L-Lingo for Android -we are looking for beta testers!

Hi there,

we have spend the last few days to port L-Lingo to an Android 2.1 smartphone. Adobe is currently releasing Flash 10.1 for Android phones and this makes it possible to let L-Lingo run on smartphones.

Due to the smaller screensize, we have changed the user interface in L-Lingo mobile to make it very user friendly for smart phones. In particular we made the buttons bigger for touch operation and also changed the Explorer screen as on mobile devices there is nothing like a ‘mouse over’.

Although I am using a pre-release version of Flash for Android it is running pretty smooth so far and is quite responsive. We have tested it on an HTC Desire phone and would like to invite other Android users to test the beta version.

If you are interested, please contact us under support@l-lingo.com and please mention your Android Phone model (incl. which version of Android you are running) and don’t forget to mention the language you like to test.

Here are some screenshots from the beta version:

Latest Release: Learn Burmese with L-Lingo

We are so thrilled to announce the newest addition to our offered languages in L-Lingo. Over the past couple of months, you may have taken advantage of our free online lessons featuring 8 languages. We are so pleased to offer you the release of Lingo Burmese! With this online application, you can now learn Burmese words and phrases quickly. Just like all the other languages that we offer, L-Lingo Burmese is jam-packed with 40 free online lessons that you can access plus a guided training, and fun quizzes that you can take to significantly gauge your newly acquired skills on how to read Burmese, write Burmese, and speak Burmese! Learning a second language has just gotten better, and not to mention fun.

Previously, we have exclusively offered Burmese as a desktop version. With this new release, you can easily access tons of lessons right on your browser, conveniently wherever you are located and just as long as you have a computer and access to the internet. Whether you are studying Burmese to prepare for a trip to Myanmar, or plainly to socialize with Burmese-speaking friends, you can now surprise everyone with Burmese words and Burmese sentences! Just imagine how priceless it would be to see the look on your friends’ faces when they hear you speak Burmese. Nei kaun la? (How are you?) Oh yes you can just imagine their jaws dropping.

With our easy to use interface, you won’t have to grapple around with your mouse clicks just to start learning. Needless to say, our online application is very user-friendly and shall get you started to learn Burmese in no time. Whether it’s learning how to say hello, how to order in a Burmese restaurant, telling the time, or how to ask basic questions, we got you covered. You will learn Burmese and be able to build a solid rock foundation of the most essential Burmese words and Burmese sentences necessary for practical day-to-day conversation.

What better way to kick-start your week than learning how to read Burmese, write Burmese, and speak Burmese with the new L-Lingo Burmese online application. Don’t forget to keep us updated of your awesome new skills by talking to us on Facebook. Happy learning!

Devangari transcription for L-Lingo Hindi

I just want to let you know that I have updated the transcription for our Hindi program. The Devangari transcription  is IAST compliant. If you like to read more about IAST have a look here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_Sanskrit_Transliteration

So now you can see the Hindi transcriptions in L-Lingo itself.
You can switch to transcription mode with the small buttons on the top right within the quizzes.

I hope all of you Hindi learners out there like it!

New Version – Better utilizes your screen size

You might have noticed that L-Lingo always has the same size when you use it -no matter how high your screen resolution is. Although we had this optimised for the most common screen sizes, it did not work well with people having either very large or very small screens.

With this new version, the application now dynamically adjusts itself to the screen size that your display has. So if you are running on a small screen, the pictures and text are resized to a smaller size whereas on large screens, you are now able to see them bigger.

Just have a look at this before and after comparison:

As this change resultet in re-writing a few modules of code, please let me know if you find any bug or anything behaving strangely so that I can correct it.

We have also added one small button in the slideshow which lets you show / hide the translations of the displayed word or sentence. This aids people who like to learn more immersion style because they can fully concentrate on the foreign words and sentences.

How are YOU using L-Lingo?

Today, we got a nice email from Dennis who is one of our customers.

Dennis raises some good points on how you can learn with L-Lingo and L-Ceps effectively and he gave me permission to publish his email here:

“I have been using L-Ceps & L-Lingo Chinese Mandarin for about one month, and it has been a successful experience for me. I am on lessons 6 and 7 as I type this note. My retention of the vocabulary has been 100%. I am getting a clear understanding of the grammar as well. And, my Chinese friends have already been impressed with the quality of my tones.

My process is as follows:
1) I study each lesson for about 30 minutes each on the PC through the Guided Training option.
2) I use the MP3 files to work on my pronunciation and tones. I listen to the MP3 while I am driving to and from work, so I get about 50 minutes of practice speaking each day. I typically run through the lessons over and over.
3) I will work on two lessons at one time, finishing up on one while starting up on the other.
4) I have printed the textbook — I study it in the evening for 20 minutes or so per day to learn the Chinese characters.
5) While I am finishing up on a lesson, I come back to the PC and take all the quizzes.

I have been able to use a lot of captured time (such as when I drive to work) to do some of the learning, so the time I have to set aside for this effort is minimized (we all have busy schedules, do we not)?

I see that L-Lingo has some updates. Will these be incorporated into L-Ceps at some point?

An earlier e-mail from you had mentioned some grammar tools that you were working on. What would be the status on those? I have noticed many ‘connecting’ characters in the Mandarin text — will the tools discuss those characters, at least in part? I am making intuitive guesses on what those characters do; perhaps a small note would contribute to my understanding.

Thank you for a well made product. I am still surprised how inexpensive it is compared to some of the competitive products I have reviewed.”

I really do like the way Dennis has integrated the ‘offline’ features like textbook and mp3 files together with the online and PC versions of our software. By the way, you can also print-out flashcards to use on the road (but please don’t use them when behind the wheel .

Now. Dennis raised some important questions:

Feature set of L-Lingo and L-Ceps

Normally we use L-Lingo to implement new features first because in the online version it is more easy to deploy new features (no setup required etc) and being an online application it is easier to get feedback from our learners on how to fine tune these features. From time to time we then update our Desktop Version L-Ceps and incorporate these features there.

Grammar Notes

We are working very hard on the grammar notes, because we know many of you would like to see this. We need a little more time because we want to ensure the notes are really good and we have to align them with our lessons. But stay tuned, grammar notes are on its way!

Let us know how YOU use L-Lingo!

It is really great to get such detailed feedback from our customers and it helps us tremendously to really design L-Lingo in a way that benefits you in learning an Asian language. So we would like to invite all of you to share your learning experiences and how you use L-Lingo here on our Blog or on our Facebook Fan Page.

Another L-Lingo update

Hi There. I just put another update online with the following new things:

Design

You will immediately notice that the application became more colorful. We have adapted it to the color scheme of our website and do hope that you like it!

Here is a small picture with the old and new color scheme:

Loading Indicators

Especially for people on slow internet connections, we have added loading indicators for the pictures within the Quizzes so that you can see the progress of loading.

When you launch L-Lingo, you will also see more details when loading the fonts and content. Unfortunately for some Asian languages the fonts are quite large so it takes some time to load but when you start L-Lingo the 2nd time it should be quicker as the font should be in the browser cache.

Review of wrong Words

After you have completed the Quiz, you can now play a slideshow with the words and sentences that you did not know correctly. For this just click on the new button called “Review Wrong Answers”.

We hope you like the new features. Please feel free to let us know your thoughts either here on our Blog or visit us on our Facebook Fan Page!

L-Lingo New Release – Now with Quiz Flows!

We are pleased to announce a new release of L-Lingo. This new version of L-Lingo is designed to make language learning easier and fun for all of you Asian language lovers out there. Over the past two months, we have been busy putting up a better code base for the program making it ready for new exciting features.

The new version is bundled with the following new exciting features:

Flows: Dynamic flows have been added to the guided quizzes so you can effectively learn while having a great time testing out your amazing new skills in the language you are studying.

Quiz Statistics: Learn the mistakes you encountered while taking the quiz and discover your success ratio in your chosen Asian language.

Log-in details: Never open your order confirmation email or look for anywhere else on your computer for that username and password ever again.

More Dynamic Flows in Quizzes!

With the added dynamic flows in the guided quiz, you will be able to learn more effectively with different types of quizzes

The guided quiz guides you through different screens. As can be seen from the image above, the learner is taken to a screen with 4 pictures with a sentence underneath that is spoken by a native speaker. Some screens don’t contain pictures, but only contain single words. The translation is written beneath the words and the learner has to pick out the correct answer from the choice of English words. The image below is a sample of this type of guided quiz.

A similar type of guided quiz is also available for the learner, with sentences written instead of single words. Each screen also has assorted number of pictures, some with 3, 4, or 6 pictures to pick out, with Asian translations beneath and spoken by a native.

Quiz Statistics: Discover Your Wrong Answers and Your Success Ratio

In order to assess how much you have learned, we have also added a list of mistakes at the end of the guided quiz. Just as any learning should be interactive and constructive, we aim to provide you the best evaluation tools to inform you of areas that you would need to perk up on. At the end of your guided quiz, a pop-up box will show you the number of correct answers you obtained as well as the number of wrong answers and your success ratio. The list of mistakes is also outlined in a table for your reference. Clicking on an error on the list will copy the text in your clipboard for future use. In a positive note, we believe this will assist you in mastering your lessons easily and effectively.

Don’t Stress Over Looking for Your Log in Details Ever Again

Apart from the added features to our free version as well as paid version, we have added a new feature that will benefit our L-Lingo Premium users. Premium users can now remember their log-in details, thus avoiding the hassle of looking for your username and password to start your lessons.

You Rock! We’d Love to Get to Know You!

Yes, you are the star of the show and by that, we mean you as the language learner, is in the centre of this wonderful journey towards mastering Asian languages of your choice. We would like to get to know you more through our blog, and Facebook fan page.

Through our web application, you can also now get in touch with us on Facebook as well as subscribe to our newsletter. Don’t forget to tell your friends, colleagues, neighbours, or anyone you think who will benefit from our program, to do check us out. We encourage you to take advantage of these ways to connect with us so we can interact with you on a personal level and see to it that you have anything you need. Our friendly team is ever willing to guide you every step of the way to ensure you are on the path to success.

We would love to hear all of your feedbacks on the new features we have added. If you find something that is not working, please feel free to drop us a line and we’ll look into it as soon as we can.

Take Your Language Learning to the Next Level

As much as we would like to afford you with large quantities of lessons and other language learning resources for free, we need subscribers to our premium version in order to incessantly provide you with a high quality product for your learning needs. If you like the free version of L-Lingo, we strongly suggest going for L-Lingo Premium. Our premium version gives you access to hundreds of lessons with downloadable flashcards, textbooks, and mp3 files—all these amazing features for a very low price. This will definitely take your language learning to the next level.

With L-Lingo, you can learn a language that you like, the way you want it, and whenever you want it! Say hello to a fun and exciting language learning experience with L-Lingo. From the L-Lingo team, we welcome you to our community. Happy learning!

We are on Facebook now!

Hello everyone!

Over the past week, we have been busy brewing some exciting stuff for all of you. We want to get to know you more and interact with you, and with the way social media has revolutionized building of online communities, this will definitely bring us closer and create a more meaningful relationship.

It is our pleasure to inform you that we are launching our official Facebook fan page today! We are hoping to get in touch with all those who love to learn Asian languages, university students, beginners, and pretty much anyone who would love to connect with us on Facebook.

Anything you need to know about L-Lingo—what we are as a company, what we love to do, what we can do to kick start your language learning, and so much more, these will all be available in the fan page. We also have loads of awesome free resources that you can check out so please do head over to our fan page.

Whether you like to learn Thai language, you can do so with our free Thai lessons and phrasebook,  or if you would love to learn to speak Korean or write Korean, we got you covered with our sample Korean lessons—all available to you at no cost.

We also offer Chinese Mandarin,  Hindi,  Japanese,  Malay,  Tagalog and Vietnamese for you to learn with our 40 free lessons online application.

We would love to hear loads of comments from you. Whether you would like to share your thoughts on how the program has helped you or if you have any bright ideas to put forward, we would love to hear them!

All your comments will positively shape how L-Lingo will look like in the years to come and we want you to be a big part of the future of L-Lingo. We have received heaps of feedback from previous users of our language learning application and a great deal of these incredible feedbacks have been integrated into the program.

2010 is going to be big for L-Lingo. If you are just starting how to learn, we got you covered. We will be at your side every step of the way. Feel free to share this exciting news to all of your family and friends and let’s all have fun learning together. We can’t wait to interact with all of you. See you on Facebook!

How to Learn a Language Quickly and Easily

Every so often learning a foreign language is a daunting task. It all comes down to how much time and effort you put into learning a particular language and how many words you actually know. There are always ups and downs when it comes to learning a language that is different than the one you speak every day. So if you feel exhilarated in getting it right the first time or probably a few times after practicing, it is perfectly normal.

We at L-Lingo went through the same pain as you are doing but thought we would share our language learning tips with you. A lot of these language tips, we also have embodied into our language learning software of the L-Ceps Personaltrainer and of course into L-Lingo.

With our method you can learn Chinese Mandarin, learn Hindi, learn Japanese, learn Korean, learn Malay, learn Thai, learn Tagalog and learn Vietnamese quickly and easily.

Each person has unique styles in learning. In this case, learning about an Asian language calls for a software that is tailored to cater to your needs. This software should not only teach you the basics and the advance skills in using the language, but more importantly, it should support your individual learning style. Here are some ways wherein you can learn a language in a breeze:

Supplement Your Learning with Sights and Sounds.

This is the single best method of learning a particular language. Flashcards and mp3 files which are available for download in the language learning software that you use are great tools to supplement your learning.

Just think about how you used to guess the name of the object when your preschool teacher whipped out a card. A great language learning software would offer you similar flashcards. You can print out these flashcards so you can utilize them for quizzes after you are done with your lessons. Randomly flip out a card.

What’s the Chinese term for “bread”? “miàn bāo…” Correct! Try to memorize a number of words per day and recall them wherever you are, while falling in line at the grocery, at the bank, the doctor’s office, or while waiting for your professor to arrive.

Another important element of learning a language is being able to hear the correct pronunciation. Download mp3 files and listen to how the words are being spoken. The best way to learn to pronounce it correctly is by hearing it from the native speakers themselves. If you have mp3 files like this, then you are well on your way to speaking it effortlessly.

Learn in Clusters.

It is easier and more effective to learn different words that are placed in categories. For example, you can learn all about Food today, and then the following day, your lessons would be about Numbers.

It is important to get equipped with words in specific subject areas rather than having a broad range of topics to study. As humans, we learn effectively by using categories or groups, rather than just memorizing random words.

Adapt Your Own Learning Style.

Over time you will be able to find your own comfortable regimen of learning a language. Your language learning software has to give you this kind of freedom to learn at your own pace because only then will you be effective in mastering the art of speaking a language that is not your mother tongue.

You might find yourself having a knack for writing but have a degree of difficulty in speaking. You might also notice that your friends who are learning the same language are way better than you are. If you feel more comfortable with visual aids, jot down words and associate them with flashcards. Try to overcome your weaknesses and identify areas that you are good at.

If you are afraid of speaking, try to speak the words out loud at home in front of your family. This will be a good starting point of overcoming that fear. As you go along, you will be able to streamline your course of studying. Whether or not you have a particular number set for your goal, always remember to keep an eye on it!

We hope you like our language learning tips and we will post some more from time to time.

L-Lingo MP3 Files -Audio to Go

We have now integrated mp3 files that you can download onto your mp3 player. You will find the download button under the ‘Documents to Print Out/MP3′ section on the main screen. Using this function, you can always download the mp3 file for the lesson you have selected.

Currently, we have translations of the language lessons in English (UK), and we will soon add translations in German and other languages, so keep checking back.

In some browsers, the full-screen mode closes after you save the mp3 file. You can re-enter the full screen mode by clicking on the small icon on the top right corner of the main screen.