LingQ has been launched! (If it's new to you, I should inform you that it is pronounced "link")
I signed up for the new LingQ system a few or more hours ago. I forget exactly what time it was.
So what is it?
If you haven't heard, it's the new The Linguist. If you don't know about that either, then where have you been?
LingQ is a website to learn languages. It supports Japanese already! Other Asian languages will be coming.
OK, there is not a lot of Japanese content yet, but hey, it will be coming. And you can contribute too! And besides that, you can use it for free. So you've got nothing to lose! And everything to gain!
I'm enjoying building up my vocabulary storage. At some point, I'll get to where I've entered most of the words that I know in Japanese, into LingQ and then I'll have an accurate measurement of how many words I know in Japanese. But along the way, I'll learn a bunch of new words as well. As I read a text item, (audio is available with it) I am putting all the words into my vocabulary. I mark the known words as Known. I'm also tagging the words with parts of speech so that I'll know how many nouns, adjectives, verbs and so forth, that I know. LingQ has a super efficient dictionary look-up.
I've found it pretty easy to use. At first I tried it with my Mozilla 1.7 browser, which is not supported by LingQ, and then I decided to get Firefox 2.0, which is supported by LingQ, and things have gone smoothly ever since. Firefox seems much faster too.
I like the design of LingQ. It is simple and pleasant. And there is a cool characature of Steve on the site too.
Well, I can't do justice trying to explain what LingQ is and how it works and all. So, you might as well see it directly by signing up. Or just find another description of it at Steve's blog. http://thelinguist.blogs.com/
LingQ <- click to go