Mango Languages

Mango Monday: Do you speak Texan?

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?

Announcing our new Polish language course

Dzień dobry! (Good Afternoon, in Polish).

We are very excited to announce the release of our Polish course to all our library customers and patrons. The course is now available as part of language offerings in libraries with a Mango subscription.

Here’s a little information about the Polish language: Polish is in the subgroup of the West Slavic Languages, it is used throughout Poland  (being that country’s official language) and also by Polish minorities in other countries, like in the United States.

Despite the pressure of non-Polish administrations in Poland, who have often attempted to suppress the Polish language, a rich literature has developed over the centuries, and the language is currently the largest, in terms of speakers, of the West Slavic group. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian. How interesting.

With this new addition, Mango’s language offering now stands at over 40 languages. Mango also offers 16 English as a Second Language courses.

Want to know more about Polish culture? (Let’s be honest, who doesn’t.)

Check out this site for information about Polish history, travel and culture.

Interested in learning Polish? Want to know if your library offers Mango Languages? We can help you with all of that!

Go to www.findmango.com to see if your library offers Mango Languages. All you need is your library card to start learning Polish or any of the languages Mango offers.

Happy Learning!

Mango Monday: Using Mango

Mango Monday: Using Mango

Thanks to the Shortgrass Library System for creating this video showing their patrons how to access Mango and highlighting some of the features of the program that help you learn a foreign language.

What’s your favorite feature of the Mango program? Are there others you would like to see?

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