Bot Colony Conversation Game

We are now only a short way from having a true conversation partner with a virtual person. Imagine the effect it would have on internet language learning worldwide if anyone could practice conversation and learn any language from a native-sounding virtual speaker!

In this article, a company has produced a game that features real spoken interaction with the characters - that is, you speak and they understand, respond to and learn from what you say. So far it is only in English (which would be great practice for someone learning English) but once it is perfected, it could be adapted to other languages. At that point, it is easy to imagine a publisher of language products developing it specifically for learning a language or practicing conversation.

Years from now, it will probably even be free for everyone to learn any language!

Its Greek to Me Chart

I've made comments on this topic before. I find the phrase "it's Greek to me" interesting, because in other languages, Greek isn't always the gibberish of choice. Sometimes it's Arabic or Chinese or some other language. Those phrases tell a little about the language and what it considers gibberish or hard to understand. I came across this link to a chart showing languages and their equivalent of 'Greek' for the same phrase. It's very interesting.

Tammett Learns German

He's doing it again.

Daniel Tammett, the autistic savant who not only has an uncanny ability with numbers, also has an equal affinity for languages. He once learned Icelandic in a week and then appeared on a television show to talk about it. In Icelandic, in Iceland!

Now, he is doing it with German with the same goal. In a week and appear on a TV show. I wish I had one tenth of his learning ability.

I ordered and just received his book Born on a Blue Day. I will post some thoughts on it when I get around to reading it (it's kind of far down on the list at the moment), especially the parts about his language learning ability. Some other books on my reading list are When Languages Die by K. David Harrison and The Way of the Linguist by Steve Kaufmann.

Some New Resources

While looking for more resources to add, I found a very helpful forum for learners of Japanese.

http://kanji.koohii.com/

It is a very active and useful forum, especially for studying the written forms of Japanese. It seems that the members have tried every conceivable method and resource to study it and they can offer some great advice on the subject. I am adding some new resources for Irish, Arabic, and Portuguese as well.