The Automated Publishing House

in Books, Business, Language Lessons, Media, Technology | April 14th, 2008

The New York Times has a great arti­cle on a pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment sci­ence who has found­ed an almost com­plete­ly auto­mat­ed pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. The 200,000 books he’s pub­lished sound, well, ter­ri­ble, and ter­ri­bly over­priced: “Among the books pub­lished under his name are ‘The Offi­cial Patient’s Source­book on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stick­ler Syn­drome: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy and Dic­tio­nary for Physi­cians, Patients and Genome Researchers’ ($28.95 for 126 pages); and ‘The 2007–2012 Out­look for Tuft­ed Wash­able Scat­ter Rugs, Bath­mats and Sets That Mea­sure 6‑Feet by 9‑Feet or Small­er in India’ ($495 for 144 pages).”

But Philip M. Park­er, the man behind them, is noth­ing if not ambi­tious. He’s also pro­gram­ming his machines to gen­er­ate lan­guage-learn­ing cross­words (i.e. clues in one lan­guage, answers in anoth­er), acros­tic poet­ry, and even scripts for game shows and videogames. All of this reminds me of a nov­el by Neal Stephen­son, The Dia­mond Age. In it, engi­neers of the future design a sort of arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent primer for young girls–the book gen­er­ates sto­ries and lessons on the fly. Maybe Park­er’s read this one before.

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How to Learn a Foreign Language

in Language Lessons | February 26th, 2008

We stum­bled across this video (below) over on YouTube. It offers a quick sur­vey of web resources that will teach you for­eign lan­guages for free. Among oth­er items, the video men­tions our For­eign Lan­guage Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and, for that, we want­ed to say thanks to who­ev­er put this togeth­er.

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Learning Foreign Languages the Mango Way

in English Language, Language Lessons | December 4th, 2007

What’s an easy way to learn a new lan­guage at no cost, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er you want? One is to take advan­tage of our exten­sive col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Anoth­er is to check out Man­go Lan­guages, a web site that offers free online lan­guage cours­es that will teach you the basics in French, Ger­man, Eng­lish, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Man­darin Chi­nese, Japan­ese and more.

We’d usu­al­ly out­line the pros and cons of learn­ing lan­guages the Man­go Way. But there’s no rea­son to rein­vent the wheel. So we’re direct­ing your atten­tion to Jon Gor­don, the host of Future Tense, whose recent broad­cast took a short look at Man­go’s offer­ing. You can lis­ten to it here (MP3 — RealAu­dio — Feed) and read some more here. You can also access Future Tense on iTunes.

NOTE: To get start­ed with Man­go Lan­guages, you will need to reg­is­ter with the web­site.

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Learning Mandarin for Free Online

in Language Lessons | November 1st, 2007

Chi­na is on the upswing polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Accord­ing to Gold­man Sachs, Chi­na’s econ­o­my may out­size every oth­er econ­o­my (except that of the U.S.) by 2016, and it could even sur­pass the Amer­i­can econ­o­my by 2039. Giv­en this, the hottest lan­guage being stud­ied right now by busi­ness trav­el­ers is Man­darin (see this New York Times piece). And, in my work at Stan­ford, we’re see­ing a very sharp increase in young and old stu­dents enrolling in Man­darin cours­es (and oth­er Chi­na-focused cours­es), for both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons.

Learn­ing Man­darin can be cost­ly — some orga­ni­za­tions charge $2500 for a week-long course — but it does­n’t have to be. More rea­son­ably, you can pur­chase CD-Roms that will sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly teach you Man­darin at home, when your sched­ule per­mits, for a much more rea­son­able price (about $200). Roset­ta Stone offers one good exam­ple. Or you can do it even more cheap­ly, if not for free, with the help of pod­casts.

As you’ll see, there’s no short­age of Man­darin lan­guage lessons, and we invite you to peruse the list below. Of all of them, two tend to get par­tic­u­lar­ly high marks from users. The first is called Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Put togeth­er by an Eng­lish speak­er who stud­ied Man­darin Chi­nese for almost 20 years (and who has lived in Bei­jing and Shang­hai for 12 years), the free pod­cast cur­rent­ly offers 90 lessons that last between 20 and 30 min­utes. A sec­ond option, which users also give pos­i­tive feed­back, is Chinesepod.com (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Pro­duced by native speak­ers, these dai­ly audio pod­casts, each run­ning 10–20 min­utes in length, will immerse you in col­lo­qui­al (read: use­ful) Man­darin. Impres­sive­ly, you can now find 100 pieces of audio in Chi­ne­se­pod’s large archive. While both of these pod­casts are free, each offers addi­tion­al learn­ing resources for a rea­son­able fee (though it appears that you can get by with­out them).

For more Chi­nese lessons, please vis­it our col­lec­tion: Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond

  • Chi­nese Learn Online iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A dia­logue-based intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese. Load them on your iPod and get up the Chi­nese curve.
  • Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Week­ly lessons in Man­darin that get very strong reviews from iTunes users.
  • Chinesepod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A series of well-reviewed lessons that will let you learn Man­darin on your own terms.
  • iMandarinPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A more advanced pod­cast, this series of lessons teach­es Chi­nese by talk­ing about Chi­nese cul­ture or what is hap­pen­ing today in Chi­na.
  • LearnChinesePod.com iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A Man­darin lan­guage pod­cast taught by Yao in New York City.
  • Man­darin Chi­nese Con­ver­sa­tion iTunes Web Site
    • A lan­guage series put togeth­er by TimesOn­line.
  • Man­darin Chi­nese Feed Web Site
    • 10 Lessons by the US Peace Corps. Make sure you vis­it the site and down­load the pdf that accom­pa­nies the lessons.
  • Sur­vival Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn the phras­es you need to get by while trav­el­ing in Chi­na.
  • World Learn­er Chi­nese iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Anoth­er in the mix of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

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Coffee Break French (and Nine Other Ways to Parler Français)

in Language Lessons | October 8th, 2007

Although fac­ing no short­age of com­pe­ti­tion, Cof­fee Break Span­ish (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has remained the most pop­u­lar for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­cast, bar none. The pop­u­lar­i­ty rank­ings on iTunes have con­tin­u­al­ly attest­ed to that.

From this posi­tion of strength, the pro­duc­ers of Cof­fee Break Span­ish have smart­ly moved into new Euro­pean ter­ri­to­ries, rolling out ear­li­er this year MyDai­lyPhrase Ital­ian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and MyDai­lyPhrase Ger­man (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Now they will be fac­ing a stiffer chal­lenge – try­ing to pen­e­trate the already-crowd­ed French lan­guage les­son mar­ket.

Cof­fee Break French (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) was launched on Sep­tem­ber 26, and how it fares against the com­pe­ti­tion (see our list below) depends main­ly on whether the pod­cast deliv­ers French lessons bet­ter than the oth­ers, and whether it can cap­i­tal­ize on the estab­lished “Cof­fee Break” brand. Stay tuned. All of this remains TBD. Let’s sit back and watch how things unfold.

See our com­plete list How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, which includes audio lessons that will teach you 40 lan­guages.

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French Lessons from the BBC and the Peace Corps

in Language Lessons | May 28th, 2007

When­ev­er traf­fic flows to to our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, one good out­come is that we almost always learn of new pod­casts to add to the list. (Just as an fyi, we now have 64 indi­vid­ual pod­casts that offer instruc­tion on 22 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.)

Last week did­n’t dis­ap­point. We learned of a few good new ones. Most notably, one of our read­ers flagged for us a series of video-based French lessons assem­bled by the BBC. Pre­sent­ed by Stéphane Cor­ni­card, Ma France con­sists of 24 inter­ac­tive video units that teach you the lan­guage and a lit­tle about the coun­try. You can launch this video to get a brief intro­duc­tion. The series, which assumes a lit­tle pri­or knowl­edge of French, was shot in Lyons, the Alps and in Provence. You can access the videos on iTunes, by feed, and by web.

Anoth­er new addi­tion to col­lec­tion, How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, comes from the Peace Corps. They offer some pod­casts that will teach you some French, Man­darin Chi­nese, Ara­bic, and Russ­ian. It all sounds pret­ty straight­for­ward. But then you find out that they’re teach­ing the French spo­ken in Mali (West Africa) and the Russ­ian used in Kaza­khstan — that is, the kind of places where Peace Corps vol­un­teers actu­al­ly go. It’s a bit of a dif­fer­ent twist on the usu­al lan­guage les­son pod­cast. Also, be sure to check out the instruc­tion­al PDF files that accom­pa­ny each pod­cast.

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Learning English with Free Audio Lessons (ESL)

in English Language, Language Lessons | April 6th, 2007

These days, Open Cul­ture has been attract­ing an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence. To give you a lit­tle­sam­ple, 43% of our read­ers come from out­side the US, and they come chiefly from Tai­wan (lots from Tai­wan late­ly), Ger­many, Chi­na, Japan, France, Spain, India, Mex­i­co and Brazil. But if you count them all up over the past week, we have had vis­i­tors from 105 coun­tries over­all. Very grat­i­fy­ing.

Giv­en this, it seems worth high­light­ing some pod­casts that can help you improve your Eng­lish. (We’re assum­ing that you already know some Eng­lish, or you would­n’t be here in the first place.)

The most obvi­ous pod­cast to start with is the apt­ly titled Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage Pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Put togeth­er by two for­mer pro­fes­sors, this very rich and deep col­lec­tion teach­es stu­dents prop­er pro­nun­ci­a­tion, idioms and slang, and it gen­er­al­ly gets high marks. These guys seem to have a good cor­ner on the mar­ket, and they’re worth your time.

Now, there are oth­er, more focused ways to learn Eng­lish. If you’re a native Span­ish speak­er, you may want to give some atten­tion to Eng­lish for Span­ish Speak­ers, which is oth­er­wise called, Por Fin Aprende Ingles (iTunes — Feed — Web Site).

Or if you’re main­ly look­ing to improve your Eng­lish for busi­ness pur­pos­es, you can check out Busi­ness Eng­lish Pod (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which will teach you to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment. Anoth­er option is ESL Busi­ness News (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a week­ly pod­cast that presents inter­na­tion­al busi­ness news in clear, slow­ly spo­ken Eng­lish. As you lis­ten to the pod­cast, you can also read a tran­script at the same time.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for some­thing less for­mal and a lit­tle more quirky, you can also always spend a lit­tle time lis­ten­ing to The Bob and Rob Show: Week­ly Eng­lish Lessons from a Yan­kee and a Brit (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This uncon­ven­tion­al show often uses humor to teach gram­mar and idioms to inter­me­di­ate-to-advanced stu­dents, and you’ll get a feel for both Amer­i­can and Eng­lish accents.

To learn more lan­guages, click to see our col­lec­tion: How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages,

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Part 4: Learning the Languages of the New World Powers — China

in Language Lessons | February 21st, 2007

china-flag.jpgChi­na is the 800 pound goril­la among the new emerg­ing world pow­ers Its econ­o­my, says Gold­man Sachs, may out­size every econ­o­my except the Unit­ed States by 2016, and even sur­pass the US as soon as 2039. There is no point in bela­bor­ing things. Chi­na will be a force to be reck­oned with.

Accord­ing to yesterday’s New York Times, the hottest lan­guage being stud­ied right now by busi­ness trav­el­ers is Man­darin, and quite right­ly so. Man­darin is the offi­cial lan­guage of Chi­na and Tai­wan, and it’s also spo­ken in Sin­ga­pore. (Can­tonese is wide­ly spo­ken in Hong Kong.) As the Times arti­cle notes, speak­ing a lit­tle Man­darin can trans­late into new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties, and so it could be worth spend­ing some time get­ting con­ver­sant in the lan­guage. You could spend $2,500 for a week-long Man­darin course. How­ev­er, if you’d like to do it on the cheap, we have some sol­id, free resources for you.

To get up and run­ning, you’ll want to check out the well-reviewed pod­cast called Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk (iTunes Feed Web Site). Put togeth­er by an Eng­lish speak­er who stud­ied Man­darin Chi­nese for almost 20 years (and who has lived in Bei­jing and Shang­hai for 12 years), the free pod­cast cur­rent­ly offers 55 lessons that last between 20 and 30 min­utes on aver­age. A sec­ond option, which also gets very high marks, is Chinesepod.com (iTunes Feed Web Site). Pro­duced by native speak­ers, these dai­ly audio pod­casts, each 10 to 20 min­utes in length, will immerse you in col­lo­qui­al (read: use­ful) Man­darin. Both of these pod­casts are free, and the freely avail­able mate­r­i­al will keep you busy for some time. How­ev­er, each pod­cast also offers addi­tion­al resources for a rea­son­able fee, although you can cer­tain­ly get by with­out them.

Beyond these pod­casts, you may want to check out a cou­ple oth­er free alter­na­tives: Think and Talk Like the Chi­nese (iTunes Web Site) and Chi­nese Learn Online (iTunes Feed Web Site). Also, if you’re look­ing for more sys­tem­at­ic approach­es to learn­ing Man­darin, we’ve includ­ed some options in our new Ama­zon store.

Also, one of our read­ers asked us to through this one into the mix: Chinese-Tools.com

Please see the pre­vi­ous install­ments in this series:

Part 1: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese
Part 2: Russ­ian
Part 3: Hin­di

See Open Culture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions: Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

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