I’ve been fielding questions about my methods for Hungarian and how they might work for a less phonetic language like French, with multiple ways of spelling a single sound. Today, I made a 44-card sample deck for French, which you’re welcome to download and use as a model here.
The sample deck includes 3 chunks:
First, the update: The book is chugging along, and will take substantially longer than I had predicted (and will be much better for it!). So far, I’ve gotten my thoughts, theories and research down on Memory, Pronunciation, Word Learning, Grammar, Vocabulary lists and Mnemonic Use, and the next step (aside from some remaining research and thoughts on Reading/Writing/Listening/Speaking) is reworking it into a friendly, clear presentation that’s an enjoyable book to read (and not a textbook). As we start cutting textbooky sections out of the book, I’ll be posting them here.
My current goal, aside from finishing the book, is to provide some high quality pronunciation tools here, because there’s just not very much available that’s easy to use and effective.
The first French video is done, and it should be helpful for learners of any language. French is an extremely vowel-heavy language, and the stuff I recommend in this video for developing those vowel sounds in your ear/mouth will be applicable to any new vowels.
Here’s the link (or go to YouTube directly)
Video News: The last English Pronunciation and International Phonetic Alphabet video is done! Check it out here (or directly on YouTube). Future videos plans in the short term include: French/German/Italian Pronunciation. Medium term: Russian Pronunciation. Longer term: Who knows!
Pronunciation Help: Once you’ve seen the vowel video, you can use these charts to compare your target language’s vowels to your own vowels.
Book News: We’re represented! The wonderful Lisa DiMona at Lark Productions is representing the book, and the final final proposal is just about ready!
Site Updates: A few minor repairs, corrections and organizational fixes. Added StumbleUpon buttons (go click them! Yay!). A reader found a nice concise Spanish pronunciation guide that I’ve added to the Spanish section. I’ve found some neat Chinese resources (for learning tones and entering characters), and I’ve put them up on the Learn Mandarin Chinese page.
Wow I’m pooped. Ok here’s what’s new:
• The next pronunciation video is done. Check it out here. (or here for the direct youtube link)
• The video page has been completely redone; it’s a lot friendlier.
• The Tower of Babelfish Store is officially open, with its first product. (!) As a thanks for helping to test out the store and see if I set it up at all correctly, the first 5 people who use the discount code Test_My_Shop will get a 33.33% discount. 
[Update: Store doesn't like being in frames. I think I've found all the links that put it in frames and killed them - please let me know if you find one I missed! (thank you Mark)]
• The first product is an English Pronunciation Anki deck, which covers all of the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols that are found in the English language, as well as recordings for each sound. Here’s a note about the decision to sell Anki decks here. [demo link fixed - thanks David!]
• Contact form has been changed to a WordPress plugin
• All the social networking buttons now bookmark the individual pages they’re on, so if you click the Facebook share button on the Learn Italian page, it’ll share the Italian page to Facebook.
• Video tutorial for importing compressed decks with media files into Anki (like the English Pronunciation deck) has been added.
• CSSEdit is a magical thing! Wordpress portions of site now look like the rest of the site!
• Facebook like buttons e v e r y w h e r e
• Navigation menu replaced with something that should be a bit more browser/platform compatible
• Sidebar now works, as does search function.
If you find something broken, please let me know! I’ve changed at least 2 things on every page of the site and I imagine something got messed up.
That’s all! Cheers -Gabe
Thanks to readers for picking up a few link errors and things! I’m still working on English Pronunciation tutorial #2, and I hope to have it done soonish. Anyone looking for Anki decks should look at the bottom of French, Italian and Russian to find the link to the disclaimer.
Alright, 3 videos done, 3-4 to go this week. These take an enormous amount of work! I’m kind of shocked! Anyways, I hope they’re helpful! I’ve covered:
1: How to install and set up Anki/Ankiweb/Dropbox (Mac version) 2: The basic idea - how to start making your picture cards 3: First tutorial on English pronunciation and the International Phonetic Alphabet (Voicing and Place)
Videos 1-2 are up, #3 needs some tweaking and will be up this weekend. Still on the docket:
Tutorial 2 on Pronunciation: Manner/The English Consonants Tutorial 3 on Pronunciation: Intro to Vowels 1 Tutorial 4 on Pronunciation: Intro to Vowels 2
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