Dia duit, hello!
Gearing up for St. Patrick’s day? For a wee bit o’fun in the pub, you can learn to speak Irish with Mango Languages!
Here’s an interesting culture note you can use to impress your friends over green beer!
Want to learn more? Mango Languages is available online at thousands of libraries across North America. Find Mango near you!
Do you speak Texan?
Mangoes traded the snowy Michigan weather for some southern hospitality (and sunshine) while attending ALA Midwinter 2012 in Dallas, Texas!
While we got a little taste of the south, we gave a taste of mango smoothies to stoppers-by at the Mango booth. Attendees could also check out demonstrations of the Mango iPhone app, Little Pim and learn some Hindi!
While we were sporting tie-dye and mango smoothie sugar-buzzes, we saw many wonderful familiar faces, made great new friends and heard inspiring language learning success stories.
We even got a short lesson in “Southern English” from a few true Texans, y’all!
Check out some pictures from our adventure and let us know: did you drop by the Mango Languages booth at ALA Midwinter in Dallas this year? Do you still remember how to say, “where is the bus station” in Hindi?
First, I have to say I LOVE my job. And this is one of those times that really reminds me how lucky I am to get to do what I do with such cool customers – Libraries.
Mango likes to have fun…and at the New York Library Association trade show we really like to do it up. Why? Because we have a serious reputation to uphold. We have won best booth for two years running and the themes of the shows keep getting better and better. This years theme is Libraries Rock. And we couldn’t agree more!
Libraries are centers of the community. They are Google, Amazon, and Starbucks all rolled into one super human hero of searching capabilities and knowledge. I read a tweet today from the #nyla11 Hashtag that said 60% of librarians had helped someone get a job this year. Libraries are helping to keep this country working too! Wow!
We are always humbled by the words of love that our customers give to us…we honestly love you too. We wouldn’t be here without you and say thank you for all you have given us! I know that I have made some wonderful librarian friends and can’t wait for next year’s theme and show to do it all again!
Libraries…YOU rock! Thanks for letting us be your groupies!
We were so excited when Lilia Mouma, our head linguist, came all the way from Greece to visit the Mango Grove for three weeks. We talk to her all the time via skype but having her here in person is awesome! Check out her welcome by the Elves! Warning…we are huggers!
Feature Friday:
We have had the pleasure of Gulshen’s presence at the Mango Grove since November of 2010. I recently talked to her about her background and found it super interesting.
Gulshen was born in Korla, People’s Republic of China. She moved to the U.S. in 1999 because her husband was going to graduate school here. She had learned English in college and had studied linguistics, specifically Turkic languages. Gulshen speaks Uyghur (her native tongue, a member of Turkic Language family), Mandarin Chinese, and English. She understands most of the Central Asian languages as well.
She loved the linguistic graduate program back in China as she learned about the history of her native language, why certain words are used and where many words are borrowed from. But when she moved to the U.S. she had to stop her linguistic studies, not many schools here specialize in Turkic languages. Hmmm…I wonder why. 
She started a family but made a promise to her dad to finish her Master’s degree.
After her son was born she applied to college here in the U.S. and decided to go into accounting. Crazy right!?! A friend of hers said she could get a good job in this field, so she thought she would give it a try. She ended up loving it and finished Schoolcraft College in August 2007 and transferred her credits to Walsh College in September 2007. She received her bachelor’s degree in accounting from Walsh College in December 2009.
She found Mango through an online job search and fell in love with the idea of working at a language company where both her passion for linguistics and her knowledge of accounting could be put into practice. Gulshen is The Numberist (number+linguist) who makes sense of our numbers and accounting here at Mango Languages. We are so glad to have her and her very rich background here at the Grove.
Do you use what you went to school for?
I’ve never seen an advertisement more powerful than this Louis Vuitton spot.
In fact, it gave me goose bumps.
Maybe it was the breath-taking images or the thought-provoking copy. Or maybe it was the fact that this ad expresses exactly what I’ve failed at expressing for years: how travel changes you.
What this ad doesn’t address, however, is how knowing another language changes you.
So much of who we are is based on how we express ourselves; what we say and how we say it. So, when we express ourselves in a new language, it’s like creating a whole new version of ourselves. When we can understand others in a new language is when we broaden our perspectives.
Here’s my stance:
Going on a journey is amazing.
Communicating in another language is amazing.
Going on a journey + communicating in the native language = life changing.
What do you think, does the person create the journey or does the journey create the person? Tell us about how a journey or speaking another language has changed you!
Earlier this week Jane (government ambassador) and I visited the nation’s capitol to spend time with a few government customers, give a talk on alternative uses for a library degree (aka librarian gone vendor), and talk to a few potential mango customers.
First stop was Gallaudet University where we stayed. What a cool college…it is the world leader in liberal education and career development for deaf and hard of hearing students. They had a fantastic little shuttle that took us all over the city.
Second stop was dinner at Jaleao…and bonus it was resturant week…. OMG! We had a five course Spanish Tapas meal for a steal! We met some Mango friends and enjoyed wonderful conversation and the ambiance of a national landmark in Chinatown.
Third stop was to be complete tourists and enjoy the city by moonlight. We had both been to DC several times but never have enjoyed the monuments all a glow. We were both in awe of how grand and majestic the city was at night.
Fourth Stop was in the morning of the next day – we had to get some more delicious food. And stumbled upon the cutest little French cafe which transported us to Paris with its Cafe au Lait and Pan au Chocolate (chocolate filled croissant) and enchanting French music.
After we filled our tummies we headed over to the Library of Congress. Now if you are a Librarian this is the mothership of all libraries. I felt smarter just walking in. Jane gave a great panel presentation from a former medical librarian’s perspective and how she came to work for Mango…FYI she now wears a Hawaiian lei and tie dye t-shirt to work!After her awesome speech we had other meetings at the Library of Congress and got to walk in the underground tunnels between buildings and see the reading room on the 5th floor. The business library…it was so cool. It has an art deco influence and had the coolest carvings of owls.
Our last stop for the day was at the National Geographic Society. This was really cool! I am a travel addict and this was travelers dream. Books upon books on languages, places and maps of all around the world. I totally geeked out! They even had an exhibit on Machu Picchu which I hiked back in 2007. It is a beautiful place with amazing building skills. On top of all of that, we got to go to the Explorers Hall. Where the explorers used go to report on their exhibitions. All we could think about was the travels and stories that were shared in that room. Soooo amazing! People like Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall and so many more. WOW!
Our last visit was to Rand Corporation where we met two great librarians and chatted about world peace! Lots of great things happening there!
Overall, we had a great time, met some great people and have great memories. What is your favorite thing to do in DC?
We cannot tell you how much fun the Mango Mania Road Rally was for us! We loved all the videos, posts, tweets and the live fun we had at the ALA 2011 Mango booth and our VIP Party.
Who would have thought that a language learning program could motivate so many people in the community into doing random acts of kindness and random acts of craziness!
Check out the Mango Mania video to see the five teams who participated.
Who will be joining us next year?
There comes a time when you are trying to learn a foreign language that you feel you are not making any progress. You still make mistakes; you do not understand what native speakers tell you; you try to speak in the foreign language and they answer in English because they understand you are a novice and do not want to embarrass you, etc. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt that however hard you try there is still a lot to learn? Is there a point that you are utterly confused by the information that you have absorbed and do not know what is correct and what is wrong anymore? At that time you get frustrated and lose momentum; you get discouraged and you start thinking of giving up learning the language, which was maybe the dream of your life. Getting frustrated doesn’t help at all.
Language learning goes through stages or phases. At first you’re very happy and enthusiastic with your new free-time occupation. You are satisfied that you can greet, tell your name and talk a bit about yourself. And people around you start congratulating you on your progress. After that, you start working on more challenging stuff, a bit more grammar is involved too, lots of new words. Around that phase comes the frustration I’m talking about. Beyond the basics, you need to express some more complicated ideas but here your knowledge fails you. You know how to form good sentences; you have acquired a good amount of vocab; but sometimes when you try to construct a new sentence with what you know, it’s wrong because you are missing some new grammar rule or because “that’s not the way we speak.” How come? How many things do you still have to learn? How many more uses do these Japanese particles have? For how long do you still have to strive?
What is the best to do at such moments? Here are some tips:
Re-define your goals: Was your goal to be proficient in a year? This can be possibly achieved if the language you are learning is related to your mother tongue or to another language you are good at or if you learn languages easily, but most of the times this may be far fetched. Language learning takes a lot of time and actually never ends because languages change. Always remember this, because we still learn new words even in our native tongue. I have a friend who teases me on a regular basis by sending me a new word every now and again. At first I thought, “That can’t be true.” But then I thought that it’s only natural.
Try to improve your pronunciation: Try to sound natural. Imitate what you hear and how words and sentences are pronounced. Conquer the difficult sounds. Talk to yourself using the difficult words. Don’t worry if your housemates start thinking you have gone nuts when they see you going from room to room trying to pronounce the Arabic qaf. No native speaker will think of speaking to you in English again!
Listen to a song, watch a film, or read a book in the language you’re learning: I believe this will boost your morale. Choose something relatively easy – don’t go straight to the corresponding Shakespeare – and you will see that you understand some things and you can tell more or less what is going on in a song, film, or book. You’ll see how much progress you’ve made. This will keep you motivated.
And of course, Persevere: Our mind needs time to arrange the new information. Once it does, you will experience a real breakthrough. Keep listening and learning; your mind gets all this information, but you do not realize it. When it is ready, you will be able to speak and say whatever you want.
What other tips worked for you when learning a foreign language?
Check out this review posted on www.studentsavingbucks.blogspot.com!
“Mango Languages is an online language learning software that uses a fun and effective flashcard-type method to help you learn the basics of your chosen language. The software is extremely easy to navigate and the interface is rather simple. As soon as you open the program you choose your chapter and begin. I found it very easy to use. I chose to review Mango Languages in Mandarin, which is the most spoken dialect of Chinese. The software came packed with 10 chapters, which contained 81 lessons in total. Each chapter has a review at the end to recap what you were taught during the lessons in the chapter. During your lessons, you’ll be shown words or phrases (color-coded) that the narrator will have you repeat or remember. During this time you’ll hear the correct pronunciation and the pinyin for the words or phrases when you move your mouse over the words.” Read More…
