Mango Languages

Galavanting Review

Check out this latest product review from www.gogalavanting.com!

“It’s the New Year, but you knew that. You’ve got a ton of resolutions, from losing weight to traveling more. You probably also have a few productivity goals, or at least a hopeful urging to be more productive. And then, of course, there’s the always lofty “learn a language,” which, why not? The bragging rights (don’t lie: it has crossed your mind), the sense of satisfaction and comfort at being able to communicate in a foreign tongue… Learning a foreign language is probably the best thing a traveler can do for herself.” Learn More…

Ja makin’ me crazy

On vacation, I thought I was leaving behind my Mango friends and going to have a break from language learning. I love languages. I always want to know what folks are saying if I hear a foreign tongue. Lucky for me…I learned about a whole new language while on vacation. One of the crew members on my cruise last week was Jamaican. He was in charge of many of the activities on board. I heard him speak all week and he was easily understood, then I witnessed him speaking to a co-worker and didn’t understand but a few words. I was excited because I thought it sounded like creole and he confirmed it. But what I didn’t know was that there is such a language called Jamaican. Yep, I know…crazy!

Per wikipedia: “Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois (Patwa) or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English. The language developed in the 17th century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken by their masters: British English, Scots and Hiberno English.”

Just goes to show that even a language loving gal like myself can learn a few things everyday! So cool.

What languages have you encountered that you didn’t even know existed?

Student Saving Bucks Review

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…

Oakland County Moms Review

Check out this review on the Oakland County Moms website!

“My parents are bilingual, as are many of my relatives. I have tried all my life to learn how to speak the Italian language, and I must admit, I wouldn’t survive a day trying to get around in Italy.

I recently tried Mango Passport, a language learning tool that I downloaded from the Mango Languages website. I chose Italian, and I got to work.

What I really like about Mango:

-You don’t have to leave your house

-You can work at your own pace, unlike a classroom setting

-The set up is very effective – more on this later

-Kids love it

Finally, I found a language learning tool that is convenient for me. The set up of the Mango language lessons is very effective. You would really have to see it for yourself to understand how I am trying to explain it, but I will do my best to give you a good idea. You scroll through lessons. Each subsequent lesson builds on the previous language lesson. Read More…

patch news article 8

People aspire to learn a new language for many reasons; work, travel, studying abroad. Whatever your reason, there’s a Farmington Hills company ready to teach.

Mango Languages, which has been serving the library market, K-12 school systems, universities and government, has launched new software called “Mango Passport” with the average traveler in mind. After receiving numerous requests for a retail version of their program, the company decided to expand its customer base, offering language learning software you can use at your own pace. Read More…

“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?

Education World Review

Need to brush up on a foreign language? Mango is the place to go to learn foreign language at your own pace and in a fun and engaging way. Schools, if willing to pay the fee, can use this site to provide teachers with additional resources for their classrooms. The general public can use it to simply learn a new language. Read more…

Mango Languages for K-12 Students

Mango has been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our Educator Edition that is currently being made available to our K-12 customers and higher educational facilities.  This new edition has some very exciting functionality designed specifically with students and teachers in mind.  One cool feature is the ability to track students’ usage as they progress through the Mango lessons.

Teachers can segment their student population into virtual classrooms, making it extremely easy to track different groups of students. They can name their virtual classrooms any name they wish and view small portions of students with whom they are actively involved.  Once inside the virtual classroom, each student has their own set of statistics to view including which language they are using, which lessons they have attempted, and how long they have spent on each lesson.  Teachers now have the ability to assign Mango as homework with our unlimited remote access feature, and they can actually see which students are completing the selected lessons!

This is just one of the features that makes our Educator Edition such an effective tool to help teachers share their love of language learning with their students.  Teacher feedback was critical to the design of this unique interface, and it their suggestions have also put Mango to work on our assessment feature and custom lessons.  Think of all the tools you have available in your school for language learning:  can you think of other features that we could include to make it even better? What kinds of features do you wish you had had as a student when you were learning a foreign language in your school?

LA Times Award

Recommended by LA Times Travel as an online language learning resource for travelers.

Webware Award

“It’s clear that a lot of work went into Mango’s compendium of online language lessons.”