Mango Languages

French Canadian is Here!

Today is July 1st, which means it’s Canada Day. In celebration of this holiday Mango has launched French Canadian!

The differences between Canadian and standard European French are analogous to the differences between American and British English or the Swedish of Sweden and the Swedish of Finland. They are mutually intelligible, but there are some interesting differences, especially in vocabulary. Mango makes it easier for you: we now offer both.

Here is a brief timeline of the French influence in present day Canada: New France in Canada, the St. Lawrence valley, was the historic homeland of the French Canadian people in the time of New France. It corresponds to the southern part of modern Quebec excluding the Eastern Township. Later it had various names: the Province of Quebec (1763), Lower Canada (1791), Canada East  (1840), and finally the Province of Quebec (1867) again.

There are nearly 6 million French Canadian speakers living throughout Canada and North America, with the majority of that population residing in the province of Quebec. With a little help from Mango’s new French Canadian language course,  patrons will be soaking up the general joie de vivre in Montreal, touring the many historic points of interest scattered throughout Quebec City, or reconnecting with their Québécois heritage.

Ready to check it out? On your library’s website, log into Mango Languages to access the French Canadian course and start learning!

Enjoy!

Learn to Speak Pirate

We are so excited to announce that the Mango Pirate Language Course is here!

Ahoy mateys! If it’s pirate chatter ye be after, you’ve come to the right place. Mango’s Pirate Language Course will teach you everything you need to know to “parley” in perfect Pirate. It’s available for a limited time, and right now, it’s FREE!

In just a few minutes, you’ll learn:

• The appropriate way to hail your fellow gentlemen o’ fortune.
• A few choice names to call your lazy excuse of a crew.
• The finer points of swashbuckling.
• A bit about Pirate history, and the part it played in forming modern democracy.
• All sorts of practical Pirate lingo!

We had so much fun creating this course and along the way, got a little caught up in the life of a Pirate. Watch the footage of what the Mango Grove looked like when were were creating this course.

Looking forward for the Pirates of the Caribbean movie to come out later this month? Well now you can ACTUALLY understand everything that Johnny will be saying!

Just go to http://www.mangolanguages.com/store/pirate-day.html to start your Pirate Course for free!

Enjoy Mateys!

5 Ways to Make Language Learning Work for You

One of our linguist elves, Kimberly Cortes, wrote an article that was published today on www.HowToLearn.com. We are so excited about this!

The five ways to make foreign language learning work for you are listed here:

1. Get exposed!
2. Make it meaningful.
3. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
4. Practice active learning.
5. Make it fun!

To read the entire article, click here.

What ways do you make language learning work for you?

Mango Voice Talent

Have you ever aspired to be a voice-over talent? If you have an interesting and appealing voice, you would be a good candidate for the job.  Just imagine – getting paid for speaking!

Many people enjoy recording for commercials, television promos, animation, audio books, radio and in other fields. The voice-over talents are in a high demand in the language learning industry, especially foreign-language speakers.  However, those who think the voice-over work is a piece of cake are wrong! It is not just the ability to talk to the microphone and being able to create special effects in the recording software. Voice-over is a profession that requires lots of studying, training, practice and perseverance.

If studying is something you like to do, I will share a very easy tip on how to be a better voice talent: just smile! The specialists and instructors in the field have discovered that when a voice-talent is smiling while reading the script, his or her voice becomes more appealing and softer. That’s easy, right?

Have you ever worked as a voice-over talent?

Mango Elves Launch New Website

We are so excited to announce our new website. www.MangoLanguages.com

This has been a labor of love to all of our current customers and their requests. We tried to make it user friendly, fun to go through and helpful in finding the information you need. We have customized our new website to provide information for all of our markets and all of our fans. Our new website is all about about our passion for language learning and international communication. From cool graphics, getting to know the Mango elves, new product information, the Mango Blog, to our methodology and testimonials, the new www.MangoLanguages.com has it all.

Please take a look around…get comfortable, so you can watch the videos, click on links and let us know what you think! After all you helped us build it!

Please leave us a comment and share your impression of the site!

Video: Why Mango?

Ever want to know how the Mango Elves create our foreign language learning software? Well, sit back and enjoy this 5 minute video and meet several folks from the Mango team.

Video: Best Trip Ever Mango Languages Commercial

Want to see our product in action and see how you will be communicating with people in a foreign country? Then watch this video! We tweaked it slightly from our launch last week.

What do you think?

Coming Soon: A New Mango Website!

We are so excited to announce the launch of our new website. We have been busy working to improve  our existing website www.mangolanguages.com and have added all sorts of cool features to make it as fun and informative as possible. Our new website will launch with a new, more interactive interface.  It will be the place to find everything you need to know about Mango Languages!

The new site has been customized for each of the markets that we’re serving. You can look forward to getting more of information about our languages, products, customer service, FAQ’s, testimonials, and so much more. You can also learn about the elves that work here at Mango Languages. We basically live and breathe language learning around here, but we make sure to have fun doing it. You’ll have a chance to dive into the Mango Culture through videos about the unique people that are behind the creation and production of  the Mango Courses.

Ultimately we wanted to provide a website that allows everyone to see what we’re all about. Not only what and who Mango is, but how and why it works so well. You’ll be able to meet the owners and see what has inspired them to come up with what Mango Languages is today.

We’re very excited about this and hope you enjoy the new site. It’s coming in the next few weeks!

Now Everyone Can Learn a Foreign Language

A few weeks ago I attended a birthday party for a friend of the family. The house was full of kids and grandkids who all came to celebrate a special event. In between the main course and dessert I got to interact with the kids, playing charades, singing karaoke, playing hide and seek, etc. Seeing how the kids selectively communicated with each individual, fascinated me. Their parents were born in Russia and they were leaning Hebrew in school, yet they were born in the United States. It was “Zdrastvuyte” (hello in Russian) to all the guests, “Shalom” (hello in Hebrew) at school and “Hey, what’s up?” among friends.

This is exactly what I thought of when I found this article from USA Today, More children Learn More Than One Language. This article is all about children learning to speak multiple languages at a very young age in our globalized world.

“More and more people are aware of the importance of teaching another language to their child because we are in a global world,” says François Thibaut, who runs The Language Workshop for Children, which has nine schools around the East Coast.

Language study for children is based on immersion, he says. Kids sing songs and play games to help develop language comprehension skills. “This is a natural way of learning language.”

The articles goes on to state, that when children start learning languages at birth, they have the capacity to learn many languages at once without getting confused — because, as the brain develops, so too does the ability to separate one language from another.

Early language learning has been shown to enhance verbal development, as well as reading, writing, and social skills.  Now that Mango Languages offers Little Pim, a child doesn’t have to have an ethnic background to learn a foreign language.  Since we’ve launched Little Pim as part of Mango Languages earlier in the summer, kids ages 0-6 can learn foreign languages in a fun, easy, and effective way. Kids who know more than one language not only have the opportunity to think creatively in a different language but also more opportunities to express themselves through communication.  This is so exciting!

Intuitive Language Construction – Part VI Retention

We are excited to continue sharing our language learning methodology–we call it the linguistic science behind the Mango Languages Online Language Learning Software.

Doesn’t that sound really smart?

Intuitive Language Construction was developed after looking at current products on the market and listening to feedback from users.

The one thing we heard over and over is that they wanted a program that was fun, easy, completely integrated, and that included the following components:

1.Vocabulary (Click to see previous post)
2. Pronunciation (Click to see previous post)
3. Grammar (Click to see previous post)
4. Culture (Click to see previous post)
5. Comprehension (Click to see previous post)
6. Retention

In this post we are going to talk about the last component: Retention.  Mango’s simple yet powerful interface is designed to manage a variety of recognized retention challenges, including management of what’s known as cognitive load.

Doesn’t Cognitive Load sound scary?

Dont’ worry, with Mango, information is continually delivered in small, manageable conversational blocks–ensuring that the user’s memory is never overloaded with new material.

Mango also automatically accounts for “the forgetting curve” which is a naturally occurring part of learning something new.  Here is a great way to think about it….have you ever been to a party and been introduced to someone only to find that a moment later you go get something to drink and forget that person’s name?  You are not alone.  This is an example of the forgetting curve in action.

No worries!  With Mango, memory exercises are seamlessly integrated into new information throughout each course, reinforcing what you’ve already learned at key intervals and ensuring that those chunks can be committed to long term memory as the language lessons progress.

I know that when I learn something I want to be sure to remember it, especially when I work hard and use my precious time.  What about you?  What are your retention strategies?