In my last post here I talked about building language learning communities, and today I’m happy to announce the birth of ChinesePod Cantonese, a forum dedicated to learners of what may well be the coolest sounding of the Chinese dialects. It is being administered by AuntieSue, a familiar face in the ChinesePod community, and is off to a great start.
In other news, we’re still looking for administrators interested in our other soon-to-be launched forums. These forums are for languages other than Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Cantonese. If you’re interested in creating a community for learners of a language other than those three, let us know! As before, we’re offering a complimentary Praxis Pass (which gives you premium access to all our products) to forum administrators, and we’re also offering AdSense revenue (if you want – you aren’t required to run ads on your forum).
If this sounds like something you’d like to do, please drop me a line at john.biesnecker@praxislanguage.com and tell me what language you’re interested in and what experience you have running forums, blogs, etc.
- John B
中文 Chinese
AuntySue Says:
July 14th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Thanks JohnB, and all of the staff who helped get the Cantonese forum set up. It’s gone really smoothly, and it’s great fun!
If you’re learning a different language too, I encourage you to set up a community for like minded learners to gather together, right now while you have this opportunity. It takes a little responsibility but it’s not hard at all, and you don’t have to know much of the language either (look at me, I’m a beginner!). The hard technical work was done by Praxis staff, and now it’s up and ready to fill with discussions.
So if you’ve been thinking about it, write to JohnB to find out more. You can take a look at the Cantonese forum first if you like (maybe you can do better) and I’m sure all the forum admins will be getting in contact and helping each other as time goes on, so you’ll never be alone.
FuDaWei Says:
July 14th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Gonna hafta start calling her “CantySue” now I suppose …
trevelyan Says:
July 15th, 2007 at 2:43 am
any chance of combining the logins for cross-forum posting John?
GG Says:
July 15th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
AuntySue, how do you plan to differentiate http://cantonese.chinesepod.com from http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/?
AuntySue Says:
July 16th, 2007 at 12:22 am
That’s a great site, for sure, but there’s room in the world for more than one or two.
I’m not too worried about differentiating. Our forum is taking off really well, and it’s different already, but it’s bound to change over time.
At the moment we have a pretty strong mix of people who are studying or have studied Mandarin at ChinesePod, and some native Cantonese speakers who love to help. So right now a lot of us are just starting to find our feet in Cantonese, with a Mandarin student perspective on this new language. That might change.
It’s a nice cosy place to hang out. As we grow and start attracting a broader range of members, it will keep changing a lot and take on whatever flavour its own community needs it to have. That’s not up to me alone.
John B Says:
July 16th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Trevelyan,
We can look into it, but with all the sites being hosted on different servers and with different databases, it may be a technical hurdle that we’re not prepared to leap for some time.
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It looks like the Cantonese forum is taking off! A little birdie whispered in my ear and told me that there’s a new place Japanese learners as well. ようこそ！
Bazza 白锐 Says:
August 8th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Has anyone considered a Shanghainese forum?