Language Trainers Blog

I’ve had a bit of a change in my schedule lately which means that I have a much longer commute than before.  I hate getting up early in the morning, but I’ve been trying to look at the upside - I have more time before and after work to listen to music, catch up on news, watch TV, or, most importantly, work on my language study.  I’ve been flicking through some flashcards on the subway, and also listening to some language podcasts (right now I’m listening to Chinese Lessons by Serge Melnyk and lessons from Popup Chinese).

I’ve never really taken advantage of the speed adjustment on my iPod Touch before, but I was listening to a dialogue the other day that was just that little bit too fast.  I slowed it down to half speed and tried again.  It was a little bit jumpy, but generally worked quite well.  After listening to that specific dialogue a couple of times at half speed, I changed it back to normal and it was fairly comprehensible.  I also made use of the little go back button (I don’t know what it’s actually called) which jumps you back 30 seconds instead of having to try to rewind with the slider.  I still haven’t found a use for the 2x speed, but maybe it would be a slightly more accurate way to cue up the part of the podcast you need.

For intermediate and advanced learners, perhaps this function will allow you to subscribe to podcasts completely in your target language.  There are podcasts about pretty much anything these days, so it is another great way to integrate your language and your interests.  If the speakers go too fast, slow it down for the first couple of listens, and then see if you can understand the regular speed.  Try news programs for a slightly slower pace.

Unfortunately this function doesn’t exist for regular audio files or voice memos (just podcasts) on iPod, so it’s not that useful for your own recordings.  If anyone knows of any apps or other players that can get around this, drop me a note in the comments.

I recently stumbled across Digital Dialects, a website providing vocabulary-learning games for not just one, but 60 different languages.  These range from Afrikaans to Zazaki, a few of which I hadn’t even heard of (including the latter, which is spoken in eastern Turkey).   The games are simple and focus on basic word categories like numbers, food, and animals.  Each game has images and many have sound, as well as options such as choosing to read a word or listen to it.  Each language has a different combination of games depending on the vocabulary, and I think they would be suitable for both children and adults at a beginner level.  All of the games are free to use.

Whether you are just starting out in a language, want to pick up some useful vocabulary before a trip abroad, have a child who is studying, or just want to know how to count to 10 in as many languages as possible (I met a kid in Cambodia who could do this in at least 10 languages), check it out.

As I’ve said many times before, one of the best ways to get exposure to a foreign language is by listening to it, a lot.  An even better way is to make sure that the material is relevant to you, something you’re interested in, or something you’ve written yourself.  Not everybody is lucky enough to have a native speaking friend or teacher to record audio for them, though, and that’s where RhinoSpike comes in.

The website provides a free platform for users to both request audio in the language they’re learning, and provide recordings for other language learners.  It’s as simple as pasting in the text that you want read aloud, choosing the language you want it in, and waiting for someone to respond.  You can customise your profile to include the language/s you’re learning and your native language, as well as add images and make friends.  Their interface makes it easy to see both your audio requests and the recordings you’ve done for others, and provides RSS feeds for both audio requests and recordings in whatever languages you choose.  Once your recording requests have been answered, you can download the mp3s, add your text to the lyrics or transcript, and listen to them whenever you want to.

The website strongly encourages people to only record requests for their native language, and even lets you define your accent so other people know what to expect from your recording.  There don’t seem to be a lot of users on the site yet, but they do cover a lot of languages, and it seems like most requests get responded to pretty quickly.  I’ve even done a few myself, but maybe I just like the sound of my own voice.

Give it a try and see what you think.  You can request anything from diary entries to articles, poems to songs.  Someone even requested a recording of the prime numbers from 0 to 2100.  Random.

Link via Language Museum.

I was booking some tickets for a trip to Europe recently when I stumbled across a hilarious yet useful free service provided by the airline Emirates.  Their iLingual iPhone application not only provides you with lots of useful phrases in French, Arabic, and German, but it lets you do it with your own mouth.

Hilariously, the first thing you need to do is take a picture of your own mouth, and calibrate it.  You can choose between male and female voices, and even change the pitch to make it sound higher or lower.  Then, you simply select the phrase you want, and hold your phone in front of your mouth, and iLingual makes it seem like you are speaking in another language.

It’s not just for laughs, either.  The full versions have over 400 travel-related sentences, and the lite versions can be downloaded directly to your iPhone.  That’s a pretty solid phrasebook, if you ask me.

Also, with most electronic phrasebooks (which usually only have a few phrases anyway), you select your phrase, and then you and the listener both have to sort of just stare at your phone and wait for it to make a noise.  With iLingual, you can laugh at yourself a little bit, and show the person you’re speaking to that you are not so arrogant as to expect them to communicate wholly in your native language.  I’d definitely expect a few stares, though!

Has anyone tried this app yet?  What are your thoughts?

As a student of Mandarin Chinese, I use the romanisation system pinyin to ’spell out’ the sound of Chinese characters, including their tones.  Each tone marking shows what sound you should make for the vowels.  For a long time, I have been looking for an input engine that would allow me to type tones directly, instead of having to use letters and numbers, or go through a complicated special symbol input.  I wanted to be able to type something like e3 and come up with ě on the screen.  Until recently, my only options were to use the input engine NJStar (which works really well, except that the full version is really expensive), copy and paste special characters each time I wanted to use them, or create complicated macros which would only work in certain programs.

A while back, I thought I could use Texter, which is a tiny yet powerful text replacement program from Lifehacker.  Unfortunately it doesn’t support Unicode characters, which are the ones I wanted (although give it a go if you type the same things a lot and want shortcuts that work in all your programs).  I couldn’t find many other alternatives online, although I found a few other people online who had the same (pinyin writing) issues as me.

Then I found a link to PhraseExpress, another text replacement program, and I thought I’d give it a go.  Well, lo and behold, it works perfectly!  All you have to do is add your desired characters (e.g. ā) and the key combination you want to associate it with.  You can even add whole pages of text instead of just special characters, and export your shortcuts so you can use them on different computers.

I did have to fiddle a bit with the format of the shortcuts (you obviously have to use something which you don’t use anywhere else), but finally decided on using .[letter][tone number] as my template.  So now if I type “.i2,” I get “í”.  Magic!

If you have been wanting to type special characters in any language simply and quickly, I highly recommend downloading the PhraseExpress software.  It’s completely free for personal use.

If anyone has any additional comments or recommendations, that’s what the comments box is for!

With the script technology available these days, it’s uncommon for language learners to focus so much on the writing of languages like Japanese and Chinese.  All you need to do is recognise a character, and know what it sounds like, to be able to write it on a computer.  Even in my own study, I am trying to focus more on reading, listening, and speaking, as it seems like it will take a long time to rote learn individual characters.

On the flip side, learning how to write characters yourself helps make them more concrete in your mind, and can really help you understand them and their relationships to other words and characters.  A useful tool I’ve found to help you write Japanese or Chinese (on the computer, no less!) is Skritter.  With Skritter, you can practice writing characters on the screen, and the program can help you with stroke order as well as giving useful information about the characters and radicals.  It also provides a tracking service so you can see your progress, and focus more on characters that you are having trouble with.

They provide a two week full service trial for learners of Japanese and Chinese (both traditional and simplified), so if you want to improve your writing skills, check it out!

I came across a post on English Cafe (check/link) which talked about iPractice Obama English, an English learning service based entirely around Barack Obama’s presidential and senatorial speeches.  The post on English Cafe was a little bit incredulous, for the valid reason that the kind of language used in formal speeches like this is probably not what your average English learner will ever need to use in real life.

I thought I’d check it out, though, just to see what it was about.  They have a fairly good interface (in a downloadable program) which helps with reading and listening comprehension, as well as speaking practice.  They have a speech recognition engine that judges the learner’s speech and gives them a score.  Even though the language used might not be that helpful (unless maybe you are really really keen on American history and politics), President Obama has great enunciation and this program is sure to help English students with their listening comprehension.  Besides the speaking practice, there are also reading and listening comprehension questions to answer.  They seem to have a range of speech excerpts for free subscribers, and also premium services.

Check it out if you’re interested in English learning, politics, or are just an Obama fan.  The homepage may inspire you with just the low-angle headshot!

Note: I have tried to publish this and other posts several times, and they keep disappearing. I hope this time the post sticks to the blog!

Ever wanted to know what your beloved pet budgie was really trying to tell you?  Now, with the help of an Android-compatible phone, you might be able to find out.

Technology giant Google has finally released what animal lovers everywhere have been waiting for - Google Translate for Animals. Using their huge language database and state of the art technology, Google is able to help everyday people understand their pets, and many other animals they might meet.  Google Translate for Animals is now available in cat, dog, bird, rabbit, guinea pig, hamster, tortoise, horse, chicken, sheep, donkey, and pig.  Unfortunately they are only able to translate to English right now, but other human languages are in the pipeline.

If you’re lucky enough to have an Android phone, you can download the application and start talking to the animals right away!

I recently gave in and bought an iPod Touch, and it was, in all honesty, mostly so I could try out some of the hundreds of useful language-learning applications out there.  The incredible potential of having not only mp3s and podcasts, but dictionaries, flashcards, and other learning tools in your pocket is a little bit mind-blowing.

So, you will probably see a few reviews and recommendations for not just individual applications, but general good practices when using your iPhone (or Android).

This first one is a slightly alternative way to use a productivity tool.  I first downloaded the demo version of Use Your Handwriting (UYH) from Gee Whiz Stuff because it provided a seemingly novel way of jotting down notes and to do lists in your own handwriting (or fingerwriting).

After playing with it for a little bit, I realised that it would be an ideal way to practice my Chinese characters, as there’s a simple interface and a big writing/drawing area.  You can easily move to the next screen (it even does it for you if you want), and shake to erase if you’re unhappy with your writing.  If you turn the device vertically, you can write top-to-bottom and left-to-right like they used to do in the old days!  The paid version even has rainbow colours (although you can, of course, choose other ones), which are different for almost every stroke, so you can tell if you are doing them correctly.  It also lets you write long notes and has a very handy email function, so you can send your jottings to yourself, your teacher, or your friends.

If you’re a learner of a language with a non-roman script, I would highly recommend it for practicing your writing (get a stylus for even better results).  It’s also a good place to jot down characters or words that you see during the day but can’t look up immediately.  Or just general note-taking in bright colours!

Do you know any other good apps for this purpose, or language learning in general?

In my opinion, yes.  Google has an amazing ability to search and compare a whole lot more data than any other company in the business, and offers translations between a lot more languages.  Read on for some history and some interesting possible applications.

In a meeting at Google in 2004, the discussion turned to an e-mail message the company had received from a fan in South Korea. Sergey Brin, a Google founder, ran the message through an automatic translation service that the company had licensed.

The message said Google was a favorite search engine, but the result read: “The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing”

Brin said Google ought to be able to do better. Six years later, its free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate Web pages and other text.

“What you see on Google Translate is state of the art” in computer translations that are not limited to a particular subject area, said Alon Lavie, an associate research professor in the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world’s largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cell phone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation.

The concept of getting instant translation of a picture you take with a mobile phone is phenomenal, and it doesn’t seem like it will be too far away.

In the meantime, the headline of the original article could have done with a rewrite: “Google’s computer might betters translation tool” has tripped up a few people I’ve shared the article with.  The use of the word might (here used as a noun) has turned it into a garden path sentence.  When you read the first half of the sentence, you think that Google’s computer might do something, but then you get to ‘betters’ and think…what?

Source: CNET News.