Understand spoken language

Improved "Examples of usage" for each Thai word

Submitted by Hugh on 18 May 2013

There are some changes to Lingopolo that make me really very excited; this one here is one of those.  

The "Examples of usage" has been improved in a way which I absolutely love.  Below you will see the "before" and "after" screen shots so you can see exactly what has changed.  Previously for each Thai word there was a list in English of phrases or sentences where that Thai word was used.  Now there is the same list, but that has been enhanced by the addition of the recording controls so that you can directly play the example, and another extra column has been added which shows the Thai.  The addition of the Thai column is a fairly standard extra.  But it is the addition of the recording column with the play button which makes me really excited. Why? Because this lifts the usability of this section from "pretty handy" (having a list of examples where a word is used is pretty handy), to "absolutely wonderful resource" (being able to play the example sentences directly is just great for the student). This ability to directly play all of the examples without having to go into them one by one is fantastic for listening to real sentences using the word being looked at.

I am not only the developer of the site, but I'm also a student of Thai, so I get double the feeling of happiness when I see this; as a developer I look at this and go "Wow, that's really nice and user-friendly" and as a student I look at it and go "Wow, this is great, I want to listen to all those examples with this word in!". I feel like an artist who has produced something which he looks at and is well pleased with the result. I hope you like it too.

To see it in practice to its best you of course need to look at words with a reasonable list of example sentences. I've had a look around and here are some which I think show it off to a good degree:

The way it looked before is shown below:

Examples of usage before

The way it looks now is shown below:

Examples of usage now