Top 5 Reasons to Learn Spanish

With around half a billion speakers world wide, you wouldn’t expect Spanish to be the subject of a “Why learn” type of article. Still, numbers aren’t always everything and some of you might want some more specific advantages of learning Spanish. Personally, I had great advantages from my Spanish language skills and throughout time, I noticed that a few patterns apply to people who learn this language. Most non-native Spanish speakers are people who travel a lot. Some of them learn it because they want to, others learn it due to necessity. But let’s assume you’re learning for fun, for the time being. What would be the main 5 reasons that could convince you to start up on Spanish? Let’s see:

1. Spanish is Easy – No, seriously, it is. It’s actually one of the easiest languages to learn for native English speakers. Spanish is quite common throughout the World and ever since you were a child, you were exposed to the Spanish language on TV, radio or, in some parts of the United States, in the community. This makes it a lot easier to learn the language later on, since you already have the “ear” to learn it.

2. Spanish opens the door for other languages – it’s true, once you learned Spanish it will be a lot easier to go for another language with a Latin substrate. Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, anything that’s related to Spanish will be a walk in the park. These languages can be learnt using the same language patterns, so once you got the hang of how Spanish needs to be assimilated, you will find it quicker to adapt to its cousins.

3. Travelling – Obviously, if you travel to South America or Spain, you’ll need to speak Spanish fluently if you want to make it a pleasant stay. Otherwise you’ll be going to your hotel room with your arms aching every night, due to the extensive body language that you used throughout the day. People in Spanish countries aren’t particularly keen on learning English and you can’t ask that from them anyway. It’s you who’s visiting their country, so it’s you who has a duty to perform in learning their language.

4. Business Opportunities – Regardless if you’re from Europe or North America, there are some very rich neighbors standing right next to you. Mexico for the US and Spain for Western Europe are two markets that need to be tapped, because they offer huge potential. If you want to conduct business in Spain, Mexico or any other Spanish speaking country for that matter, you’ll make a great first impression if you can speak the language of the persons you’re dealing with.

5. Cultural Understanding – The Spanish culture has been incredible throughout history and Spanish authors have left behind hundreds of thousands of books filled with interesting information. However, information is lost during translation, so if you really want to enjoy a book from a Spanish author, you’ll learn the language and read the book the way it was meant to be read: in the Spanish language.

I hope I made my point with these advantages of learning Spanish. If you need a starting point for your language efforts, visit Internet Polyglot and start the ride!

5 Advantages of Being a Polyglot

I read on someone’s blog a while back a few journal pages where the owner made a sort of wish list for the next 5 years. Her main wishes were to learn 5 languages in the next 5-10 years, including Arabic, French, German, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. When someone commented on the post, asking why she wants to be such a big polyglot, she simply replied: to be a citizen of the World.

I agree that the only true way we can be citizens of the World is by knowing each other, our languages and our cultures but I’m sure there are many other reasons an individual would want to learn a foreign language or two and become a polyglot. Here are mine:

1. International Business – I-business is more common than ever nowadays, with the Internet allowing us to outsource, freelance and close deals overseas without too much trouble. Being a polyglot and being able to speak in the language of the person you’re working with, or the person you’re working for weighs heavily in how the deal will end. Remember, not everyone knows English and you shouldn’t expect others to speak your language if you don’t put at least some effort to speak theirs. Check out these free online courses if you’re planning on learning a new language.

2. Travelling Opportunities – How many times have you thought about travelling to a remote, exotic country, but worried that you’ll have a hard time there due to lack of communication? It happens everywhere, regardless if you’re going to a country in Africa, or somewhere in Europe. If you can’t talk their language and they can’t talk yours, you’d best learn body language. Or, you can take up these free language courses.

3. Personal Impression – Let’s face it, when you hear a foreigner coming to YOUR country and speaking YOUR language, I’m sure it tickles your ego a bit. The same thing would happen if you would travel to another country and the natives would hear you speaking their own language. It can really bump your image (positively) in a native speaker’s eyes.

4. Social Status – Does making a lot of money automatically make you a great person? No, because money can be the result of luck or theft. Does knowing 3-4 different languages earn you this social status? Yes, because being a polyglot is clearly the result of some hard work and you can tap in on that aura that you’ll be surrounded with, regardless if it’s simply to gain an edge in society, in business or at work.

5. Explosive Learning – Learning a new language is a tough process that involves both short and long term brain cells to work full time. The reason the first language is hard to learn is that we’re not used to the learning process itself. Most polyglots will find that it’s easier to learn their 3rd or 4th language than the first ones, because by the time they reach number 4, their language learning process is already in full motion and is capable of assimilating information much quicker, through the patterns you already established with the other languages.

Are these reasons enough to become a polyglot? I hope so. But even if it’s for one of the above reasons, or just for the heck of it, becoming a polyglot is a great achievement and something that is heightening for any human being. So if you want to become a better human and a true citizen of the World, start by learning a few languages to back you up.

Greek Audio

Audio has been enabled on Greek lessons . Enjoy!

A huge thanks to George (the voice) and Baggeroli (audio processing) for making it possible!

What's next: Polish audio, game improvements (adding audio and images in games). Stay tuned!

Portuguese and Japanese Audio are On

Portuguese audio has been recorded by Baggeroli and Eliana and enabled on the site. Enjoy!

Visit Portuguese lessons.

Previously, we recorded and enabled Japanese audio, visit Japanese lessons.

In process: Greek is recorded, now in the post-processing stage, will be enabled in a week or so.

New Version of Site. Spanish and Ukrainian Audio.

The past month we've done the following changes:

• We developed a new version of the site
• Added Spanish and Ukrainian audio

The new site's version's changes are the following:

• Renovated home page that allows easier starting of language learning games
• Transliteration for Chinese (Pinyin), Japanese (Romaji), Russian and Ukrainian (Translit), Greek (Greeklish) so that the words pronunciation can be seen by those who don't know the alphabets. Transliteration can be turned on/off
  
• Some changes that should make the site running faster
• Some other minor changes

We also recorded and published audio files for Spanish and Ukrainian languages.

If you haven't visited our new forum yet, here it is: Internet Polyglot forum
It's a new forum so you won't find many discussion topics there - but you can ask any questions and expect a quick answer. Especially, if you have any suggestions about the building of the site please be welcomed to write to us on this forum.

What's next:

Next is working on more languages:

• Japanese audio has been recorded already but is being currently in the process of producing mp3 files
• Greek audio will be recorded soon too, meanwhile we brushed through the Greek lessons and removed many errors

Stay tuned!

New Release, New Cool Features

New version is developed and deployed. The new features are:

- Tutorial Slide Show
- User Game Statistics

Example of Tutorial Slide Show: http://www.internetpolyglot.com/play_slide_show_lesson_-2104301010 (make sure that you have your sound turned on, turn on your speakers or put on your headphones). I have long been thinking that we have games on the site, which is the way to drill words that you've already seen but we didn't have an efficient way to see them first. The Tutorial Slide Show does exactly that: it teaches you new words, shows the image for the word, pronounces it and its translation. You can go from word to word and enjoy it. After you finished with the slide show you can start playing games with this lesson.

User Game Statistics. You've been working hard on learning new words but we didn't have a way to show your progress. Now we do. Go to http://www.internetpolyglot.com/userGameStatistics.html and see your progress. Please remember that you have to be logged in when you go to this page.

Also recently the site was translated to Ukrainian.

Plans for the near future:
- Chinese (Mandarin) is almost done. The vocabulary is uploaded, it even has pinyin (roman transcription). What left is to upload audio files. The site is also translated to Chinese (some corrections are to be done though).
- Improvements of the games. Show pictures, play pronunciation.
- New games.

Stay tuned!

New Version of the Site. New Awsome Features.

My dearest Internet Polyglotter!

At last, with a great honor and deep moral satisfaction we announce that a new version of the site has been developed and deployed on http://www.InternetPolyglot.com !

The new version has a number of new features:

1) Typing Game - a new game where you are presented with a word in your language and you have to type its translation in the language that you learn. We hope this game will be a good addition in the language toolset that we provide for our users.
2) We bought and uploaded more pictures so that the majority (95%) of all lessons have images associated with the words. Enjoy a more colorful experience in learning new words!
3) New improved chat. Now the chat page has multiple channels so that you can chat with other people in your native language or about a language that you learn.
4) "Jump to a lesson" link. Now when you go to a lesson detail page you can see a new link "Jump to a lesson". When you click on it you see a popup list of all other lessons that are of the same word language and translation language.
5) Romanian audio pronunciation on Romanian lessons.
6) Other minor improvements that should improve your staying with http://www.InternetPolyglot.com .

Now a little bit about our plans. We are working hard now on a new "game-like" page which we call a slide show. We think that it should improve the initial learning process - instead of just jumping to games, go through all words in a lesson as a slide show: each word will be presented as a picture with the word and translation and the word and translation will be pronounced. We hope to develop the slide show in a month or so. As soon as it's ready we'll gladly notify you of that.

Now enjoy learning languages with http://www.InternetPolyglot.com and have a great time!

Internet Polyglot team.

Italian Audio. Benvenuto!

Great news for all Italian learners! Now you can learn new words on Internet Polyglot with audio pronunciation! Simply go to any Italian lessons like http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lesson-3202101130 and click a green "Play" button next to any Italian word.


Enjoy the fine quality Italian pronunciation! The voice recording was performed by a professional voice actor and as usual, huge thanks to Baggeroli who helped with audio post-processing.

Visit Italian lessons on Internet Polyglot and learn Italian efficiently and with fun!

Permanent link to this post: http://internetpolyglot.blogspot.com/2007/05/italian-audio-benvenuto.html



Word of the Day: a snail

العربية:	الحلزون
Nederlands:	een slak
English:	a snail
Français:	un escargot
Deutsch:	eine Schnecke
Ελληνικά:	ένα σαλιγκάρι
עברית:	חלזון
हिंदी:	घोंघा

Italiano:	una lumaca
日本語:	蝸牛
Latin:	cochlia
Polski:	Ślimak
Português:	um caracol
Română:	un melc
Русский:	улитка
Español:	un caracol
Türkçe:	salyangoz

The benefits of learning Japanese

The Japanese language seems at first impossible. Not only does it sound and feel completely different from any kind of western dialect, but there three different writing systems! However, it is not as incredible a feat as it seems to learn Japanese. Learning this language is both extremely beneficial, and practical.

First of all, Asian languages make up almost a third of the languages spoken on the Internet. English takes up another third, and the European languages bundled together take the last. Japanese is the most prevalent language of all the Asian languages, so it is clearly an important language to know. But why does the internet matter when learning a language? There are a few reasons for this. Japan has the second largest economy in the world, which means that its residents are not stingy about what they buy. If you are a salesman, or someone wanting to get as many people to buy your product as you can, then investing in learning Japanese will increase your success as much as twofold, because you will be able to sell your product to all those Japanese-speaking consumers that were blocked off from you previously.

If you are not looking for business, then there is still a wide open door of opportunities to enjoy the benefits of learning Japanese. If, as stated previously, Japanese is the third most widely used language on the internet, then by learning Japanese, it will be possible to communicate with these people, who may potentially have radically different experiences and beliefs than people brought up in Western cultures. By bridging the language gap between you, the different parties can share their experiences and get a taste for what the culture on the other side of the world is like. Thus, even if business and making money is not your top priority online, learning Japanese can bring much excitement and many new experiences into your life.

Now we have arrived to the logistical reason why learning Japanese isn’t as hard as it seems. First of all, the Japanese writing system has a phœnetic alphabet, which can be used in place of all Chinese characters to help beginners. This alphabet is very helpful, because, unlike English words such as “acquiesce” or even “mice,” there is no ambiguity in how to pronounce a written Japanese word like there is in English. Secondly, Japanese grammar can be a lot simpler than English grammar. For example, the verbs only have present and past forms, unlike English, which has perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, future, &c. Similarly, the nouns do not have genders or plural forms, and the accompanying articles such as “a” or “the,” which are always impossible for English learners to master, are absent in Japanese. Overall, Japanese may look baffling when briefly glanced at, but most of it is quantity, and not complexity. Therefore, learning Japanese is a relatively easy task, especially compared to an ambiguous and almost completely random language such as English.

There is no doubt about it: one way or another, learning Japanese will make your life richer (in any sense of the word) and more satisfying. And since you now know that it’s not such a difficult task to learn it after all, why not go for it? There is nothing to lose in learning Japanese, and everything to gain. Bridge the gap between yourself and all those Japanese speaking people on the internet and all over the world in general, and make friends with people who you never thought you would be able to speak with before. And if you are really serious about learning that vocabulary, then try www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-ja-en, a website devoted to creating flashcards to aid the memorization process so you can get to using your new skill as fast as possible!

French and German audio

Two more languages now have audio in their lessons: French and German.

French: http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-fr-en . The recording was performed by Annie.

German: http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-de-en . Recorded by Tilmann.

And as usual refining the sound and cutting mp3 files are done by Baggeroli.

Annie, Tilmann, Baggeroli, huge kudos to all of you!!!