I just come across this video:
That’s really good! Do you think guys it (or similar video) could be put at the LingQ main page? (www.lingq.com)
Oscar, I am glad you like it. We made it some while ago. We should translate it and record it in other languages. Would you be prepared to do the Spanish? Could others help us?
Where should we use it on the site and elsewhere. I look forward to the comments of others.
Hi Steve. I would be glad to help translating and recording in a mp3 file the Spanish version of the video’s sound. What I would need is the transcription in English in order to make a more accurate translation.
Oscar, I will be sending you the transcript. Many thanks.
PierreM, the video will remain as is.
@Pierre - This is not a commercial. It is a video on our site to explain to site visitors what LingQ is about. You can find it and another video now on the Tour page. You will have to log out of your LingQ account to see the Home page and Tour page.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word “commercial”. Like Mark said, it’s a video to explain what LingQ is about.
In my opinion the video is original, a bit funny, but above of all it makes you feel the approach used at LingQ.
By the way, many sites explain what they do and what they offer by means of a video in their main page.
Oscar, here is the text of the video. Also anyone else who is willing to record this in their language, we would be very grateful. Thank you.
For most of history, people have learned each others languages without going to school.
When people from different tribes met, they listened and imitated each other. Our brains are good at figuring out patterns and meaning. That’s how we learn languages.
That’s how we learned our native language as an infant.
Things started to change when writing was invented. Writing made it possible to record what was said. That meant people could now learn languages by reading, as well as listening.
Of course, most people still couldn’t read until governments decided that everyone should go to school, sit in class and read text books. This was a good thing but had one big problem.
Language learning, which used to be a natural, pleasant task, became a boring chore.
Grammar explanations, exercises, drills and tests replaced listening to real, meaningful conversation
Since then we’ve seen courses on tape, cd and cdrom which were more fun than being in class but still taught us the same old way.
Simple drills, grammar explanations, boring dialogues - covering a very small part of the language we want to learn.
The result was that many of us began to dislike learning languages, or became convinced we couldn’t succeed. That’s because our brains haven’t changed. Basically, we still need to listen to a language and imitate it in order to learn it.
Fortunately things are changing fast. We’re headed back to our roots on a global scale.The iPod, the Internet, social networking, mobile computing - these things are exploding how we communicate, and how we learn languages.
We can learn on our own or with friends around the world. We can all be learners and teachers. That’s what you’ll find at LingQ. Give it a try. Your brain will thank you.
Thanks Steve, I will work on it. When I will be finished, I’ll let you know.
Hi!
A few days ago, Steve asked me to record the audio in Spanish for the video LingQ - The Dawn of Language - YouTube . As far as I know, new recordings in different languages are needed. Since most of us are not on vacation, I would like to encourage people to record more versions in their native language.
The work is easy. You just have to translate the transcript Steve posted in this thread into your native language, and then record it to create a mp3 file. The audio is about 2 minutes. It’s not a big deal.
What do you think?
Mark is away and we are still trying to figure out how to integrate this. BTW shortly our lessons will have videos so that we can incorporate these into our library and people will be able to see the video.
We have now dubbed the video in Spanish, thanks to Oscar. Here it is.
We could to the same in other languages if anyone is interested in recording it in their language. In some languages it may be necessary to reduce the text a little to fit the length of the video. We will add this as content at LingQ along with the video. We will also use it as part of the explanation of the philosophy behind LingQ.
Can’t wait to have videos on LingQ! I’ve a bunch of italian podcasts which offer transcripts but are video
you will need to extract the audio somehow.
Mark takes more vacations than George Bush…
Mark is in Sweden on a biz trip related to the wood side of our operations.
I thought everyone would have preferred that George Bush took more holidays…