Save Fort Ross

The crisis forced California Government to dramatically cut down the funds for the State Parks and so Fort Ross State Historic Park is now in danger of being closed. We understand that this was unfortunate and hard decision that our lawmakers had to make but Fort Ross is not just "another" typical State Park where you can bring your family for a weekend to relax and grill some sausages - it's part of our American History.

In nowadays American and Russian visitors, volunteers, and helpers come to "Fort Ross", the museum under the sky. The park is open for Cultural Heritage Days and is the point where two cultures interweave naturally. There people from many backgrounds meet, and the relaxed and beautiful site of the open air museum helps to promote understanding between nations.

This place is especially important for the young generation. There are interactive educational programs for children. As a part of the overnight trips at Fort Ross, students, dressed in XIX century costumes, adopt the names of people who lived in the settlement and study this page of local and Russian history through enacting various aspects of the life at this time. American youth get to know more about the different people who lived here; and Russian children who live in America feel their roots and their belonging to the rich Russian culture through Fort Ross.

This is our responsibility to preserve the memory about the people who lived in California before us and to pass this information to our children. Please sign the following simple petition to save this beautiful piece of our history: http://makefortrossnationalmonument.us/index.html

Swedish is loaded

Today Swedish language lessons have been loaded. They are without audio yet but we are going to start working on audio pronunciation as soon as possible.

Ah, by the way, recently we loaded Amharic sounds.

How to do translation for polyglot vocabulary - Instructions

This is an article that describes how to do the instruction of Internet Polyglot vocabulary.

• You will receive an Excel file, it will contain multiple tabs
• First tab is "Lessons" - a list of all lessons
• Other tabs are particular lessons
• While translating tab "Lessons": each cell contains lesson name and description divided by "|" sign. When you translate - do the same, separate lesson name and description by |. Don't translate word-to-word, make it sound natural for your language. Some humor is useful too.
• Individual lesson tabs (ANIMAL, PLANT, etc.). Each tab will have some words in two or more languages. Let's say you are translating to Spanish from English and French. You have to make sure that your translation works both with English and French counterparts. If you can't find a word that corresponds to both of them - skip it, just don't enter anything.
• On lessons tabs translation should be precise - use the word that is the best (don't give a line of possible synonyms).
• If you don't know how to translate a word - just skip it! It's better to skip it than to give an incorrect translation.
• Articles. Most of languages have articles. For example, in Spanish it is necessary to put articles because they indicate the gender of a noun. Decide what article to put in each case (definite or indefinite) according to your language rules.
• Adjectives - if your language have different adjective forms for different genders, use masculine form.

First translate a couple of tabs and send me an intermediate result so that I could verify correctness and give my feedback.

Amharic is loaded

Huge thanks to our volunteer Lulit for translating our words to Amharic. Amharic, according to Wikipedia, is "is a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara. It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia."

Also, "Many Rastafarians learn Amharic as a second language because they consider it to be a sacred language, and even the original language."

If you can't see the font, here is a page that can help you: Can't see Amharic font? , for me personally (I use Windows XP and Vista), the following installation worked perfectly: GF Zemen self install

What's next? This Saturday I am going to meet Lulit and record audio for those lessons. Stay tuned!

Widget for Internet Polyglot - Random Multilanguage Word Of The Day

Here is a beautiful widget. You can see it on the right sidebar of this blog. It shows a random word in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish. You can click a speaker icon and hear audio pronunciation of this word in these languages. Click "Next" and see the next random word of the day.

Place it on your website, or your blog, or your Facebook, or in your iGoogle. Even on your Vista sidebar! For that click "Get & Share" at the bottom of the widget and then follow the instructions.

Also give a good rating and post a comment about this widget here.

Hindi Audio

Hindi audio is recorded, processed and uploaded to the site! Check it out on http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-hi-en

Huge thanks to our long time supporter Baggeroli for organizing and managing this project!

New improvement: Speeeeeed it up!

The latest version that was deployed on last Friday (October 24) had a very small change - we did some optimization using JAWR https://jawr.dev.java.net/

The results are amazing - the speed of loading of all pages improved dramatically - in most cases by 30-50%.

Enjoy a faster Internet Polyglot - learn foreign languages while playing games!

New version of the site

Today our team deployed a new version of the site. The main changes are the following:

1) Improved sidebar - didn't you hate it when it was loading for about 5 extra seconds after the page was loaded. So, not anymore. Now he sidebar is loading quickly and the whole page is loading quickly too. Still, in this sidebar you can see the same information as before: your session game score, last played lessons, the champions of gaming.

2) iPoly widget. Now you and everybody can place an InternetPolyglot lessons on your blog or your site! For that go to http://www.internetpolyglot.com/widget.html , select languages that you like to show on your page in the widget, copy the code and paste it on your site or blog. Afte that your blog or site will start showing lessons directly from Internet Polyglot. And it will look like this:



The code for this widget was:
<br /><object><embed width='425' height='344' id='IPWidget' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://widget.internetpolyglot.com/widget.swf' flashVars='wordLanguage=English&translationLanguage=Russian'></embed></object><br />

but you can change the languages in this code. For example, if you want to show Spanish-French lessons then simply change wordLanguage and translationLanguage parameters in this code like this:

<br /><object><embed width='425' height='344' id='IPWidget' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' src='http://widget.internetpolyglot.com/widget.swf' flashVars='wordLanguage=Spanish&translationLanguage=French'></embed></object><br />

and the widget will start showing Spanish-French lessons like this:




So please hurry and place this widget on your site or blog, make your visitors happy with playing Internet Polyglot language games!


What's next. The next couple of weeks our main goal becomes speeding up the site. We are going to work on making site's pages loading faster. Especially it's important for the game pages - iPoly gamers, stay tuned!

Three Fun Ways to Learn Italian

Who says that learning a language has to imply thick glasses, more than 1000 page books and a teacher who punishes you with loads of homework? Well, I believe learning can be fun! You might say “who are you to say that?” well, let’s just say I’m really smart and also lazy: I want maximum results with minimum effort. Trust me; you will WANT to read about these easy, fun methods of learning Italian!

1. Sing, sing, sing

What’s funnier than seeing all your friends goof around and try to keep up to both music and the lyrics? Well, your learning process has a lot to gain if you make a special Italian karaoke night! Great Italian singers like Laura Pausini, Tiziano Ferro, Biagio Antonacci, all have very inspired, clear lyrics that are easy to understand and to reproduce – they’re great for your pronunciation and vocabulary! Plus, in karaoke you also get to read the lyrics - improves you reading & writing skills! So, all in all, the Italian karaoke night will be a success both as a party and as a learning lesson.

2. Label everything in your way!

We feel more comfortable around the house, so we assimilate with more ease what we want to learn. Around the house – that’s where we have all the stuff we use on a daily basis. So why not take a pack of post-it notes and a dictionary and write the Italian word for things and label them? For example write “armadio” on a note and stick it on your closet, stick a “frigorifero” note on your fridge or even a “scarpe” note on the shoes you don’t wear as often. And also try to read the notes any time you see them – your family might consider you a loony, but soon enough, they will be proud of you being the only one in the family who speaks the language of DaVinci!

3. Pasta, anyone?

Have you ever considered taking up cooking as a way of getting familiar with a new language? Well, you can start now! Who doesn’t love a good lasagna, some freshly made spaghetti carbonara and of course, the Italian superstar: a ten topping pizza? The Italian kitchen is one of the richest and flavored of all. So, buy a dual-language recipe book or simply buy one in Italian (you will find loads on the internet) and a dictionary, and translate each recipe from Italian into your native language, as you cook it.

This helps you get familiar with the names of fruits, veggies and all sort of groceries and activities (cutting, baking, seasoning etc). Plus you have your belly filled with the world’s most exquisite meals. If you are a man and you’re reading this, trust me: your fiancé will be impressed by the pizza quarto stagioni you prepared for her! It gets your language learning juices flowing and stops your stomach from aching!

These 3 easy and fun steps are just the beginning of your “learning Italian odyssey”, but they will help you remember usual and common words and phrases, taking just a few minutes every day to do it. Once you know the basics, going to an Italian class will give you the professional teaching you need. Your teacher will see to your pronunciation being accurate, and your writing and grammar being close to perfection. But remember, the three methods I showed you above can be paired with your classes, so that you will speak fluent Italian in no time! Tanta fortuna, amico! (Good luck, buddy!)

7 Tips Every Wannabe Polyglot Needs

Any craft or skill in the world has its pros and amateurs and many times, the difference between the two is not necessarily natural talent, or hard work, it’s knowing the secret ingredient that makes the recipe what it is. Make no mistake about it, language learning is pretty much the same: know the tricks, you win the game. Here’s a collection of 10 useful tips and tricks on language learning for any wannabe polyglots out there:

1. Get Over Mistakes

One of the most annoying drawbacks when learning a language is fear of using it. Whether it’s fear of not spelling something right in an e-mail or letter, fear of sounding funny when speaking it or something similar, you need to get over making mistakes! So what if they occur? It’s the only way you can improve your language skills.

2. Set Yourself Stepwise Targets

Don’t go all out and plan to be proficient in a language, in a certain amount of time. Just take it stepwise, try getting to a basic level in the first few months, then improving your vocabulary in the next, then your grammar, then your speaking and so forth. Break it down into small bits, so you don’t choke on the bite.

3. Get Over Apparent Lack of Progress

Language learning is a flow that may or may not keep a steady rise. You might find yourself stagnating at some points during the process and it’s these that are the hardest to overcome, because you feel like you’re doing nothing apparently. Get over it!

4. Interests First

Are you learning Japanese for business purposes? Or maybe learning Brazilian to be able to communicate with your hot new Brazilian girlfriend? Whichever the purpose, study the language as if you would for that particular reason. Don’t stumble on small mistakes, get those economical Japanese terms so you can have a basic conversation, then build up on those.

5. Build a Solid Foundation

Again, if you have a solid foundation you can build up on it quickly and without too much trouble. Get the basic vocabulary down: that’s around 200 words that are commonly used, including common nouns, verbs and adjectives. Once you grab hold of that, there’s really nothing that can stop you.

6. Revisions

Happened to each and everyone of us in school, didn’t it? You learnt some long list of verbs in French class, but when it was time to actually use them the second time around, at the exam, you forgot them. That’s why revisions are always necessary, don’t lie on your back as soon as you’ve gone through the exercises, vocabulary practice or lessons.

7. Have fun While Studying

It’s been scientifically proven that if we learn something while we’re having fun, our brain assimilates that information a lot easier and for a longer period of time. Spice up your language learning habits, play some vocabulary games, maybe use some flashcards, or learn together with a friend. Anything that you deem as fun, is probably going to help you loads.