Mango Languages

Why do you learn a language?

While the end result may be the same for many language-learners, the motivation can be unique for every learner.

Below are three quotes that relate to  three different situations I found myself in this past week.

1.
“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.”
‒Flora Lewis

While catching up with an old friend from high school and mentioning where I worked, I was excited to hear that he had not only heard of Mango Languages, but he was also starting to use it, thanks to Mango Military through the US coastguard! He  shared his new goal to learn Spanish as a new dad and husband. It seemed random at first, as both him and his wife, and their families, all speak English. When I asked why, he told me that he wants to learn Spanish to be able to better communicate with the teachers at his son’s daycare.  It was great to see him making such an effort to ensure that communication was always clear for the well-being of his son, but it also was great to see that language-barriers don’t have to push people apart, in fact in this situation, it is only bringing people closer!

2.
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein

A friend from Mexico who recently moved to the United States for work asked me if I knew any fun and easy ways to learn a new language (Mango Languages!) so that his girlfriend who is still in Mexico could start learning English.  After telling him all about Mango Languages I realized that he also had a unique motivation for learning a different language; his future! It was touching to see that he thought about his girlfriend’s comfort and success as they contemplate their future together beyond their comfort zone and in a foreign country.

3.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
-Nelson Mandela

Hitting a little closer to home, my Turkish boyfriend’s parents, after hearing all about my new job at Mango Languages, wanted to know how and how fast they could start learning English. With my efforts to learn Turkish and their effort to learn English, I was excited at the prospect of us being able to communicate without needing a constant translator (the boyfriend ). I was also touched that they were willing to take time and put an effort into learning a language in order to be able to talk to me and my family. It also made me realize how much it would mean to them and to my boyfriend for me to be able to speak to them in their native language. Without doubt, my Turkish-learning experience continues!

After talking to these friends and family, I realized how extremely happy and thankful I was for being able to be a part of their language-learning experience. In the end, everyone has a different motivation for learning a language. Maybe it is out of necessity, or out of thirst for knowledge, or maybe its for love.  Whatever it may be, I hope you continue to find motivation and encouragement!

Let’s Talk About Organic Learning!

When I was trying to learn a foreign language in the past, there always seemed to be a rude awakening at the end of the course.  I could no longer acquire new information as soon as the course book ended, the audio tape finished, or the class was over. It was frustrating to know that I spent so much time trying to learn a language and couldn’t continue to build on what I knew after the intense learning method was over.

I wish Organic Learning was incorporated into the different language learning methods I used to try.

Mango’s organic learning lessons are designed to help users continue increasing their vocabulary and cultural insights outside of the Mango lessons! These lessons are focused on teaching you to ask a variety of useful questions and use vital communications that allow users to ask about a word they don’t know, request additional information about any given subject, get clarification from the person they are speaking to, and more. The more you implement organic learning, the more you’ll be able to learn after the end of the course!

Intuitive Language Construction integrates vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, culture, as well as comprehension and retention strategies into organic learning to make Mango a fun, easy, and incredibly effective resource for foreign language and ESL users!

We can’t teach you every single one of the thousands of vocabulary words that make up a certain language, but we can teach you how to find out this information as you use the language. For example, you may find yourself in Spain and not know the name for a specific fruit you want to buy at a farmer’s market.  After using Mango, you would be able to point to the fruit and say, “Come se dice (point to object) en Español?” which means, how do you say (this) in Spanish? (Literal traslation: What is this called in Spanish). Not only will you now learn the appropriate word, but this technique will allow you to engage in conversations and grow more confident in your communication skills.  It’s a win-win, if you ask me.

See it in action – try a lesson for free!

Also, watch our methodology video to see all the unique features of Mango Languages courses.

“Habla Espanol?”… “No, but I Do Speak Perl!”

To all the programmers and tech savvy people out there, this blog post is for you. Today we will be discussing languages. Yes, we here at Mango live and and breathe languages and one might ask, “What’s new about this blog post?” Well here goes.

Programming languages. A programming language is an artificial language designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine, to express algorithms precisely, or as a mode of human communication.

These languages don’t get enough credit, after all they are the reason we can provide our software to people around the world to learn foreign languages through the web. I’m talking about the C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. To many this might look like a bunch of letters and symbols and doesn’t mean much, but it should. This is the back end of all communication on the machine that you are using to read this blog.

Someone may not know Italian, Spanish, or Chinese (although they will once they start using Mango Languages) but they do know C++ and Ruby, does that make them bilingual/trilingual? It may not be a language spoken by a whole population from another country, instead it’s a language that not many even know about, which makes it pretty impressive if you ask me. Having talked to our geniuses who help put our programs together, it really does appear they speak a foreign language among themselves, through computers. Cool Stuff.

What are your thoughts? If you speak Java are you bilingual?

From Snail-Mail to Email

Hello Mango Fans.  This morning after talking to another fellow Mango about our study abroad experiences, it got me thinking about how technology has changed our lives. When he went on a study abroad trip a couple decades ago, communicating with people back home wasn’t as easy. One was left with the options of writing letters by hand and the occasional, expensive, landline phone call.  When I studied abroad last year in Madrid, I sent picture messages to my friends back home, updated my Facebook status through my Blackberry, and got to physically communicate with my family and friends for free with Skype.

We treat technology as a family member, even if that is a little co-dependent. You can’t blame us, though; it’s certainly made aspects of our lives easier!  We’re no longer forced to send letters through the postal service, book vacations through travel agents, shop in stores, visit the library for research material, or wait for our photos to be developed.  Thanks to technology, all of these activities can be performed either digitally or online.

Think about it, kids these days don’t have to get caught passing notes to each other, they can just text.  Instead of buying greeting cards at Hallmark we can send ecards for special occasions that get delivered instantaneously to multiple people. We are no longer bound to long-distance charges, either. Many folks have already kicked their landline phones to the curb and replaced them with Voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) and mobile phones.

With thousands of applications now available at our fingertips with the use of iPhones, Blackberrys , and other smartphones (including the Mango iPhone application), people are more addicted to their phones than ever before.  The world we live in is moving at, what feels like, the speed of light when it comes to technology. For the most part, however, technology does us more good than harm: it’s reconnected us with old college roommates, helped us learn foreign languages, and encouraged us to exercise.

As you read this blog on your iPad, laptop, smartphone, or even TV screen think about the ways technology has changed your life.

Maybe in a couple more decades, when students sign up for to study abroad they can be teleported across the pond any time they choose. We’ll see…

What Do You Mean?

In this post I would like to explore two subcategories of Linguistics: Semantics and Pragmatics. Semantics studies the meaning of words and sentences. The notion of meaning, however, has many facets. For example,  the words “unmarried man” and “bachelor” have the same meaning; the sentence, “The toothbrush has five legs” is meaningful only in a Lewis Carroll-like story; the sentence, “I saw her work” is ambiguous (“I saw her while she was working” or “I saw something she made”). The meaning of the two phrases in the sentence, “John killed Mary and Mary didn’t die” contradict each other.

A sentence can be well-structured but nevertheless meaningless. Let’s illustrate with the last example: “John killed Mary” is a well-structured sentence with a verb (killed), the subject  (John), and an object, the receiver of John’s action (Mary).  This is  meaningful: a male named John took the life of a female named Mary.  The same goes for the sentence, “Mary didn’t die.”  Their combination is a well-structured sentence with verbs, subjects, and objects in the correct order, but it is meaningless; this is due to the inherent meaning of the verb “kill,” which entails that the killed person has died for good and is 100% dead.  Semantics then is about the conditions a sentence has to meet in order to be meaningful.

Pragmatics on the other hand has to do with how we use meaningful, or sometimes even meaningless, sentences in order to communicate. And to communicate successfully, to understand and be understood, another factor plays the most important role: context, or everything that has to do with the circumstances in which a sentence is uttered.  For example, the sentence, “Can you open the window?”, a well-structured and meaningful sentence, can be interpreted as a question in which we ask the listener if he has the ability to open the window, or as a request for the listener to open the window.  How does the listener reach the correct interpretation? In our example, how does he understand if it is meant to be a question or a request?

According to Pragmatic theories which are based on Paul Grice (e.g. Relevance), we need to guess the speaker’s intentions, i.e., the reason why he is saying something. We put the speaker’s intentions in the right context, and we interpret the utterance. Let’s imagine we are in a stuffy room.  The listener interprets the sentence as a request, given the stuffiness of the air and guessing that the intention of the speaker is to ask him to do something.  Now imagine two burglars outside the house they want to break into. The listener interprets it as an ability question given the fact that they are outside and want to get into the house one way or another. Many times we do not make the right guess and we misinterpret the speaker’s intention, which leads to lack of communication.

We say one thing, but is that what we REALLY mean?

To Communicate Without Communicating: Is It Possible?

It is widely accepted that communication is needed for language learning.   Rooted in this idea is the communicative approach to second language acquisition, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).  Two main principles of CLT are: (1) the development of communicative competence, and (2) the supposition that communication is both an end and a means to language learning (Alcón, 2004).   Dell Hymes (1972) identifies the development of “communicative competence” as the main objective of CLT.

Communicative competence is really just a fancy term for the ability to communicate, that is, the ability to efficiently and appropriately use language in a given situation.  The idea that communication is both an end and a means to language learning is supported by additional research and theories such as Long’s Interaction Hypothesis.  As discussed in my previous blog post, Long argues that interaction and the fine tuning, or negotiation of meaning, of the target language input that occurs in conversational interaction is a driving force for language learning.

Communication is the main goal of using Mango.  Following the Communicative Approach to language learning and in agreement with Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, communication is both the end and means to language learning.  The Mango System applies this idea by beginning each chapter with an authentic conversation in the target language.  The student is then requested to use the target language as they learn it, either by repeating material that was taught or by creating new phrases/chunks out of previously learned material.  Once a chapter has been completed the student will then hear the initial conversation again.  So the Mango system begins with a conversation, provides input, solicits output, and then ends with a conversation, all of which are elements of communication.  With this we can see that Mango applies the concept of communication as a means and end to LL.

So what do you think?  Can you learn to communicate without communicating?

Language and Words

We usually understand language as an accumulation of words.

The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax was based on words; languages are sometimes referred to as richer or more complex on the basis of the number of words they contain; we usually pinpoint the differences between languages as differences on the word level: What is “apple” in English is “Apfel” in German, but it is “pomme” In French!!

This understanding of language is justified because language is the means of expressing our thoughts and thoughts are represented by words: words for tangible things, like “apple”, and words for abstract notions, like “liberty”. However, if every time we wanted to say something, we just uttered the words in any order, then communication would fail.

Remember also the example with computers from yesterday’s post: if language was just words, then why would it be difficult to make a database like a dictionary and just provide the right word every time we need to construct a sentence? Children need to learn the words of their language of course, but is it only with words that they learn when to say certain words.

Which words do you think have multiple meanings or should be simplified?