a āthirdā language through the medium of a āsecondā language is very exciting. Apart from anything else, it gets one away (hopefully, or it may help to get one away) from āthinking in Englishā, or mentally translating to English all the time.
Weāve probably got a bit more work to do on the SSiBorg for it to handle this smoothly, but weāll be starting to try and hammer it out pretty much as soon as we have our next round of new languages up and runningā¦
This is very exciting! Glad to hear that the Welsh Level 3 is on the way. Iām also wondering if the Latin course will advance at any point? Iāve done all of whatās offered in that course and would love to do more. Excited to hear about the other upcoming additions, and am hoping Swedish also will make its way onto the list at some point.
Slovenian may get more popular now that the wife and son of the next President are fluent/native speakers!
Speaking personally I would prefer SSIW, to make a priority of going further with saying something in WELSH, and then, and thereafter, looking to apply the brilliant learning principles to other languages people are desperate to learn quickly and fluently, like German or Russian, or Chinese, rather than languages like Cornish, Manx etc . Just a personal opinion though:slight_smile:
Yes, but the ground of SSi I always understood as to protect and preserve not just Welsh but all minority languages especially those which are āvanishingā already, just like Manx, Cornish etc ā¦Of course the method is brilliant, too brilliant not to implement some of āmainā languages into it aswell.
That the wife and the son of future president of USA are fluent Slovene speakers (I actually donāt know about son tnough) - it will be forgotten as quickly as it was remembered so the Slovene language in that matter has no bigger chance of bigger interest then some other languages - Croatian, Serbian, or whatās more to them I believe.
Also I have always wonderred how colloquial SSiSlovene should go if implementing it in SSiLanguages. There are bigg (really big) differences inbetween daily spoken language and more formal but still colloquial language in Slovene and written/formally spoken language is something quite different aswell. So, we can have 3 aspects of Slovene - very colloquial, colloquial and formal (spoken) language and slang is (still) excluded from that.
For example: If I ask āWhat do you want?ā I can ask this at least two ways:
āKva bā rada?ā (very colloquial and mostly every day expression) or ākva ÄeÅ”?ā
or more formal āKaj bi rada?ā or āKaj hoÄeÅ”?ā
Of course depends of the tone in the voice both expressions can be very impolite if voice not right tuned.
the most formal (as itās written and is polite also) would be āKaj želiÅ”?ā. - Hereās no dilema. Even if the voice is not tuned too rightly you almost canāt go impolite with such question but we donāt use it mostly in daily conversations.
So it really is the question how colloquial we should go with Slovene.
Sorry for going a bit offtopic but I just want to point out teaching/learning colloquial way is sometimes a bit of dilema and hard. And, to be honest: Iāve listened to āColloquial Sloveneā course and have established itās not too much of colloquial at all but quite very formal, even āacademicā at times. We mostly donāt speak like this in everyday life but of course Slovene was always taught this way in courses.
Personally, I would like to see more of a focus on less popular (than the likes of Spanish, German and Mandarin, at least) languages for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because those languages already have a ton of semi-decent resources, and secondly because not having to compete on the open marketplace with significantly bigger names (such as Michel Thomas and Pimsleur) could paradoxically make the smaller languages into bigger sources of income, which might in turn allow them to stop relying on volunteers for various aspects of the business, and to actually get some advertising going so that more people actually know that this course exists.
Also if you put all the speakers of these smaller languages together then that is a really big number of people - if only we could all work together - lots of little languages, but they could have a strong combined voice and there could be some beautiful harmonies.
I think regular updates is a great idea. But, I think monthly is too often. So far, not much changes in a monthās time and it will be more taxing on your time (a month goes by pretty quickly ). So maybe consider quarterly updates.
Itās something weāve talked about in great detail - not least because our personal inclination is strongly towards smaller languages.
So far, though, our best possibilities for scaling all seem to come from directions that require at least some evidence that our work is relevant to larger languages. Iām hoping that weāll have enough momentum to start investing more in smaller languages in the course of next yearā¦
@craigf - thanks for that, Craig, appreciated! My only concern is that Iām less likely to remember quarterly updatesā¦ But Iām fairly sure youāre right that the monthly updates will, in general, tend to be a bit shorter than this oneā¦
Because I know how highly commited one must be to fulfill āthe promiseā then and if thereās not particularly new and many things to tell, the updates can be more or less very much the same with no mommentum in them.
When I re-started dysgu Cymraeg back in 2008 (I think, was it that long ago?) my plan was to spend about 7 years doing that and then move on to Cornish, Breton and Gaelic (in no particular order) - ambitious or what:-?
Time has been the problem, but now that Iāve retiredā¦thatās going to be one of my New Years Revolutions:-)
Weāll let you know as soon as votes for certain languages will actually make a differenceā¦
Weāve got connections and a willingness to do stuff with Breton/Gaeilge/Gaidhlig - but theyāre not going to be part of our next round of beta-testing, Iām afraid.
If I may, this is a tool/software with which future language courses will be created more efficiently, faster and easier way. Itās developed (is developing) by SSiW staff so something totally unique to the company. I believe (if I understood correctly) Manx is already created with SSiBorg as will be the languages which are currently announced. As much as I could understand, SSiBorg will allow easily to do one language course for learners to learn through other medium then English as much as it will allow vice versa learning (Spanish through Welsh and Welsh through Spanish for example).
I hope I cleared the things a bit and more I hope I was allowed to do that.
I would be particularly interested to know how soon(-ish) the SSiBorg will facilitate the availability of āLanguage X through the medium of Language Yā where Language Y is NOT English.
But Iām fairly sure youāre right that the monthly updates will, in general, tend to be a bit shorter than this oneā¦ 
