With our feature in The Economist this week, we have been getting a lot of feedback asking us if we have plans for other language products. We thought this would be a good opportunity to put the polling plug-in back up on the blog and ask you:
{democracy:2}
If we neglected a language you are interested in, please let us know in the comments.
Thanks,
Hank.
中文 Chinese
john patrick Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 6:39 am
My vote is for Arabic, but I would also dig Korean, Portuguese, and Italian.
If you decide to do French, I’m sending a resume!
Other language: Tagalog!
Luís Oliveira Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Esperanto! Among other reasons, it’s actually a great language to get people interested in learning a third (or fourth) language.
Matt Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:40 am
German, Hebrew, Korean, Russian and Greek are my top choices. I would really love to have Korean, Hebrew and Greek most of all. Thanks!
Bazza 白锐 Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Cantonese should be an option.
FuDaWei Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
If I had my dearest wish, I’d jump at “Modern Hebrew”. Alas, I don’t think it would be cost-efficient for you and I suspect that most hardcore Hebrew fans would probably opt for the (very) pricey http://www.HebrewOnline.com, since it’s located in Israel.
Japanese is pretty well covered by our friends at JapanesePod101.com (mentioned in virtually every article about CPOD).
There are already good (but not great) podcasts for “French” and “Italian”. “German” doesn’t seem to have anything (surprisingly), but this is offset by a wealth of other online German language resources (mostly through Deutsche-Welle). Moreover, material for all of these favorites — as well as regular classes — are available most everywhere.
“Portuguese” is do-able. I don’t recall any strong podcasts for it, but I haven’t looked too hard. I can’t get too enthused about it personally, but others might.
“Russian” (again, surprisingly) does not have any significant podcasts. That’s definitely an open field. Seems to be declining a bit in demand since the breakup of the USSR, though.
“Arabic” definite has potential — but, like Spanish — you’ll have to make some tough decisions on which dialect to emphasize. Are you doing Eastern (closer to the current action) or Egyptian (a bit more widespread, thanks to the film industry and such). Do you attempt a neutral and artificial standard? Trying to please everyone invariably backfires.
“Korean” an interesting notion. I don’t think I’d go anywhere near it — too much on my Asian plate at the moment. I don’t think anyone else is really tackling it. Every site I’ve seen has petered out after a half dozen podcasts. I guess the bottom line here is “the bottom line”. Is there interest in it? I can’t gauge that. I have no idea.
I’ll add my own suggestion:
“Hindi” Just a thought. Bunches of people speak it. It’s starting to because a cenozure of business. Don’t know if there’d be interest or not, though. And English is widespread enough that it might ameliorate the need to learn it.
I’ll add a few more thoughts later … after AuntySue posts her suggestion for “CantoPod”.
:) 
goulnik (郭力毅) Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Chinese will keep me busy for the rest of my life, don’t need more, sorry (although Japanese would be of interest)
Henning Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Not many votes yet. I remember online votes at CPod with up to 1000 replies. The Blog is hidden to deep. You should put that vote back on the start (and/or the Connect page) where it belongs.
French is definately of high importance for your European audience. I still reget that I let that slip through my juvenile fingers when in school (languages always gave me a 头痛).
If you decide for German I would recommend it to some of our Mandarin speaking students. Right now when correcting exams, it definatly helps to know how Mandarin sentences are structured
Henning Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
FDW made a good point up there: Competition is a factor.
I send the SpanishSense-link to my sister a while ago, but she could not find the lessons. She did not expect them to be under “Explore” but under “lessons” (V3 terminology!).
After she tried around for a while she went to the local bookstore and bought a multimedia Spanish-DVD which was build around a tourist guide. She told me later that I do not need to give her any of my “techy recommendations” in the future.
With Chinese she would have had no alternative but to continue searching the site.
Brendan (Peeling Mandarin) Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
English!?
FuDaWei Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Here’s a list of the “30 Top World Languages”:
http://www.vistawide.com/langu.....guages.htm
Such lists are just approximations and depend on how one defines a language, so take it with a grain of salt.
Bazza 白锐 Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Punjabi would be interesting I think.
Hank Horkoff Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
We tend to focus on the US market, so we have been using the ADFL 2002 report of registered university students as a guide:
http://www.adfl.org/resources/enrollments.pdf (pdf link)
How about a video podcast teaching American Sign Language? According to the list, it appears to be more popular than Russian.
Henning Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Hank,
why? Isn’t significant part of your hardcore CPod users coming from outside the US? I do not think there is a clear “US market” in a global environment when you do not the need to distribute physical products.
And shouldn’t the longtail rationale suggest moving through the list in reverse order? But no Latin, please.
Hank Horkoff Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
@Henning,
We definitely have hardcore CPod users all over the world, but our fellow Chinese students in the US make up the biggest chunk with 40%.
Right now, we are just exploring some ideas and want to get everyone involved in the brainstorming.
AuntySue Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Cantonese, please! Cantonese.
Millions of speakers to practise with, and there’s no competition whatsoever.
pharmine Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I voted for Arabic, but I’m more interested in Cantonese. Learning Cantonese gives you the cultural background you need as you continue to learn Mandarin Chinese. Moreover, since ChinesePod is located in China, it can utilize the geographical advantage if it decides to take up Cantonese.
Perhaps the US market is not interested in Cantonese very much, unfortunately. I remember Ken once spoke against the possibility of ChinesePod doing Cantonese podcasts.
FuDaWei Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Maybe Ken should consider outsourcing Cantonese. Have someone else do the actual work (with their own equipment) within a framework resembling CPOD. He provides server space and puts it under the Praxis mantel — giving it immediate wide exposure. He monitors the quality and takes a cut. They indemnify him against lawsuits (should they fail to perform and he’s forced to drop it).
I’m sure there are other issues to consider. That’s a lawyer’s job. Thing is, this could work well for other languages that Praxis may not want direct involvement in, but wouldn’t mind show-casing under their banner.
Auntie Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
[QUOTE]
“Arabic” definite has potential — but, like Spanish — you’ll have to make some tough decisions on which dialect to emphasize. Are you doing Eastern (closer to the current action) or Egyptian (a bit more widespread, thanks to the film industry and such). Do you attempt a neutral and artificial standard? Trying to please everyone invariably backfires.
[/QUOTE]
I’m with FuDaWei on this; I voted for Arabic. Actually, I managed to vote TWICE for Arabic, the second time after I re-logged on (a bug?). But nobody is telling Ken, I hope…
The dialects thing is less hairy these days for Arabic, thanks to global TV networks such as Al-Jazeerah, which over the years has gotten Arab ears all over the planet used to listening to fairly neutral vernacular.
If CPOD does decide to explore Arabic, they would do well to hook up with a Jordanian partner. Jordan has plenty of experience in blending together diverse Arab traditions (50% Palestinian by now?). Take HM Queen Rania — she is Palestinian, was born in Kuwait, graduated from a fairly international college in Egypt (or was it Lebanon?), and worked as an executive in Jordan before she became Queen. The fact that Jordan lacks oil wealth means that it has had to look outwards, and does not have the luxury of being able to cling to particular local dialects or traditions in the way that, say, the Saudis are able to.
Cheers,
Auntie
Auntie Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
[QUOTE]
“Korean” an interesting notion. I don’t think I’d go anywhere near it — too much on my Asian plate at the moment. I don’t think anyone else is really tackling it. Every site I’ve seen has petered out after a half dozen podcasts. I guess the bottom line here is “the bottom line”. Is there interest in it? I can’t gauge that. I have no idea.
[/QUOTE]
As to Korean, Arirang TV has already done several seasons of really excellent 10-minute daily lessons for TV. Even if you don’t have Arirang via cable or satellite, ALL of the past lessons are available, on demand, on the website via streaming video. Korea is one of the most internet-savvy societies in the world, I think, so that’s not surprising.
Tianye Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I would love to see a TibetanPOD. In terms of the amount of people who actually speak this language it seems not as practical as something like Arabic or French. Yet, with the increase in tourism to Tibet, I could see tibetan being useful to people. I have searched the internet over and there are no good english resources for learning tibetan, so there wouldn’t be any competition in that arena. As with previous posts that have mentioned having to deal with dialectical differences, Tibetan would present a complicated situation considering that it has so many different dialects.
Bazza 白锐 Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
KlingonPod? LOL
Ken Carroll Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Fascinating. I think Henning’s ‘long tail’ approach is ingenious. Let me think about that one for a while.
Ken Carroll
FuDaWei Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
“Longtail” ??? Okay … what’s the “longtail approach”?
Andy Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I would pay double subscription prices in a heartbeat for Cantonese. Ppl seem to forget that 70 million people natively speak Cantonese.
Auntie Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Hello again. As an alternative to Hindi or Punjabi, how about Bangla/Bengali (230 million speakers)? Universally spoken in Bangladesh, and the second most important Asian language in India after Hindi. Also spoken all over the Middle East and SE Asia, both by Bangladeshi overseas workers as well as by Bengali families who put down roots many generations ago.
Apart from English, I can’t think of another official language in South Asia that is able to bridge borders so powerfully. The national anthems of BOTH India AND Bangladesh are sung in Bengali. It is said by some to be the living language with the strongest literary tradition in South Asia; think Rabindranath Tagore, who is revered both in India and in Bangladesh. In Cinema — Satyajit Ray. In music - Pandit Ravi Shankar, Anoushkar Shankar. In “life” — well, the Grameen Bank.
Hee hee…
Jimmy B Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Though I’ve been a vocal fan of Learn French By Podcast’s quality product, I do see that the CPod model could apply to French and be very useful… BUT I’d wait to see how things shake out on SpanishSense before tackling another Romance language (because the lessons you learn on Spanish will likely apply to Italian and French).
I do have concerns about German and Russian as Podcourses, since they are SO reliant on case structures, you’ll have to come up with some truly brilliant ways of implanting that knowledge. Even Pimsleur isn’t able to truly make it sticky the way they can with other languages (if you compare the “end point” on their different courses, German is easily the least far along by the end of the course).
Korean: JPod teased us months ago with the idea of a Korean series of courses, but they have yet to materialize… I think there’s something to the fact that it hasn’t taken off for anyone, but I’m not sure why.
I’m attracted to the idea of an Arabic pod, however… Even if I did vote for German above.
AZERDocMom 易新 Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Henning,
“And shouldn’t the longtail rationale suggest moving through the list in reverse order?” What does this mean?
Henning Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:55 am
AZERDocMom, FuDaWei,
playing Web-2.0 buzzword bingo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
This is one of the Web-2.0 terms I really find convincing - with CPod as a proof of concept.
Jimmy B,
what are “case structures”? I speak German all day long and do not see where it is different from other languages. It is very close to English, actually. I do not see why the podcasting approach should not work.
FuDaWei Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Henning … I think he means that the modular approach would be trickier for a case-intensive language. He’s kinda got a point too. It’s certainly do-able … but there are pitfalls.
(For the record, though I voted for “Russian”, I’d love to see a good German podcast. Be great to include Joachim & Anne somehow; they do a superlative job on the German CPOD Blog).
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:38 am
FuDaWei, Henning — that’s how I understood the point about “case structures” too. For an English speaker, learning your way around mein meine meiner meines meinen takes a lot of practice and drilling.
German is more highly inflected than English in the sense that the mutations are conditioned not only by number (singular, plural), but also by gender. Also, German uses very explicit case endings to indicate the dative and genitive cases, whereas in English this context tends to be implied using separate words. Eg. try putting “My mother’s youngest brother’s greatest fear was… ” into German. In English, the apostrophes take the place of genitive case endings, and they are invariable, not conditioned by gender etc. The “my” is not inflected to reflect the case, nor are words like “youngest”/ “greatest”. Am I delirious?
FuDaWei Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Throw the horse over the fence some hay.
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:44 am
That sounds like Yoda…
chris(mandarin_student) Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Cantonese please
You could possibly gain some mileage by re-jigging many of your scripts.
Jimmy B Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Fu and Auntie - thanks for clarifying my point: You explained what I was getting at much better than I was able to.
Brendan (Peeling Mandarin) Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Ah go on then. I have to say it. Gaelic. Ken - your Leaving Cert Gaeilge will finally serve a purpose.
I voted for Arabic - it’s so completely impenetrable to the the eye and ear that it’d make a juicy challenge.
vaftrudner Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Cantonese _really_ makes a lot of sense, if you think about it from a long tail perspective. There is, from what I can see, almost no competition at all, and it seems like a language which very many in your target demographic would love to learn. The way I see it, the people who have the patience and time and tech-savvy to learn a language online through podcasts probably overlap quite well with the people who have had the patience and time and tech-savvy to download hundreds of obscure and wonderful HK actions. And in every American town you probably have at least one bunch of geeks sitting in a dark basement watching John Woo or Wong Kar-Wai movies, so there’s easily enough people that are interested.
Elsie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:19 am
I’d love to see Turkish on your list of offered languages. I’ve been studying for 2 years with teachers in the SF Bay area, but the lessons are limited by schedules. Tapping into native Turkish teachers (located in Turkey or elsewhere) would be great.
Mr. Me Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 5:41 am
It’s not clear that you can replicate the success of ChinesePod in other languages. There are a number of factors that help make the ChinesePod approach successful for Chinese:
1. Chinese (Mandarin) has only one standard dialect (unlike Arabic, Spanish, etc.), and this avoids fragmenting your target audience.
2. Chinese is grammar-lite, and sentence structure often resembles that of English, so you can get by without presenting grammar lessons. This is a much bigger problem for other languages, much harder to avoid. I suppose SpanishSense is a testbed for that particular issue.
3. Chinese has no insurmountable pronunciation issues. Arabic, on the other hand, has one particular unique and notoriously difficult vowel, and Hindi has some consonants that are hard for non-native speakers to tell apart from one another, so you’d probably have to present some pronunciation material as well.
4. Chinese is considered a must-learn language by a lot of people who have money to spend. High-powered US executives are hiring Chinese-speaking nannies for their children, for example. From a financial point of view, it’s vital for ChinesePod to attract enough premium or practice plan upgrade customers, because that’s where the money is. Few other languages have that financial power of attraction. Many other languages are probably over-represented by the flat-broke-student demographic.
5. Chinese is also increasingly considered a must-learn language across large parts of East Asia, where (as the English-teaching industry illustrates) people are in general much more willing to spend money on cram school and extracurricular learning than in other parts of the world. You might do better hiring Japanese or Korean speaking staff and adapting and redoing existing ChinesePod lessons for those markets instead of teaching more languages to English speakers.
AuntySue Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Good points, Mr.Me. Of course they all apply to Cantonese too.
Around here, there’s business advantage to knowing Cantonese, even if you could only use it to understand what’s being said across the table. We do a lot of business with Hong Kong.
We also have a lot of young people who spoke Cantonese in the home, or rather, listened to it, and would like to improve their knowledge and ownership of the language. Cantonese is one of the most spoken languages in the home over here; we still have a lot of older migrants who speak only Cantonese; some Aussies speak various other forms of Chinese, however they all speak some Cantonese.
Surely all of that would apply to many other countries that have also had a long history of workers migrating from Southern China and Hong Kong. The UK is a special case because of Hong Kong.
Ken, here’s an idea. Remember you produced a week’s worth of sequenced introductory podcasts for Mandarin starters to get a foothold? When you decide on a short list of possible languages, how about producing a similar introductory week for each, then call it quits for a while and see which language gets the response? The no-shows can remain as a showcase of what you are capable of, including for special contract work, and when future world changes suddenly make one of those discarded languages popular, you’ll be more ready to launch it quickly, with some credibility already established and the URLs well known.
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Zhou sunn! I am heartened to read all the posts supporting CantonesePod. Aunty Sue’s idea of showcase introductory weeks is pretty brilliant.
Okay, this is not going to fit into Praxis’ “One Size Fits All Languages” innovative model, but: One reasonable way to get Cantonese in, is to offer a good conversion course to people who already have a prior knowledge of Mandarin, ie, the average CPOD subscriber.
This could be an extra feature in Premium. As a speaker of both Cantonese and Mandarin, I’d say that with a good teacher, it is actually more effective to maintain a degree of reference to Mandarin.
I base these comments on the only effective course I’ve used in Cantonese, is the out-of-print but still amazing,
Cantonese 400 course by Beijing Languages Institute.
In the audio, sentences are read in Cantonese, and then again in Mandarin. The well-written notes to each unit highlight the important syntactical and character differences between the two versions, as a way to introduce the student to the syntax and grammar unique to Cantonese.
The reason why it worked for me is that it taught me how to listen to Cantonese and deduce the equivalent Mandarin meaning (hence acquiring vocab even from what I heard outside the lessons), but at the same time giving a solid foundation in Cantonese syntax, solid enough to avoid the hilarious trap that many Mandarin-speaking learners fall into, which is to assume that there is a word-to-word correspondence between the two languages. An added advantage, I discovered, is that harnessing the differences as well as the similarities was synergistic; I think I came out of it with a more confident grasp of Mandarin as well.
Of course, I am helped by the fact that I am one of those people exposed to Cantonese in the home as a child…
But it is the same approach that makes Spanish to Portuguese conversion courses work so well. If any CPOD users out there have learned Portuguese in this way, do please share your experiences! My personal experience is that Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese are close cognate languages, so the written languages are mutually intelligible. However, the way the two languages are pronounced is so different that the spoken versions may not be mutually intelligible until the listener has been trained to listen to the other language, and been introduced well to the unique syntactical structure of the “target” language that distinguishes it from the “home” language. At the same time, the pre-existing foundations in the “home” language can be utilized, which helps with the learning curve.
What a long spiel before my second cup of morning coffee…
Cheers, Auntie
AuntySue Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 11:20 am
If Praxis produces a Cantonese language course, just about everyone in the world who learns Cantonese will be doing it here. There’s no real alternative podcast courses, and almost no books, tapes, CDs, or classroom courses, anywhere. Nor are there second hand items to be found in junk shops and libraries. People learning Cantonese won’t have to make any choice whatsoever. Even if they do use one of the (two?) course books available, or the two audio courses available (one ancient, the other limited and expensive) or stumble on a rare Cantonese class, they’ll still be using this course.
Sister, you know what we should do?
Work it all out for them, how it can be put together, what it’d do and what it’d look like, make it so damn easy to take it forward. Oh yeah, then they’ll say thanks much appreciated but we’ve decided to do Sanskrit instead… but that’s fine. Others will be watching, and hopefully they will take it up if Praxis doesn’t.
I think a lot of Cantonese students would be people who haven’t been here before, and don’t know Mandarin. It would have to cater for them too. Maybe your idea could be exploited specifically for those who have a joint subscription to Mandarin and Cantonese. Instead of giving a multilingual discount, give some extra explanations linking the two together and separating them as necessary.
Then with Cantonese you’ve got a LOT more people who already know, or understand, a fair bit of the language and will be starting on a moderately high level but with huge gaps in their fundamentals. This format lends itself well to that purpose, because you can study at, say, intermediate level to keep moving forward with interest, while simultaneously starting from newbie to patch up the missing pieces.
Maybe there’s some reason why it’s “inconvenient” to offer Cantonese from China. I’m surprised to hear that a Cantonese course was published in Beijing, but that book could have been put out a long time ago, before PTH became the One True Language. Most of us aren’t in China (which is why we’re interested in Cantonese), so we don’t give two hoots about evaluating and promoting particular languages, we just want to learn them. The situation might be less easy on the other side.
Michael Butler Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Auntie Sue,
I hate to disagree with you but I don’t see a compelling reason to study Cantonese as a second language (except for heritage speakers of course).
While the number of people who speak Cantonese is quite large, most of these people, now or in the future, will also be speaking Mandarian as a first or second language.
For customers/learners who want to pick up a second language, Mandarian is a much better pick than Cantonese because it has a far bigger group of speakers and more importantly most Cantonese speakers (in China) increasingly also speak Mandarian.
I would argue that Cantonese is a choice for people who want to acquire a third (fourth?) not a second language.
Which brings to mind a question I have. If the U.S. is Cpod’s largest market then I would think language choices should be centered around 2nd languages. The subset of Americans who are ready to start (and master) a third language is much, much smaller than those interested in a second language.
I’d have been quite interested if, along with Ken’s poll he asked the people being polled to identify which languages (or how many languages) they already had studied extensively.
I choose Arabic because I have already studied Chinese and Japanese. I don’t think Arabic would have been my choice for my first second language.
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Dear Aunty Sue, this Auntie really wants to work with you!
I had a good think about what you said concerning most Cantonese students being people who haven’t been here at CPOD before. In the case of Overseas Chinese (people like me), it may not be so clear-cut. Very few of us would have grown up exposed to Mandarin (vs Cantonese), but we are studying Mandarin first because: (i) if we are going to be able to speak only one kind of Chinese, it might as well be the high-profile “global” version, viz., Mandarin; and (ii) the resources for studying are simply not out there, as you rightly say.
However, after CPOD has stunned an Overseas Chinese person, by making Chinese do-able for the first time in what could well have been many years of angst and baggage about being a Chinese who can’t speak Chinese properly, I’m willing to bet that he or she is probably pretty eager and curious to know if the same could not be done for the dialect which one grew up hearing (albeit not speaking, and in all likelihood not being able to read or write).
This is most happifying. If you pm me with your postal address in Australia, I’ll try to rip the CDs (which I painfully transferred myself from the audio cassettes, ouch!), zap a copy of the coursebooks, and ship them to you. Okay, Djoy Gkeen — Sharon
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
Michael Butler, I agree with you too. But my gut feeling is that Ken et al don’t know their “heritage speaker” constituency as well as they think. I’m referring in particular to the heritage speakers who are nationals of SE Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Ethnic Chinese families in these countries have business and economic interests well out of proportion to the size of their communities. For various reasons — nation-building, dictatorship, instability, etc — they are forced to keep a very low profile, but maintain very close family and cultural links.
The important thing to note is that for these people, their business ties with China are based on dialect. Yes, dialect. This is not surprising, because each of the three countries mentioned above has at various times (some very recent) had varying degrees of official restrictions on Chinese-language schools, press, even names. During the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia in the 1990s, just about every regional flight I caught for my business trips had a good number of Indonesian Chinese businessmen headed eventually for China to look for a safe haven for their businesses and even schools for their kids.
So alongside the more high-profile European or Australian or American expat who speaks good Mandarin and has a good job in China with some MNC, China’s economy also comfortably includes a large number of such people who have maintained profound emotional ties with China, and are quietly building business interests there. Their families have been helping to build China, via generations of remittances, and where possible, with direct investments. China — very discreetly — has always welcomed these people, their capital, and their business culture.
That’s only my perspective on this one aspect of heritage speakers… thank you for considering it if you do!
Wendy Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I would love to see Latin!
Michael Butler Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Dear Auntie,
As usual you make some great points. No, excellent points. After reading your post it occurs to me our goals are quite different.
It has been my experience living in two Chinese communities where there is a strong local dialect (Taiwanese in the case of Taipei and Shanghainese in the case of Shanghai) that families with young children are moving increasingly towards speaking Mandarin in the home.
Young children in these areas generally speak Mandarin better than they do the local dialect. This is perhaps inevitable given that their education is in Mandarin and also given the importance of education (or testing) in China.
Now, nothing I said invalidates your thesis which, if I understand it correctly, is that cultural ties among overseas Chinese are extremely strong and part of this culture is encoded in the language. Your sub-text is that heritage children are not getting adequate language training in Cantonese at home and that they are therefore missing out on an important part of their culture.
Based on what I’ve seen happening in the above two communities, I’m thinking that Mandarin is slowly eroding the importance of dialects in China. Universal education in Mandarin is the biggest reason for this change.
Where that leaves speakers outside China is an interesting question. It doesn’t surprise me that C-pod isn’t as familiar with heritage speakers’ concerns because these speakers are remote and for the historical reasons that you mentioned, obscure (or even secretive).
One thing that favors your proposal is that if Ken did decide he wanted to do this kind of pod cast he might be contributing to reversing the decline of a dialect (in a small way) as much as he would be involved in teaching a 2nd or 3rd language.
This could become a model for other dialects in decline.
AuntySue Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
It will be interesting to see how many heritage speakers are interested when it becomes so easy to study Cantonese, and interesting to see what proportion they make up of the course’s students.
What I meant before is that out of the other students, whose first and possibly only language is English, I predict many will not have studied Mandarin. If that’s so, then for them a constant compulsory comparison between Cantonese and Mandarin would be inappropriate. So until it happens, let’s not make too many assumptions… though a little speculation is always fun
A quality, entertaining and successful Cantonese course, available across the globe, would be radical. Its creation requires an open-mindedness and vision that few other organisations have, and that none are in such a position to implement.
Hank Horkoff Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Article today from The Australian on the popularity of languages there:
http://theaustralian.news.com......32,00.html
Up: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic
Down: Vietnamese, Hindi, Russian
AuntySue Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
And of course when you’re talking about “Chinese” in Australia, that commonly means Cantonese
AuntySue Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Michael Butler, yes you’re right, only a couple of reasons to study Cantonese (for non-chinese) come immediately to mind:
1. if you are living in a community where that is the language spoken (e.g. outside China)
2. if you just love the language
That’s why for me Cantonese makes a whole lot more sense than, say, French or Latin, or even Spanish.
Betty Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
How do I vote? I click on the languages to no avail.
FuDaWei Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I have little at stake here. My language plate is quite full, and I’d probably pop by most any language Praxis ultimately decides to add. I “would” dearly love some Hebrew, but I’m putting that out of my mind, since I think it would be foolhardy for Praxis to offer it at the moment.
Thus, I think I can be pretty neutral here. So, here’s my wrap-up:
1.) I’m startled to see German suddenly coming on strong. I have no idea why and would be curious to hear the lurkers voting for it to chime in and explain why. I think it’d make a fine podcast and probably easier on the tech crew since (for the most part) it uses the Roman alphabet. There are no German podcasts I’m aware of that are worth much. Most I’ve heard are excruciatingly slow; certainly no intermediate or advanced levels. There are, however, other great online resources for German — probably the best for any language. Both the BBC and Deutsche-Welle have fabulous stuff; particularly DW’s “Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten”, where they repeat the daily news at a slower speed and provide a transcript. (French Radio does this too, but not as well). I mentioned earlier that German would necessitate some strategic planning from Team-CPOD. I’m confident they’d quickly discover that the modular approach they use for Mandarin would cause then grief in a highly inflected and case-sensitive language — unless they prepared an adequate strategy in advance. I’ve already seen this problem pop up to a lesser degree in SpanishSense.
2.) Japanese is quite popular. Not surprised in the least. The 4-way alphabet is not as intimidating as they’d have you believe (except the Kanji part — but CPOD fans hardly fear that, eh?) … and there are NO TONES!!! It’s tense system is closer to Chinese; making heavier use of grammar markers. The sounds are already in the English inventory for the most part (though expect some trouble with the liquids and retroflexes). I’d call it a golden choice — EXCEPT that JapanesePod101 has staked a pretty strong claim to that audience. They are VERY good. Do you really want to go head-to-head with them? I think you could, I think you’d ultimately come out on top — but I’m not sure it’d be worth the headache. Maybe it would be; that’s a business decision for Hank to wrestle with.
3.) Arabic — the numbers of worldwide speakers that put it high on the “World Language” list are misleading, since they are lumping together something like 30 dialects into one imaginary monolithic language. They are NOT interchangeable. There is a so-called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and mass media (film and TV) is doing a fine job of leveling the field, they aren’t there quite yet. Still, even with that factored in, there are still plenty of people — more than many of the other languages cited — to make this a very plausible pursuit. I would certainly monitor it with great fascination. There are no significant Arabic podcasts at present. A few intrepid people — usually university students — attempt it from time to time, but they generally peter out after a few episodes.
4.) French. A great choice. A natural choice. And that (alas) might make it a bad choice. Unlike the others, there ARE good, solid French podcasts already available. Moreover, there are a tone of other resources and Team-CPOD would have to fight hard to get noticed in this glutted arena. On the other hand, to be totally fair, no other language on our list is as widespread. Take a look at the countries listings “French” as a primary or secondary language. That makes it very useful. Add to that a mountain of classical literature, philosophy, popular film, and such. It’s just hard to ignore French. (Heck, I was forced to take it in order to read Russian novels! There are entire paragraphs of “War and Peace” written in French, since the aristocracy considered Russian vulgar.)
5.) Cantonese — I can’t help thinking: I’m sure this has already occurred to Team-CPOD. If they are tepid toward the idea, I have to think that they’ve run the numbers and simply are not impressed (this is a business, after all). Then again, that’s just me speculating. They’ve never really said anything. Frankly, I can’t handle another Chinese language — but that’s just me. I can certainly see that other people are interested and they are correct: not only is there no significant Cantonese podcasts, there are only a handful of other online resources. That makes their advocates understandably vocal. It is a pity that this poll did not include a Cantonese option. Maybe it should be run again — with a link from the main page. I’d be curious to see is the strong cheerleading from CPOD regulars is shared by lurkers. If it is, then I’m inclined to wonder why it isn’t offered. But I wouldn’t take any bets.
NOTE TO KEN: Did you read my message about the notion of outsourcing? Is that maybe what Praxis is building toward once they have a framework in place they like (in which case I’m simply stating the incredibly obvious)? Is that not the ultimate in “modularity”?
chris(mandarin_student) Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Auntie raises some interesting points..
I am finding that learning Cantonese on top of a small (but solid) base in Mandarin, works very well. I have to monitor the differences and similarities but if anything the Cantonese learning is improving my Mandarin (I think there maybe a little grammar bleed over lurking on the horizon but I am sure that will be temporary).
I talked to a Chinese guy recently who learnt German for similar reasons and he is convinced that his English is much better for it.
Japanese is a different story, that is really requiring me bed down into the mindset of a third language (I know I will gain a lot from knowing Hanzi later on though.
Ken Carroll Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Fu Da Wei,
We have certainly considered your outsourcing idea. People have approahced us to license out the platform, franchise it, etc. The question is whether or not that would be ‘on strategy’.
Ken Carroll
Auntie Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
[QUOTE]
One thing that favors your proposal is that if Ken did decide he wanted to do this kind of pod cast he might be contributing to reversing the decline of a dialect (in a small way) as much as he would be involved in teaching a 2nd or 3rd language.
[/QUOTE]
Hello, I’m back (groan!). Michael Butler, you make a lot of sense to me. Funnily, from where I am, it does indeed seem like Mandarin is gaining ground, but at the same time I also have a strong sense that in China as well as in the overseas communities, dialects are beginning to flex their muscles. Simultaneously.
The Internet and — hate it, love it — globalization are allowing many speakers of “obscure” or “declining” languages to express themselves in their own vernacular, to build links with people from the same tribe.
In the case of China, Mandarin is already so strong that it can’t possibly be threatened any more by local dialects, which is why people are being allowed more leeway to enjoy their dialects these days. And as you would know from living in Taiwan, dialects are not an “either-or” situation. In fact, it would be pretty normal for an extended family in Kaohsiung to have, say, Mandarin and Hakka as everyday languages, and maybe even Japanese for the grandparents who may well have received their higher education in that language.
In the case of the overseas Chinese, I humbly suggest that China seems to be amazingly pragmatic. The country does of course welcome multilingual foreign talent employed by global blue-chip MNCs, but China also quietly welcomes Overseas Chinese investors who come to invest in relatively small ventures. After all, these OC are (almost invariably) investing their own money, ie., family money. They are not employees, they are classic Chinese entrepreneurs, with all the limitations and strengths that come with the label.
Here in Singapore, it’s dawning on us that the best man to send to hammer out a deal in a Teochew-speaking part of China may not always be the executive speaking polished Mandarin. Because sometimes the best man can be the Teochew-speaking guy whose family has roots in Swatow. His Teochew sounds rough, but heck, so does the Mandarin of the local government officials who are babysitting him. And unless somebody invents a machine to condense 70 years of corporate governance principles/basic stock market savvy into a single 10-minute session, dealing with that guy probably has the potential to be educational in some way. China’s economy is surging, but people are still at a very steep place in the learning curve. Hope nobody flames me for saying this!
My humble appeal to Ken et al is to please not rush into any assumptions regarding “heritage speakers”. So many of the changes associated with V3 (just see Hank’s remark!) seem to show a strong shift in priorities towards the features in “Premium” subscriptions, to the extent that it almost seems sometimes that only an idiot would still only remain in “Basic”, when “Premium” offers so much more. One answer from Ken to on this was in the category of, “duh!”.
What I am trying to say, is that for certain Overseas Chinese “heritage speakers”, Mandarin (or Cantonese or Teochew or Shanghainese) on their terms has nothing to do with vocab drills or flash cards, they will never need such features even though they do get a out of CPOD’s basic content. If they/we don’t upgrade, it’s not because we’re fools, it’s because the needs of this constituency are different. I suspect that such people would really appreciate any improvements to “Basic”, and they may even resent this new emphasis on the decision to upgrade to “Premium” as being something of a no-brainer.
ldfs Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 12:21 am
I voted for Russian, but had a hard time choosing between Russian and French. Both are languages I’ve already studied for several years, but I would really value something along the lines of ChinesePod that would focus on more everyday language and which will give me an opportunity to practice listening to native speakers and build useful vocabulary.
I don’t know what the data show about the effectiveness of ChinesePod for people who are using it “from scratch” as their only source of instruction. As much as I love it (and I do love it!) I don’t use it as a stand-alone. I use it in conjunction with traditional classroom instruction at my local university (I’m fortunate enough to be a staff member there so I get free tuition), and I also use Pimsleur. It’s hard for me to imagine learning how to come up with an original sentence in a language like Russian without a lot more information on the grammar than is typically given in a ChinesePod lesson, but maybe I’m just limited by my previous language learning experience, or maybe my brain is just no longer flexible enough to pick up enough information to understand the patterns just by getting a lot of input . . .
Andy Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 4:12 am
if you guys do Canto, I will personally come to Shanghai and pay my respects to you guys. The worldwide community depserately needs a good Canto source. It’s sad that Canto is often put into the dark….. my gosh, there are 70 million plus native speakers of Canto.
It is said even in the States, where there a huge Canto population, kids grow up not learning Canto effectively, and this because of lack of educational resources. Chinese pod can take the lead in this.
My goal is to learn Chinese, through which can be done with any dialect. My dialect of choice is Canto by far. It’s nice to learn PTH, but I only care to gain a working knowledge of it. In Canto, my goal is to be native proficient.
David Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 6:38 am
I like the idea of Cantonese very much. I voted for Portuguese, meaning the Brazilian variety please! Although given how slow I am with Chinese (using not just CPod but having a native speaker to talk with often!), I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to try another language too.
Sebastian Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I’d like Cantonese and Tagalog
Henning Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
According to Wikipedia there are 6,500 (living) languages spoken on this planet. Considering that you might want to translate every language into every other you get a number of
42,243,500 podcasts
that you need to cover mid term.
加油!
Ken Carroll Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Henning,
That’s a piece of cake. In fact, I could probably host and script them all myself!
Ken Carroll
Ken Carroll Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
A question: If you could just take a pill and immediately be able to speak a new language without having to study, how many pills would you take? And what would be the point? (It’s Friday afternoon. Where’s Mike in Jubei?)
Ken Carroll
Henning Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Ken,
depends on the side effects I guess.
Chinese will probably be too big of a pill to be swallowed without pain. Maybe a suppository would be the intake of choice. Following a bottom up strategy.
Friday noon, indeed. It’s been a long, long week
FuDaWei Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I think you oughta teach Czech.
When the Chinese get cocky about having a tough language, let them wrap their tongues around: “Strč prst skrz krk”.
Can we do html yet?
Ken Carroll Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Henning,
I meant without any pain or side effects, but hey, I can see the appeal of the suppository! (Kind of.)
Fu Da Wei,
I totally see your point here. I think the UN really should deploy some vowels over there to the Czech republic to help those poor people.
Ken Carroll
FuDaWei Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Interesting race. Russian gains a push. German closes in on Japanese. French, 10 points down earlier, regains the lead from Arabic.
Ken: I thought maybe they give the Czechs a Hawaiian island. They’d pick up some vowels and Hawaiian would get some consonants.
ldfs Says:
June 15th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Well Ken, are the available over the counter or do they require a prescription? I would be popping those pills like crazy. The more languages, the better. I can’t see any down side to knowing more languages.
Barry Says:
June 16th, 2007 at 5:16 am
Inuit, anyone?
Seriously, this is a great discussion. I have quite enough to be getting on with with learning Mandarin, but the possibility of learning Cantonese at some future point does interest me.
Joachim Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Auntie:
“My mother’s youngest brother’s greatest fear was …”
Die größte Sorge des jüngsten Bruders meiner Mutter war …
… die weiterverbreitete Furcht vor der deutschen Grammatik.
Piece of cake!
Now, in Chinese please!
Joachim Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Urgh, “weitverbreitete”, not “weitERverbreitete”.
Cough.
Ava Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 1:01 am
I think Arabic or Russian would be good.
Please don’t do French. There are plenty of materials already available for learning French. I already speak French, and I have never ever had any problems finding learning materials. Arabic, Japanese, and Russian, however, are difficult languages spoken by many people, and there is a lack of good resources for learning them.
Auntie Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 1:19 am
Dear Joachim, heh heh thanks. “Weitverbreitete” is the right word, it’s especially strong here in Singapore where I’m still feeling a bit terrorized by the all your case endings!
Hope everybody had a great weekend.
Keith Hill Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 3:22 am
I read that article in the Economist(hands up those who read it thoroughly).
The greatest language combination for an modern academic or professional commercial career would seem to be : English, Russian and Mandarin.
Perhaps you can explain why our present and evergrowing energy suppliers and consumers are not linked together in this language search by your corrispondents. Is it because the right people are not reading your we site? Reading Praxis web site seems to lead nowhere.
I haven’t seen any similar teacing/tutoring for Russian language. I feel I ought to know more about Praxis Chinese. I like the Skype combination mentioned in the article.
Jamie Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Leaving aside all the interesting thoughts that have come up throughout the conversation, I’ll just throw in another vote for Hindi. There are probably other materials out there, but I do like the Praxis approach. And it would help a lot with my Bollywood-watching habit.
Auntie Says:
June 18th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Hi Jamie. I love Bollywood too (can’t escape it in Singapore, whatever your race). Have you discovered cuttingchai.com yet? It’s so entertaining — and surprisingly substantive — that my brother and I were in tears a couple of times, we were laughing so hard. Even my serious brother, who’s a lawyer and a Daddy, started wishing me (sic) “Fermelinge!”.
Hope you enjoy it!
Ken Carroll Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Although I’ve forgotten most of it, I still have a deep and abiding love for the Italian language. However, it’s getting the cold shoulder in this poll - or relatively so. Che macello!
Ken Carroll
Henning Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
My wife would love Italian. She would eventually be able to follow her beloved Operas.
FuDaWei Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
http://www.learnitalianpod.com/
Henning Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Thanks FuDaWei!
The look & feel and terminology of that site feel strangly familiar…
Ken Carroll Says:
June 19th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Henning,
Agreed. Familar in a kind of V2 way, don’t you think?
Ken Carroll
Osirius Says:
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:22 pm
As for me russian,I never thought about cantonese or shanghainese, but now I think there is sense of makink these courses, as well I’m interested in korean and arabic.As for french,japanese and italian, there are similiar sites as chinesepod,so I think we can use them.So my faivorit is shanghainese and cantonese.If only from the list than korean and arabic.
Jimmy B Says:
June 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 am
Not the same thing as a CPod, but I just discovered Deutsche Welle’s free web based language training…
http://www.dw-world.com/dw/0,2142,2469,00.html#
Cool!
Bazza 白锐 Says:
June 24th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Just wondering, does anyone the what the most widely written language in the world? English? Simplified Chinese?
Henning Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Bazza,
I think it is English. Certainly it is on the web.
Just do a Google search for “from”
6.430.000.000 hits.
and “从”:
421.000.000
Now I know that “measure” is less than valid - among other considerations one would have to at least check that equally frequent words of the respective languages are used, and that the search robots scan the Chinese web adequately.
But the difference is so drastic, that I think that it certainly can serve as a valid indicator.
gregg Says:
June 25th, 2007 at 5:18 am
heaven and earth we fear not, what we do fear is a mandarin-speaking ChinesePod not speaking cantonese!
would love to see your excellent format that has vastly improved my gwokyue, to also offer gwongdungwa. these two dialects are the 800lb P/R gorillas of china.
Chris Says:
July 10th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I would vote for Arabic, portugese then french
Matt Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I am not sure whether anyone will see this but I woud just like to say something. I had seen some discussion earlier about out-sourcing and getting other people in other locations to do stuff. I don’t think that all the languages mentioned here can just be done from Shanghai. I mean if we want someone teaching something like Arabic or Hindi then you may need it to be done from somewhere else. Are you always going to be able to find an Arabic or Indian person in Shanghai?
Hank Horkoff Says:
July 24th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Matt,
That is a very good question. In many ways Shanghai, or New Shanghai if you will, is positioned to be in the top cities of the 21st Century and we have been very fortunate to have been able to attract excellent people - either here already or by invitation. We have found that there is a ‘Praxis way’ to teaching with this format that is best learned from daily contact with everyone else here in Shanghai.
That said, there is nothing saying we won’t have other Praxis locations in the future or even a de-centralized Praxis-like platform to empower other language podcasters around the world. We are just taking things step-by-step at the moment and appreciate all the community input to help us along.
Catherine Says:
April 8th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
How about Indonesian?
Carolina Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Well…. i want to learn english, its really necesary today for everyone !!!!!
Feliciano gomes Says:
April 17th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Cantonese, please!
Joanna Says:
April 17th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Indonesian would be wonderful. I used to learn it and found that despite having so many speakers there is a serious lack of podcasts or other material designed for people who want to learn on their own.
cwmartz Says:
April 19th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
So what’s the answer Praxis - this has been going on for almost a year and I’m hankerin’ for yet another Praxis language. I read an intereting article that rated languages by 6 different criteria (numboer of speakers, number of contires, economic strength, culture etc) English had top score of 37, French was second with 24 then spanish with 20. Chinese was 6th with 14. So I’m now inspired to add French to my other languages. Are you guys working on a next language?
p.s.
(Russian was 4th and Arabic was 5th, German was 7th)
cwm
Brendon Carr (Korea Law Blog) Says:
April 20th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I’m a Korean speaker, as well as a former Mandarin speaker (brushing back up with ChinesePod — thank you Praxis!), and I can say that the Korean language is not a “world” language.