Tower of Babelfish
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Tips, tutorials and resources to aid you on your path towards fluency.

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    • Tag Archives: video

    When you forget a language: How to bring it back (and a video demonstration!)

    Forgetting.jpeg

    Forgetting.jpegA few months ago, I realized that I had forgotten a great deal of my French. My book was taking up 40-50 hours of every week, so I didn’t have extra time to study, and I didn’t really want to study French, either. This year is my Hungarian year, and what little time I have, I like to spend on that language. Languages benefit from focus, and so I try to avoid studying two of them at once.

    I needed some way to bring back my French without actually having to work at it, and I found it in the form of television.
    Continue reading →

    Video: The Sounds of French (aka “How to learn lots of new vowels”)

    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)

    The Vowels Video is done! Book Agent, pronunciation help, site updates, la la la.

    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.

    Man, videos take a long time!

    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