LingQ takes Chinese and Japanese Out of Beta

    WEST VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA, December 03, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- LingQ (www.LingQ.com) announced today that their Chinese and Japanese learning systems have been taken out of Beta. Learners of Japanese and Chinese can now utilize the complete set of features previously only available to learners of the other eight languages offered on LingQ.

"There were some significant challenges in enabling LingQ's unique word learning and tracking system to work with Asian languages. This is an exciting day which has been eagerly anticipated by our Chinese and Japanese learners." said Mark Kaufmann, COO at LingQ. "We're thrilled that these problems have now been solved and that we can provide the same level of service to members studying all languages."

"Our system relies on spacing in texts to perform word identification and tracking for our vocabulary system", Kaufmann continued. "LingQ keeps track of the number of words you know in each language you are studying. However, the lack of spaces in Asian texts prevented this analysis from working properly. Our team, therefore, had to develop and refine an algorithm for splitting Asian texts into words. Obviously, a separate algorithm was required for both Japanese and Chinese. Let's just say there are many ways a text can be split and it took a fair bit of doing to get it right."

LingQ's word analysis and tracking tools allow the utilization of any digital text as language learning content. The ability to split texts is necessary to turn user generated content and translations into useful resources for all members of the site.

About LingQ

LingQ.com is a language learning platform and community unique in its emphasis on input based learning and statistical tracking of activity. LingQ is an example of an interactive, yet carefully structured, Web 2.0 learning community, that takes advantage of the Internet and new technology to help people learn languages from each other. For further information please contact us at 604-925-9544.

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