Mango Languages

New Language, New Perspective on Life

To have another language is to possess a second soul. –Charlemagne

The soul of a person is the essence of who that person is.  That essence is shaped by life experiences and cultural norms.  Language provides us with a way to organize and symbolically represent all of the experiences and cultural influences that define who we are.  When we acquire another language something amazing happens.  We open up wonderful opportunities that would have never been available to us in the past.  We open up the possibility of meeting new and interesting people from other countries with different life experiences and different cultural norms.  We learn to think in new ways thereby deeply enriching our lives with new and amazing experiences.  This fresh way of thinking is uniquely born from understanding a new language and culture.  When I speak another language, I take on many of the characteristics of native speakers of that language including hand gestures and body language.  I feel like a new person.  I feel like a different person.  I feel like a person with a second soul.

How do YOU understand Charlemagne’s quote?

A Happy Chinese New Year at Mango Languages!

We recently welcomed Jamie Zhang to our team as our new accountant.  Jamie was very excited to join the Slice of Mango DJ’s as we learned how to say “Happy New Year” several different ways in Mandarin.  Here are a couple of ways you can say “Happy New Year”:
过年好！
Guò nián hǎo!
Happy New Year! (This is the more traditional greeting and can only be used for the Chinese New Year)

过‭ (‬guò) – to spend time
年 (nián) – year
好 (hǎo) – good

—————–

新年好！
Xīn nián hǎo!
Happy New Year! (This is a more generic greeting and can be used on January 1st as well as the Chinese new year)

新‭ (‬xīn) – new
年 (nián) – year
好 (hǎo) – good

——————–

过年啦 ！
Guò nián la!
It’s New Year! (this is said with enthusiasm to exclaim that the new year has arrived)

过‭ (‬guò) – to spend time
年 (nián) – year
啦 (la) – grammatical particle

Take a listen as the DJ’s “learn” a bit of Mandarin!

guo_nien_la

Mongol Rally – A Worthy Charity

Some friends of Mango are journeying across 1/3 of the earth’s terrain to raise money for charity.  They are raising money to support various educational, sanitation, and medical projects throughout the country of Mongolia through Mercy Corps.  The money will also support the building of a new kindergarten in a remote area of the country.  To learn more about their charity please visit their website at http://www.mongolrallyguys.com.  Even the smallest donations are greatly appreciated and will support this worthy cause.

American Library Association Annual Conference

Well, it’s that time of year again.  ALA.  You can feel the buzz in the air.  Everyone around here at Mango is getting geared up to go to Chicago this week for the ALA Annual Conference.  This show is going to be very special.  We have a lot of great things that we are very excited to show off.  Yes, of course, we are going to have wonderful music from around the world and dancers performing engaging international dance styles such as Brazilian Capoeira.  And naturally we will be serving the world’s greatest Mango smoothies.  But all that is just icing on the cake.  We are really there for one main reason; to show you that we listen to you and have been listening to your feedback all along.

Ever since we entered the library market we have received great feedback from libraries and library patrons on ways to improve our product.  We have also received requests for many new languages.  We will be unveiling the latest incarnation of the Mango Language Learning system at the conference.  The geniuses in our marketing department decided to call it “Mango 2.0″.  You will see that it is rich with new features, a beautiful new makeover, an enhanced pedagogy, and many new languages.  You will be pleasantly surprised to find that almost all of the feedback that you have given us has been accounted for in a significant way in Mango 2.0.  Furthermore, we will be demonstrating our new library administration portal designed specifically for our library accounts.

If you are coming to the ALA Conference be sure to visit us at booth # 4827 and remember to ask for your Free Mango T-Shirt (in any language other than English).  We look forward to seeing you there.

- Jason Teshuba