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  • Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)

    September 19, 2007

    I’ve always loved hearing the rich tones of people speaking their native tongue. Probably because my high school Spanish class was so full of students (myself included) torturing words and botching the accent. Back then, they equipped us with a cassette tape so we could hear the language spoken correctly.

    It’s too bad sites like Mango weren’t around then. Mango is a site featuring several free language learning courses, each loaded with digital audio and flash animation that highlights the pronunciation of every word. Select from languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and German. There are also courses in English for speakers of these other languages, so it could be very helpful if you’re an ESL teacher. –BILL FERRIS

    Mango

    Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)


    I enjoyed looking at this site, but was glad to note that, as indicated, the site is in “Beta.” Thankfully, the site invites feedback to make it better. I noted that the transcriptions for French pronunciation, for example, did NOT convey the correct emphasis on the final syllable of a give word. Further, the same transcriptions only represented the pronunciation of words in isolation, NOT the actual pronunciation of those words as they appeared in the context of the lesson. For example, the final “t” in “Comment” in the expression “Comment allez-vous?” IS pronounced. This was not indicated in the lesson and will confuse and perhaps generate bad pronunciation.

    Again, it is a great tool, but need some work as indicated above, hence the “Beta” designation.

    • Billsays:
    • September 20th, 2007 at 8:14 am

    That’s a good catch there, Bobby. With such an ambitious project, I suppose it’s inevitable that something like that would slip past the goalie. Still, I’m sure they appreciate corrections on details like that :)

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