Dynamic Language Blog

When visiting different countries, it can be difficult to talk to the natives when you don't know the main language. Many people in other countries may speak some English, but some don't, and others may look down on visitors who don't bother to learn their language.

American Sign Language (ASL) originated more than 200 years ago, is the 3rd most common language in the United States and is used by over 500,000 people in North America, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

Language Learning Goes Mobile

One of the inevitable challenges of learning a new language or honing your language fluency skills is not having the “intuition” that comes naturally to native speakers. Most of us have had the frustrating experience of trying to find the meanings of words by plugging text into machine-translation services or searching in dictionaries, only to find terms that are either outdated or not used in casual conversation. We are often left with more questions than when we started! 

In May, Adweek posted an article about language learning that we absolutely loved! We recommend you read the full article, but here’s a quick summary: a school in Brazil connected young teens who wanted to practice English with elderly Americans in retirement homes looking for a little companionship.

Below is a video featuring some of the participants. Warning: it may bring a tear to your eye!

Many of us know what the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)is – sort of. You’ve probably seen it in a dictionary before – characters slightly resembling the English alphabet written to the right of a word, e.g. \fə-ˈne-tik\. Many know that it explains how to pronounce the word. Very few of us actually know how to read these characters, however, as the IPA is largely ignored by the average citizen. It’s a shame, because knowing the IPA has great benefits!

The below video features Chris Lonsdale, creator of Kungfu English and author of The Third Ear, explaining how anyone can learn and become fluent in a second language within six months.

The creators of Memrise – a free, online language learning program – have recently released a wonderful app called CatAcademy. The app, which teaches Spanish through entertaining pictures of cats, is quite ingenious and definitely worth downloading for anyone wanting to learn the basics of the language.

Language learners are blessed with a plethora of wonderful, online resources for studying. Today we are taking a brief look at three of the most popular sites for language learning: Mango Languages, Duolingo, and LiveMocha. Each program was tested by spending about ten minutes on an introductory Spanish lesson.