Wiki Language School
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This would be someway between Wikiversity and Wiktionary.
The goal is to assist language learning, translation and communication.
See User:Ilya/Wikiversity_Example:Japanese!an example with japanese.
Difference with wiktionary : instead of clearly defining terms, it is sufficient to explain them in the learner's language.
Let's take french for english-speakers as an example :
- "bateau" : noun (m) → boat ; adjective (slang) → simple, easy.
notice that you don't need a definition like "a vehicle for moving on water" or whatnot. If the translation's straightforward just put it. If not, add more information :
- "ville" : noun (f) → a city or a town - the distinction is not made in French.
This is probably better than something like a) city and b) town - the goal here is to teach, not to define formally !
But this is not only about a bilingual dictionary (or this page would be on Wiktionary) - it should also include grammar, idioms, notes on language use, sample phrases ...
A good open source Dictionary English-German/German-English and French-German/German-French exist already on http://dict.leo.org Maybe it can be integrated in the future in Wikimedia organisation...
Wikibooks already has some coursebooks in different languages. However, these are not attached to wikitionaries.
Occleve - The Open Content Learning Environment
[edit]Occleve - The Open Content Learning Environment is very similar to the above proposal - and is working NOW. It's hosted at berlios and at the moment primarily contains English-Chinese tests, but there are a few other language pairs too. It has the additional (and substantial) plus of being designed for learning on the move. A Java mobile phone application connects to the wiki via the Internet to retrieve tests. The tests are written in XML, not wikitext. --Joe Gittings 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)