Do you want a different language combination adding to Learn10?
We can provide any language pair. All you need to do is pay a 200 USD fee, which will give you premium membership to Learn10 for 2 years, and tell us which language combination you need (sourced from translatorscafe.com). We will then have the language you choose added within 7 days, including a transliteration if necessary (western style spelling).
No time to learn? How does 30 seconds grab you? You have no excuses! If you have time for nothing else today, try the test. This free, quick test will ensure that you’ve processed today’s words & will help you to recall them in the future.
You start with 100%, race against the clock and loose 2.5% for any incorrect answer. For each word, you are given four possible answers, and only one is a translation of the word you are learning. If you are in the top 10, your username goes on to the the scoreboard, and you can publish your results on Facebook if you feel like challenging your friends.
To start the test, visit the widget (on Facebook or the Learn10 website), and click on the test icon - a circle with a tick (third left below the Main Menu bar).
The test works well on the iPhone, so next time you have a spare 30 seconds; avoiding an ad break, waiting for windows to boot, the kettle to boil or your significant other to leave the house… give it a go.
We are receiving many requests for additional materials from Learn10. If you have requests, please join the debate at getsatisfaction.
At present we offer a range of features which can be accessed via the widget (on the Learn10.com website etc.), including gender & examples of words in use (live examples of the words in use by native speakers, in sentences pulled from Twitter). Click on the magnifying glass icon next to the word to access extra information.
Are you a blogging language teacher who would like to contribute by working our daily words into your lessons? Or could you construct materials around the lists? Can you spin out the tenses of a verb? Make a simple test? Give some tips on how to remember the appropriate article? Or do you have your own ideas to share? If yes, we would love to direct our members to you by adding your URL to our directory of relevant language sites. Contact us on support@learn10.com with details of your blog.
(P.S. MF - stands for Modern Foreign)
Ada Lovelace Day is a blogging event created by Suw Charman-Anderson:
“Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to.”
There are a couple of people I would like to mention locally: Tania Le Moigne is the boss of Google cz and Jane Gilson is the CEO of Microsoft in the Czech Republic. It is particularly important to see these people in leadership roles in tech companies in the Czech Republic.
As I’ve said elsewhere - at the last TechCrunch meetup in Prague, one of the participants in the pitch-off claimed that his product was “so easy that your wife could use it”! He clearly wasn’t addressing his comments to the men in the room who are married to software developers. And he definitely wasn’t talking to the women in the room - who made up maybe 1% of the total head count.
Strong gender stereotypes* exist in the Czech Republic. I hear my students say things that people of a similar age in the UK would definitely not: ‘I’m not going to hire any more women because they’re not technical’ for example. I argue that by making assumptions about abilities based on gender, we are removing 50% of the potential pool of talent in a country which has a small population to start with.
As well as business leaders such as Tania and Jane, I also want to highlight the achievements of the women involved in Girl Geek Dinners CZ: typically women who are going against the grain to follow their vocation in IT in the Czech Republic. If you would like to meet some of the Girl Geeks in the Czech Republic, we shall be gathering on Thursday for our monthly Girl Geek Dinner meeting.
* A false friend is a word that looks like an English word but has a very different function. When I start conversations about stereotypes, my Czech English students launch into a description of their daily itinery - talking about their schedules or their general habits - things that are repeated and unchanged. This is a dangerous false friend. Consider the statement “Stereotypes of Black people and women are negative and harmful” bearing this in mind.
We have made many changes to our project since we started out with our prototype -LearnItLists - twelve months ago. Many of the developments have been based on the ideas and feedback from our members.
If you have a spare minute, you might like to explore Learn10 on your iPhone, on Facebook or by visiting us at Learn10.com. To see what features are available, click on the main menu button at the bottom of the word list, or click on the L10 logo in the top left corner of the widget.
Each feature in the list under the main menu has a little picture by the side of it. These are the same pictures we use for the symbols on the short-cut buttons, so that you can navigate quickly around the widget. To close any page and return to the word list, click the X in the top right hand corner below the date.
If you have any questions you can contact us on GetSatisfaction.
Apart from Spanish, what other languages can you study with Learn10?
We now have: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish & Welsh.
If you would like to change your language settings, visit the Learn10 widget (either on our site, Facebook, your igoogle homepage or elsewhere). Once you are signed in on the widget, there is a link called ‘profile’ on the top line. Click on this and you should see ‘language settings’ half way down the page. Select a different language under ‘I am learning’.
In recent weeks we have added Welsh and Hindi. If you are a fluent Welsh or Hindi speaker we would be delighted if you could make some recordings for other members to learn from.
We are also experimenting with Afrikaans, Esperant0, Latin & Tagalog and hope to be able to add these languages soon.
It is possible to add any language combination if you are willing to pre-pay for a two year subscription to Learn10 for $200 US. We will then provide a qualified, human powered translation to be added to Learn10, with transliteration where necessary (western style spelling). The list of available languages can be found here.
What do you think? Join the debate on the blog.
We have had some great feedback about the auto translated email text. And by great, I mean entertaining or informative, rather than positive.
Our problem is that we do not have a budget for translating the emails and website text until we have enough premium subscribers or an investor. We decided that for most people, understanding something is better than nothing. Unfortunately, as some members have pointed out, Google Translate is better at some languages than other. For example Turkish and Serbian Cyrillic are particularly poor:
“Google Translate is not mature enough for Turkish at this level.”
“I am from Serbia, and when I opened learn10.com I saw it “translated” into Serbian Cyrillic. I actually had a good laugh, because 95% of the translations are very wrong and very funny
Serbian is a complicated language with sometimes very unusual word order and a complex grammar, and these kinds of literal translations only sound funny
“Your Spanish Google-translated emails are nice and funny!”
Our temporary solution is to now send the email in English with an approximate translation (powered by Google Translate) beneath each paragraph. This should mean that members can ‘get the gist’ of the message, even if the translation is not perfect.
What do you think about the machine translated email text? Should we remove some languages completely?
10 ways to learn a new language for free
Nicola Robinsonova is a business English coach who, when not teaching English (or learning Czech), spends her time researching and developing tools for language learners (such as learn10). She says:
‘It’s hard to comprehend how delightful it is to be able to speak a second language. I went to a typical comprehensive school in the UK and was completely turned off languages - so much so that I cheated on my option sheet to avoid taking any language qualification. The Internet and technology labelled ‘web 2.0′ have transformed language learning opportunities so that it can be a pleasure even for people who never thrived with classroom learning. ‘
Here is Nicola’s guide to studying a foreign language for free:
Take the path of least resistance. Though there is no way round the fact that learning a language takes time, that doesn’t mean it should be difficult. If you find a way of learning which is fun, you’re far more likely to put in the time. Luckily there are loads of great, free resources now available on the Internet. So experiment with some of the different sites available and see what you enjoy most.
Explore. There are many different types of sites for language learners because web 2.0 technology is so perfectly suited to helping you learn a new language. I have organised a tour of some of them here, and I’ve put together a directory of sites that might be useful on learn10.
Label things. Post-it notes are your friends - use them wantonly. Use them to label things (nouns) around you. Our brains are pre-wired to learn languages. As babies we learn the words for the things around us first, then actions (verbs), and after this start putting words together to form sentences. Natural language acquisition just happens without us studying grammar.
Remember the 80:20 rule. To be time effective, you need to be a pragmatic learner. You will learn more in the end by concentrating on the easy 80% of content rather than spending 80% of your time on the things you find difficult. Those who speak English as a second language have to dedicate years of hard work to attain the high level of grammar which is natural to native English speakers, and even these ‘experts’ make mistakes.
Listen without worrying. I advise all my English students to listen to BBC Radio 4 whenever they can. Right now I’m listening to Cesky Rozhlas 2 - the talk radio channel in the Czech Republic. I don’t understand every word, but it’s helping me develop a sense of the rhythm and sound of the language. In time I’m comprehending more and more and recognising which words occur frequently. I met a student who hadn’t studied English for years apart from listening to the BBC every day, she had perfect pronunciation and a great vocabulary.
Learn what’s important - common phrases and the 1000 most frequently used words. Once you’ve got the first 1000 words and a few phrases you’ll be able to make yourself understood - even though you might not understand everything that’s said to you. If you learn 10 words a day, you’ll get to this stage in about 3 months.
Talk, talk, talk. Once you know a few words and phrases you can use sites like italki.com to meet native speakers of the language you are learning in order to do a language swap. However, if you can’t meet in person, you can use video phone systems such as Skype or a Multi User Virtual Environments - such as Second Life - my current favourite place to hang out and speak Czech.
Remember how to remember. In order to retain new words you will need to review them. Our brains classify information by how important it appears to be. If we remembered everything we would not be able to function! The ideal time to review material is after 2,10,30 and 60 days - so that new learning goes from the ‘temporary recall’ draw in our brains to the ‘permanent’ section.
Make learning a habit. It takes less than a month to create a habit if you do something every day. I dedicate time to learning Czech when I first wake up in the morning (as this is my best learning time). I use learn10 on my iPhone to learn, test and revise a list of 10 words for the day. I then see the same vocabulary on my computer’s screensaver. The daily email and Twitter posts helped me create the habit without having to really think about it.
Good luck, and more importantly, enjoy!
ENDS
