website visions

Actually, this is part of where my specific work is leading the Free Language Project: a free and open, interactive interface with dynamic real-time tools that enhance and accelerate the language-learning process.

I am considering what languages to add for the next round of 12 languages.

The idea is to choose the languages that will be most useful to most people.

Here are some candidates:

Swahili
Farsi
Swedish
Hungarian
Vietnamese
Thai
Korean
Bengali
Bahasa Indonesian
Afrikaans
Polish
Greek
Hausa
Ukranian
Croatian
Czech
Slovakian
Hebrew
Danish
Albanian
Armenian
Norwegian
Dutch
Georgian
Tagalog Filipino
Belorussian
Bulgarian
Romanian

Some of the factors I have been considering are the world's most widely spoken languages and most commonly used languages on the internet.

There are a few more than 12 there... we'll see.

The plan is to use this website as a springboard for creating the "Free Language Foundation".

Basically, enough money will be made with the site through affiliate links to keep the people maintaing the site fed and happy, and the rest will be put into a fund to begin a foundation for language learning. This foundation will eventually become wealthy enough to open a physical school and offer scholarships to students from around the world. The potential students will propose an application explaining what the intention is behind wanting to study languages.

The intetions can be social, enviornmental, political, financial...

A school where the students can come specifically to learn loads and loads of languages! To become polyglots. With a purpose, a motivation.

The technologies, methods and materials developed will remain in the public domain.

Free Language will use existing commercial learning products to create the interface for a worldwide collabrative language-learning web community that will be available to any and all for free. Podcasts, videocasts, chat rooms, interactive learning materials, collaborative content...

New technologies will emerge. Imagine being in a video chat interface with a Japanese speaker that has a special set of educational tools specifically designed for English speakers learning Japanese. Now switch over to a German speaker and your tools instantly change to be appropriate for English speakers learning German.

That is just a small taste. The future holds many amazing possibilities that nobody is "blogging about" these days.

As mentioned before, revenue sharing is going to key in this process. Right from the launch of user accounts, which can be requested here, Free Language will be sharing revenue with its users.

The World Wide Web is making it possible to learn languages for free on a large scale.

As long as you can access the internet and have the free time to work at it.

Some are willing to pay for a commercial software or course package.

Others either can't or choose not to.

One of my visions for this site is to bring together free resources and couple them with effective commercial products.

In the process, the web entity produces economic wealth, which can be used to enhance the functionality.

When the site launches free user accounts, it will implement revenue sharing for users.

This is part of what people can request a BETA account to get involved in.

With enough people and funds involved, this website can gradually transform into a more direct tool for learning languages themselves. With enough energy, it will evolve into a collaborative force capable of teaching myriad human languages directly through the interface.

Then one could ask the "ethical" question: When do you stop using the entity to produce economic wealth?

My feeling is never.

As long as it is balanced.