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!!!

English Audio [New Feature]

Majority of people who go to InternetPolyglot learn English. English is a "lingua franka" in the modern world - it means that it is used everywhere on Earth as a common language for communications. And at last you folks can start learning English with even better results because now each English word in our lessons has an audio pronunciation.

For example, go to the following lesson: http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lesson-2102001130 and press any green button with white triangle on it.

Now you can hear the pronunciation of this word!!!

The recording was done with an American guy, so the accent is American therefore. Also there were some decisions that we had to make and these decisions are described in the following essay that this guy has written after we finished recording:

Creation of English audio clips for Internet Polyglot We began the reading of the English words for the Internet Polyglot early in the morning when the male human voice is still deep and resonant. Using a simple uni-directional microphone plugged into a laptop which was running an audio recording and editing program, we began the task of reading and recording hundreds of words in English. Early on, we realized that when practicing English words, we don't generally use the article ("the" or "a") preceding a noun. For example, in other languages it is very important to include "the" or "a" before a word because there may be many different forms of that word depending on the gender of the noun. But in English, the articles are always the same and so we made an executive decision not to include them. However, we found that when it came to verbs, that it made more sense to include the helping word "to" before each verb. For example, "to wet" is a much better translation than simply "wet" which could be misinterpreted as a descriptive adjective. On a technical recording note, we found it difficult at first when reading words that had the hard sound "p" at the beginning without creating a Pounding sound on the recording. Holding the microphone further away to artificially soften the "p" sound changed the volume of the sound being recorded and was inconsistent with the rest of the recorded words. So each time we got to such a word, it was simply softened vocally so as to avoid this recorded unpleasant pounding sound. We also avoided having the words read so that they had any down-inflection to them. For example, if reading down a list of 30 words, it's important not to read the last word of the list as if you're finishing a sentence. For the person later listening to this individual word while studying the English lessons, it would give that particular word a strange down-inflection. We found it better to read each word as if it was the first word on the list so that they all had the same level of vocal importance. It was an honor to be the "voice of English" which will be listened to by people all over the world who are practicing their pronunciation using the brilliant program, "Internet Polyglot".

As a side-note, this guy has his own blog which might be of an interest for many of you, here it is: http://healthyspine.blogspot.com/

Dutch Audio Lessons

A good friend and active supporter of Internet Polyglot Baggeroli did a great job in creating audio files for Dutch lessons. The quality of sound and the voice are amazing! So if you learn Dutch, go ahead and visit http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lesson-2002101130, click on the "Play" button (green button with white triangle) and enjoy learning Dutch pronunciation!

Publication about Internet Polyglot

One prominent Russian news site published an article about language learning (http://www.3dnews.ru/editorial/it_lingua/) - why, where, how and so on. I was amazingly impressed finding a good portion of it was about Internet Polyglot. So if you can read Russian - please visit this article http://www.3dnews.ru/editorial/it_lingua/ , scroll down about 2/3 of it and you'll see a review of Internet Polyglot that recommends using it for memorizing new words.

It might be a good chance that you came to Internet Polyglot from this article. Welcome and good luck in language learning with Internet Polyglot!

Internet Trips That Perfect Your Foreign Language

It has been stated on numerous occasions and in most specialty books and courses that the best way to learn and to build up on a foreign language is to live in an environment where this language is constantly present. The most obvious choice would be to visit or even move in a country that speaks that particular language but this often involves great costs and requires that you sacrifice a hefty amount of time for the trip (staying there for 2-3 days won't help too much, obviously). However, there is an alternative that can get you surrounded by the language you're learning without involving the costs and time requirements of actually visiting a foreign country: the so called "Internet Trips".

Internet trips will have you surfing the Internet for a learning location that is completely covered with the foreign language of choice. Using your favorite search engine, you could type in a common phrase in that language and click through the various sites resulted, in search of one that has some interesting information to read, view or listen to. If possible, try looking for a site that is completely built in that language, with as little English as possible. You need to feel "abroad" on this site, so it needs to be as foreign as possible in what regards its content.

Forums are also a great place to arrange an e-trip on. It doesn't really matter what the forum's subject is, as long as everyone or most of the participants in the discussions on are speakers of the language you're learning. Getting involved in the discussions, or even simply reading what others have to say about a subject will boost your vocabulary and general knowledge of that language. However, please note that it's a common fact for forum users to use slang, grammatically incorrect expressions or even common spelling mistakes.

The third option is to visit a "live chat" channel using one of the various programs designed for this purpose, or programs that offer live chat channels as an addition to their real purpose. Amongst such programs, we can include the IRC, DC and all of their variations. Visiting such channels gives you a chance to dynamically engage in conversations with native speakers of the language you're learning, but the same hindrance as in the above mentioned forum case remains: grammar and spelling are often sacrificed in favor of faster typing or simply commodity on these channels. Not to mention that sometimes the chat can get overly trivial for no reason, so you might be building on the wrong side of the vocabulary :).

This said, I wish you a safe journey. If you're after a more focused location for the language learning subject, you can skim through the numerous sites offering such services. If you find the language you're learning amongst those covered by these sites, try combining them with the above mentioned methods to get a better overall experience of your trip :).

Russian Lessons in Audio [New Feature]

Do you learn Russian? If yes, this new feature is for you! Go to this lesson: http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lesson-4302101130 and you'll see a "Play" button next to each Russian phrase.

Press this button and you'll hear the pronunciation of this phrase. You'll need to have your earphones speakers on of course. More Russian lessons can be found here: Free Russian Lessons Online. All of them now have their words pronounced.

Please also visit our articles about Russian in different languages: The Russian Language (in English); Lengua Rusa (in Spanish); Langue russe (in French); Russische Sprache (in German); Lingua russa (in Italian); Russische Taal (in Dutch); Língua Russian (in Portuguese); Limba Rusa (in Romanian)

Also there is a large collection of articles about different languages written in Russian:

История английского языка
Корни испанского языка

Три причины, чтобы начать учить французский
О китайском языке
Что хорошо было бы знать о немецком языке
Язык Восходящего Солнца
Сведения об итальянском языке
Голландский язык – от истоков до наших дней
Выучить русский – «зачем» и «как»
Краткий обзор истории португальского языка
Краткие сведения об арабском языке
Полезные советы изучающим иврит
Истоки цивилизации
Хинди. История и факты
Корни польского языка
История румынского языка
Турецкий язык. Исторические факты
Происхождение и история чешского языка
Корни украинского языка

New Language Lessons: Hebrew

New language lessons have been uploaded today to the Internet Polyglot site. This time the new addition is Hebrew lessons. So if you are interested in learning this ancient language, please be very welcome to http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-he-en .

History of the Hebrew Language



Hebrew is one of the world oldest languages and it’s one of the few languages that kept its composure and structure for the most part, since it is written and spoken today almost the same way as it was more than 2,000 years ago. For example, the style and structure of the Hebrew language that is used today in most books, newspapers and magazines published in Israel is very similar to the one used in the Bible. A strange fact in the history of the Hebrew language is that it ceased to exist as a spoken language for almost 1,700 years ago, being reborn as a modern language around the 19th century. Nowadays, Hebrew is the official language of Israel and it is spoken in the large Jewish Diaspora.



The comeback of Hebrew as a spoken language in the 19th century is often attributed to the name of Eliezer ben Yehudah. Eliezer was a visionary linguist and polyglot that devoted his entire life to the revival of his ancestors’ language, adapting it to the rigors and rules of modern society as well as allowing a substantial vocabulary increase through foreign words. Following Eliezer’s efforts, Hebrew gradually came to use among Jewish settlements around Palestine and when the State of Israel was created in 1948 it became its official language.



Tips and tricks for learning Hebrew



One of the fastest ways to learn Hebrew is over the Internet (for example, on Internet Polyglot Hebrew Lessons), where you can find a lot of free Hebrew lessons online to start off with. If these don’t cut the mustard for you, you could always try a local “Learn Hebrew” course or start studying it from a course book. However, these methods should only be considered a starting point to help you grasp the basic notions of Hebrew and help you improve vocabulary. Direct communication is always a great teacher, so you can try finding a Hebrew conversation partner to help you out, or even try out learning through video conferences with an online teacher (they could cost quite a bit though).



The grammar of the Hebrew language is usually considered easy to understand by most students, however the major problem is spelling and pronunciation of words. These can be improved through several of the above mentioned methods, but if you find those too boring or stressful, you might want to try out a few Hebrew vocabulary games that you can find in books, on audio tapes or over the Internet. These games improve both spelling and pronunciations and they will also allow you to memorize words easily.



Take note that these tips and tricks don’t apply STRICTLY to Hebrew, as they can be used in studying a number of other languages. Remember that learning skills grow up directly proportional with language skills, so the more you learn of a language the better you are at learning a different one in the future. Once this happens, becoming a true polyglot is only a matter of time and ambition.






You can also read about Hebrew in these articles in different languages:

History of the Hebrew Language (in English)
Lengua hebrea (in Spanish)
Hébreu (in French)
Hebräisch (in German)
Ebraico (in Italian)
Hebreeuws (in Dutch)
Hebrew (in Portuguese)
Limba Ebraica (in Romanian)
Полезные советы изучающим иврит (in Russian)
تأريخ اللغة العبرية (in Arabic)

Learning A New Language To Create A Bilingual Household

Learning a new language as a family can be a wonderful and rewarding thing to do, especially if you have small children at home. For them, learning at smaller ages will be much easier than learning later in life. It will also be more rewarding for you, as a family to be able to have that extra cultural exposure that another language makes available to you. Most children will grow up learning both languages naturally, at the same time if they are used constantly near him. However, if you want to speed up the process or make it more effective, there are several techniques that you can try out.

For example, there are many online programs that can assist you with learning a new language for yourself as well as making the process fun through the use of games for the entire family. In addition to the ability or need to memorize words, you will find that these online programs will actually teach you to analyze and choose the correct words in the first place. This is done through the use of flash cards, matching games, word scrambles, and tons of other games that make the learning process seem much less like learning and much more like fun.

If you are having fun learning something, chances are that your children will wish to learn as well. Keep reminding them how fun it will be to travel to the land of the language and speak like a native or go out to dinner in a new town and pretend to be foreign by only speaking to each other in the language you've learned. Not to mention the fun they will have on the school bus when no one else really understands what they are saying.

Raising a bilingual family in today's world has many benefits that go far beyond knowing a second language. In addition to the languages learned you are increasing their ability to learn more languages, as each subsequent language is easier to learn. While at a young age, children may have a tendency to mix languages or switch back and forth that is something that will occur less frequently in time.

The process of creating a bilingual household also requires a considerable amount more effort on the part of the parents. Not only are you learning a new language and committing to learning it well enough to teach to your children and speak on a regular basis, but you are also committing your child to another language as well. This can be confusing to him or her at times and overwhelming at others. Be careful that you don't overload them, which may cause them to stop speaking all together and that you are patient with them offering support and kind words when needed. This is one of the greatest gifts you can give your children and they will understand that in time.