How about Taiwanese? It’s not Mandarin, it’s a form of Hokkien.
Y tho? Well, as a first step towards Taiwanese as an operating language…
Firstly, if China really invades Taiwan, there will be emigrants. If Taiwanese can be a target language, it can be developed into an operating language also, and it’s a language which older people from all areas are more likely to speak comfortably. There’s some Hokkien in China and Singapore; that isn’t going to be much use to people avoiding China, and Singapore doesn’t let people in.
Secondly, there are about 16 indigenous languages dying in Taiwan, with a further 10 having disappeared. These languages are not Sinitic but Formosan, and are considered to be the origin of the Austronesian languages. The government has provided support to try and save/revive these languages, and there is some focus on awareness of native culture, but something like SSi might be game changing. Most indigenous people now speak Taiwanese Hokkien.
Thirdly, Korean and Japanese are very popular languages in Taiwan for obvious economic and cultural reasons, but they’re very difficult places for emigrants. The Chinese words that survive in Korean and Japanese are nearer to Hokkien or Cantonese forms than to standard Mandarin forms. So an app offering Taiwanese Hokkien as a base to learn these languages might be very useful…
Obviously, it would also be great for me, as the only way I’m going to ever have time to learn Taiwanese is if I can learn it by ear.
It might however be quite a challenge for the app, as it’s tonal, and the tones can change according to context, and I’m not sure how that would affect chunking.
That’s so interesting, @tatjana, diolch yn fawr - yes, we’ve managed some fixes with masc/fem so I’ll ask for Croatian to be added to that list as well. It’s really motivating to think that if I keep pushing on with Croatian, I’ll have a head-start for some other languages! Or at least be able to understand a little…
@meredith-cane Taiwanese isn’t supported by our current tools - I think the volunteer building tool is going to be crucial here, and we’re getting close with that, there are just so many other things to do as well! But I hope in a year or so we’ll have a really robust way to let people build free courses for any language they like
We have an old audio-based short Manx course which was created long before the app existed, so it doesn’t fit the software requirements to be included yet, and needs a lot of work to become a full course.
If you’re interested in it, you can find it through the app in production by going to Account, then My Resources and scrolling down.
You could also click on ‘Learn’ above to get to the basic website, then click on the “SaySomethingin” at the top left, to get a dropdown of the languages available, and select Manx from there.
To add, when you have a decent level of one Slavic language, you’ll notice words in others and be able to have a guess at them, particularly written. Having said that, there are sort of continuums of understanding and outside of those you’ll find it harder. My wife is Russian and she can have a good go at Belarusian or Ukrainian, but when we were in Poland she was totally lost. A native Ukrainian speaker would be more comfortable with Polish than a Russian, a Pole could learn Czech easier than a Bulgarian speaker, and a Bulgarian could learn Serbian much easier than a Pole. Irrespective though, you’ll have a great headstart into others if you learn one.
@meredith-cane oh, yup, all of that sounds pretty familiar (but for different languages!). I’m currently hugely excited about how well the listening exercises are going for Croatian, because I think that’s probably the main thing that I’m missing to get myself up from B2 in Spanish and French…
@Greg that’s super interesting, thank you! I’ve always wanted to learn Russian, kind of bucket list stuff, so that feels like an encouraging extra win from the Croatian
I thought I remembered a Manx option, but there are so many options now fab, I have a friend learning Manx and it would be nice to chat in Manx sometime.
By the way ‘ssi’ is a term of respect used after names in Korean by people who are on banmal (familiar chat) terms, so every time I see Deborah-SSi it makes me think of that
Has anyone suggested Yiddish yet? It would be at least 6 months before I would have time to do do such a course (more if Kai was serious about making a Yoruba course at some point); but I thought I’d suggest Yiddish while I have the thought in mind.
Well, @aran, you’ll surely have quite a head start with Serbian apart from reading. Serbians write (mostly) in cyrilic script and of course you’ll have to master this first if you would want to read something. Also they have a rule “Piši kao što govoriš” (write as you speak) what means that Aran Jones wouldn’t be written as such but they would write “Aran Džons” (or Đons for that matter)
And, as you’re a good listener, you’ll be able to understand quite a portion of Slovene so you already could have 3 for 1 in quite some cases.
One interesting fact: You surely know Esperanto - a mixture of some languages forming quite unique language which should mostly be understood, especially to those who learnt at least some romance or germanic languages or are native speakers to them. Well, something like this exists in Slavic languages as well. This language is called Interslavic and consists from words from approximagely all Slavic languages. Its use is more and more popular and many people from different Slavic countries are surprised that all of a sudden, speaking it, can prety well understand each other.
I didn’t take a go on it yet, but might be interesting to try. I’ve listened some spoken on YouTube and, yah, I could understand prety much everything what was said. Finding someone who already speaks it fluently you could be pioneering in teaching it through SSi method.
SSi currently supports (although very much in beta) Eastern Armenian. Supporting Western Armenian would be very nice. One statistic I read is that 18% of Western Armenians in their homeland speak the language, and it’s on a course to be extinct by 2100. (this is due to pressure from a government which very much dislikes minority culture).
The grammar differs quite a bit from Eastern Armenian (what is spoken in the country), but there is a vast diaspora of Western Armenians in Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, many of whom do not speak their ancestral language.
Also: Scots Gàidhlig (and Scots, with the help of volunteers?). I have a wee bit of Gàidligh, it is true, but using the SSi would be great.
e: This video on Arbëresh (an Albanian variety spoken in Italy) was in my algorithm today and now I’m reflecting on Albanian.
I’m not sure how we’d go for voices, @brigitte. The Duolingo ones are obviously real people recording on equipment of varying quality which sounds terrible, but I’m not sure there would be any good AI voices out there. The course itself wouldn’t be hard to make and I’d be happy to check it .
I have a wee bit of Gàidligh, it is true, but using the SSi would be great.