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Here it is... my first entry in a brand new blog about learning Mandarin Chinese.

I am working on a new web entity to serve as an ever-evolving artistic expression of my lifestyle, which I call transcombouge.

I will be heading to Beijing in mid-June and am in need of a serious review of the material I know and some new concepts to explore. I will be using a lot of books and materials, which I will list here later.

Just wanted to point out a nice Wikipedia Linguistics entry.

There is lots of good info there, plus links to many, many other resources with more info.

It's all there... for free.

I just ran across a post by the Linguist Steve Kaufmann:

I am indebted to podlearner.com for the following quote from St. Exupery's Le Petit Prince.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

NPR has an interesting Exploring Language series on their website.

"Researchers used to think that grammar and vocabulary were the only things needed to carry on a conversation. But over the last two decades, a much more complex picture of language has emerged. It turns out that words and sentences are just the tip of a huge linguistic iceberg."

English - I love you
Afrikaans - Ek het jou lief
Albanian - Te dua
Arabic - Ana behibak (to male)
Arabic - Ana behibek (to female)
Armenian - Yes kez sirumen
Bambara - M'bi fe
Bengali - Ami tomake bhalobashi (pronounced: Amee toe-ma-kee bhalo-bashee)
Belarusian - Ya tabe kahayu
Bisaya - Nahigugma ako kanimo
Bulgarian - Obicham te
Cambodian - Soro lahn nhee ah
Cantonese Chinese - Ngo oiy ney a
Catalan - T'estimo
Cherokee - Tsi ge yu i (Thanks Nancy!)
Cheyenne - Ne mohotatse
Chichewa - Ndimakukonda
Chinese - 我爱你 (wo ai ni)
Corsican - Ti tengu caru (to male)
Creol - Mi aime jou
Croatian - Volim te
Czech - Miluji te
Danish - Jeg Elsker Dig
Dutch - Ik hou van jou
Elvish - Amin mela lle (from The Lord of The Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien)
Esperanto - Mi amas vin
Estonian - Ma armastan sind
Ethiopian - Afgreki'
Faroese - Eg elski teg
Farsi - Doset daram
I LOVE YOU - in different languages bracelet Filipino - Mahal kita
Finnish - Mina rakastan sinua
French - Je t'aime, Je t'adore
Frisian - Ik h�ld fan dy
Gaelic - Ta gra agam ort
Georgian - Mikvarhar
German - Ich liebe dich
Greek - S'agapo
Gujarati - Hoo thunay prem karoo choo
Hiligaynon - Palangga ko ikaw
Hawaiian - Aloha Au Ia`oe
Hebrew (Thanks Lilach)
Hebrew to male: "ani ohev otcha" (said by male) "Ohevet ot'cha" (said by female)
Hebrew to female: "ani ohev otach" (said by male) "ohevet Otach" (said by female) Hiligaynon - Guina higugma ko ikaw
Hindi - Hum Tumhe Pyar Karte hae
Hmong - Kuv hlub koj
Hopi - Nu' umi unangwa'ta
Hungarian - Szeretlek(Thanks D�ra!)
Icelandic - Eg elska tig
Ilonggo - Palangga ko ikaw
Indonesian - Saya cinta padamu
Inuit - Negligevapse
Irish - Taim i' ngra leat
Italian - Ti amo
Japanese - Aishiteru
or
anata ga daisuki desu
Kannada - Naanu ninna preetisuttene
Kapampangan - Kaluguran daka
Kiswahili - Nakupenda
Konkani - Tu magel moga cho
Korean - Sarang Heyo
or
Nanun tangshinul sarang hamnida
Latin - Te amo
Latvian - Es tevi miilu
Lebanese - Bahibak
Lithuanian - Tave myliu
Luxembourgeois - Ech hun dech g�er
Macedonian - Te Sakam
Malay - Saya cintakan mu / Aku cinta padamu
Malayalam - Njan Ninne Premikunnu
Maltese - Inhobbok
Mandarin Chinese - 我爱你 (wo ai ni)
Marathi - Me tula prem karto
Mohawk - Kanbhik
Moroccan - Ana moajaba bik
Nahuatl - Ni mits neki
Navaho - Ayor anosh'ni
Norwegian - Jeg Elsker Deg
Pandacan - Syota na kita!!
Pangasinan - Inaru Taka
Papiamento - Mi ta stimabo
Persian - Doo-set daaram
Pig Latin - Iay ovlay ouyay
Polish - Kocham Ciebie
Portuguese - Eu te amo
Romanian - Te iubesc
Russian - Ya tebya liubliu
Scot Gaelic - Tha gra\dh agam ort
Serbian - Volim te
Setswana - Ke a go rata
Sign Language - ,\,,/ (represents position of fingers when signing'I Love You')
Sindhi - Maa tokhe pyar kendo ahyan
Sioux - Techihhila
Slovak - Lu`bim ta
Slovenian - Ljubim te
Spanish - Te quiero / Te amo
Swahili - Ninapenda wewe
Swedish - Jag alskar dig
Swiss-German - Ich lieb Di
Surinam - Mi lobi joe
Tagalog - Mahal kita
Taiwanese - Wa ga ei li
Tahitian - Ua Here Vau Ia Oe
Tamil - Nan unnai kathalikaraen
Telugu - Nenu ninnu premistunnanu
Thai - Chan rak khun (to male)
Thai - Phom rak khun (to female)
Thai (informal) Rak te (thx CAF!)
Turkish - Seni Seviyorum
Ukrainian - Ya tebe kahayu
Urdu - mai aap say pyaar karta hoo
Vietnamese - Anh ye^u em (to female)
Vietnamese - Em ye^u anh (to male)
Welsh - 'Rwy'n dy garu di
Yiddish - Ikh hob dikh
Yoruba - Mo ni fe

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.

The latest updates include:

Learn French Wikibook
French École French for Beginners Podcast

And if what you are interested in is the Italian language, try out these podcasts for learning the Italian language.

I was interested in finding out which languages are the most commonly used on the Internet. My search led me to the following resource:

Internet World Stats for the 10 Most Used Languages on the Web

I was interested in finding out about what languages are the most widely spoken in the world. By this I am referring to the number of native speakers. I found a few of links that are quite useful in determining this using different factors.

Acabo de encontrar uma lista muito util de gírias em português:

Lista de gírias em português.

Latest additions:

BBC Languages French
BBC Better at Languages
Exam English Free Practice Tests

I have noticed that many Brazilians say "Tem não" rather than "Não tem".

Indeed, when I speak, I feel as though I am speaking more fluently when I use the "não" after the verb rather than before.

This verb can be any verb, which makes the whole concept very universal.

Vou não.
Quero não.
Vejo não.
Tenho não.
Fui não.
Gosto não.

Saying this is appropriate especially after someone asks a question involving one of these verbs:

"Tem batatas fritas?"
"Tem não."

Stats for the first two months of the Free Language website are up for view on the web stats page.

The entire history of web stats will be up shortly.

Here is the taster:

February 2006
March 2006

I added a Geovisitors link a few days ago to allow people to see where the site visitors are coming from. Here is a screenshot:

Soon, we will begin posting detailed stats about the site on a monthly basis.

Latest updates in include resources for German, Arabic and Spanish language learners:

Learn German Wikibook
University of Chicago Arabic Circle Lectures Podcast
InstaSpanish.com's Insta Spanish Podcast

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.

Easy French Poetry Podcast and Breaking News English EFL/ESL Learning Podcast have been added to the line-up of free resources.

I just added two podcasts from the folks at Radio Lingua International:

MyDailyPhrase.com German Podcast
MyDailyPhrase.com Italian Podcast

These are the same folks that produce the very popular Coffee Break Spanish Podcast.

What are podcasts?

Podcasts are basically audio (and sometimes video) files that you can subscribe to. The actual podcasts themselves take on may different formats. Some are produced like high-quality radio shows, some are basement productions about local events or interests, others consist of music and still others regard just about anything you can imagine, such as language learning.

The key here is that you can subscribe to these audio and video "feeds" so that when a new one comes out, you can be automagically notified in a number of different ways. The way that you are notified depends a lot on how you subscribe. There are many types of "RSS readers" and "News Aggregators" that can aid you with this subscription process. (See links at bottom for more info about these.)

Tools for Subscribing

Here are some links to lists of available RSS readers for Mac and Windows. (Linux? BSD? You know what you are doing!)

List of RSS readers and news aggregators for Windows.
List of RSS readers and news aggregators for Mac.

For those who want a good one to run with, I would recommend these Free Software RSS Feed Readers:

Feedreader for Windows.
Vienna for Mac.

Many web browsers such as Firefox can manage RSS feeds for you.

There are also many web-based news aggregators such as Technorati and Bloglines.

Free Language RSS Feeds

Free Language has numerous RSS feeds you can subscribe to for automagic updates. Every language has an RSS feed, and these show up in the left sidebar. Just click them to subscribe.

Free Language also offers RSS feeds for the front page articles, the blog entries and the newsletter.

More Info

Find out more about Podcasting.
Find out more about RSS Feeds.
Find out more about web feeds.
Find out about more about News Aggregators.

Over the last two days two new podcasts have been added for learning Spanish and French:

Learn French by Podcast
Chile Podcast and Video Podcast

I wanted to give a little bit of web love out to a great site that has loads and loads of links to online resources for learning world languages. It is called I Love Languages.

Just wanted to let all the blog subscribers know that the Second Edition of The Free Language Letter was just sent out and published on the site.

Here are three recent additions to the site:

Listen 2 Russian
HindiLanguage.org Website
BBC Languages Portuguese

Updates have been less frequent over the last few days because I have been in transit to Sao Paulo from the US. I am still moving around a bit and will be back up and running with some regularity by the end of this week.

For the time being, I wanted to let folks know that I added another podcast for learning English, more specifically business English:

Business English Pod Podcast

I just added a couple of resources.

The first is a unique site that lets you create your own flashcards called The Flashcard Exchange.

The other is a fabulous Italian language resource called The Italian Online Classroom.

These are the latest four added to the site:

Learn Arabic Language Wikibook
A Door into Hindi
BBC Languages Spanish
Business Spanish Website

I have been working a lot on some of the back end of the site, so updates have not been as frequent. My goal is to add at least two resources per day.

I just stumbled upon a cool tool that is a good laugh.

From the site:

"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended this application of their program. As of September 2003, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another. But the software is not equipped for 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of text. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original. Remember the old game of "Telephone"? Something is lost, and sometimes something is gained. Try it for yourself!"

It can be funny.

Here is an example of a sentence I submitted and the result:

"My sentence: Ralph and Anna are cooking dinner in the kitchen.

The resulting "translation": Cook of Ralph and the given form model this food completes this kitchen"

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.