Mark Pentleton

我在学普通话 wǒ zài xué pǔ tōng huà！

Taking a break from el català, I've spent the day working with 玲玲, Líng Líng, our Mandarin developer. We're currently working on a number of projects, and the first of these - a short course in Mandarin (no prizes for guessing the name of that particular course!) - will be launched along with our Catalan course, and hopefully a few other projects on D-Day, 26 September 2008, the European Day of Languages. We're very keen to promote the fact that this is not the Day of European Languages, rather the European Day of Languages and it's only right that we should finally launch our first Mandarin product.

It has been really interesting working with 玲玲, especially because of my own interest in Mandarin. Simplifying Mandarin into ten short lessons (surely you don't need any more clues by now!) has been quite a challenge and it's been fun balancing the two criteria for the phrases in our course: keeping it as simply as possible and trying to ensure that the chosen phrases are the most natural way of saying things.

We talked at great length about the whole issue of tones, and I often feel that too much concentration on tones puts learners off. Given the type of learner we'll be aiming ... ok I'll say it ... One Minute Mandarin at, putting learners off is the last thing we want to do. The whole point of the One Minute Languages courses is that they're a structured approach the absolute basics of a language, hopefully helping learners catch the bug to learn a bit more. They are absolutely not intended to create fluent speakers, and this comes back to my own feelings about fluency.

I firmly believe that the vast majority of learners of a foreign language do not need to be fluent, or indeed anywhere near fluent. They need to be able to communicate at whichever level is most appropriate, and at the level which will serve the purpose they require at a given moment. In my experience being able to say a few phrases in a language has literally opened doors which would have otherwise remained closed. Through learning the basics of a language with our One Minute Languages courses, learners can say things like "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm learning (Mandarin/Catalan/Russian, etc). It's quite difficult. Can you help me?" and I believe that these are the phrases which native speakers will appreciate.

I don't intend this blog to be somewhere where I advertise our products - absolutely not. But it's quite nice being able to share the ideas behind what we do.

Ultimately we decided to take a low-maintenance approach to tones and have introduced them once the learner is well into the course. Even then it's linked to the fact that listeners have already learned 是 (shì) and then need to learn 十 (shí). I hope our treatment of tones goes down well with learners when we release the show. For info, when we release our larger-scale Mandarin projects there will be more help with getting used to tones!

So, instead of saying bona nit tonight, I'll be saying wǎn ān - 晚安！

One Minute Catalan

It's now official: one of the main reasons I'm involved with Catalan at the moment is because we're going to be launching what I think will be the very first "teach yourself Catalan" podcast. It will be part of our popular One Minute Languages series which aims to equip learners with the absolute basics of a language, primarily to make travel more enjoyable and to impress native speakers. I feel really strongly about the value of the One Minute Languages series: from my personal experience I've found that even knowing a couple of well-chosen phrases in a language can go a long way and can immediately give a good impression to a native speaker.

The first time I spoke in broken Norwegian to a Norwegian the reaction was one of surprised delight. Since then I've learned much more Norwegian and the ongoing reaction helps to encourage me further. The One Minute Language courses teach learners to say the standard basics like "hello", "goodbye", "my name is...", etc., but they also teach learners how to say "I don't speak much (Norwegian) - I'm learning it. Please help me with it!" and it's this kind of interaction with a native speaker which will demonstrate a learner's willingness to learn the other language.

I'm looking forward to working with Ana on One Minute Catalan, and we're delighted that we'll be launching it live in Barcelona on 26 September.