Holiday Discounts on Language Products

Holiday gift-giving season is upon us again. The great part about that is the discounts and sales the publishers offer. I remember last year they had some great sales, especially 1-day sales for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the official start of the holiday shopping season, and Cyber Monday which, I guess, they just made up. Fine with me. The sales (20% off and more) are great if you are looking to buy a software or audio language product for yourself, but they may also make a great gift for the right person. I have updated the Language Product Coupons page with some of these current and upcoming sales. Keep an eye out for more in December.

Where Are Your Keys

I read an article or two on this new language learning method. Some are touting it as revolutionary, so I had to check it out a little. It is called Where Are Your Keys and employs a structured set of basic dialogues. It is clearly engaging for the right group of people, but I don't see how it is revolutionary in any way. I have an old Berlitz French book that employs pretty-much the same techniques. Except for the sign language, that is. Sign language? Yeah, they actually employ sign language as a sort of medium or reinforcement of the spoken language. I find it a little distracting. Maybe I have it wrong (I only viewed a few demo videos for a few minutes) but it's not for me.

National French Week

It is national French Week here in the US. Since I am studying French, I suppose it is important to me, but then again, I'm studying French every day and every week, so I don't think I'll be doing anything different or special. Someday (when I have time, whenever that is) maybe I will do something special.

Why do we have a National French Week in the US? Don't forget that there is a significant population of French speakers in the US. And I don't mean of the visiting variety. Louisiana has a French speaking community in the hundreds of thousands, and there are also a number in New England (near Quebec, of course). It is one of the significant second languages in the US and a very large number of people are of French lineage to some extent (myself included).

Anyway, celebrate the Frenchness and eat lots of croissants. Salut.