language-learning goodness

i think i've mentioned chinesepod on here before, yeah? the same folks recently launched frenchpod, and i'm using more of my time than i probably ought to be poking around there. but... if i can find a job where they like the fact that i speak french, it'd be better to have knocked some of the rust off my grammar and vocabulary before trying to interview. so yay for feeling a little productive while i'm having fun. they came out with their first upper intermediate lesson today, and i'm rather relieved to find that i can follow it, no problem.

also on language, chris p. (whose blog i think i wandered over to from chinesepod?) recently posted a video explaining his strategy for learning lots of vocabulary in a foreign language quickly. it's not too entirely different from what i do when i'm being serious about learning vocabulary anyhow, but it's more systematic and it's been a while since i've been serious about it. i'm giving his method a try with chinese, albeit using the pdf transcripts of my daily podcast dialogs instead of articles -- not up to article-reading level yet, but the pockets of "things i understand" are getting more frequent!

babelfishies!

for a minor language geek... you have no idea how much fun it is to have babelfish-like translation bots available in google talk. not that it's hard to get to ye olde babelfish, but putting things right in the email window i always have open is nice. i don't really regularly chat with anybody who doesn't speak english (yet!), but i can amuse myself for hours with this stuff. now waiting on the swedish-speaking bots so my friend mats can tell me how much of a garble they make of things...