Review of MANGOlanguages.com
Web+Apps, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, Free at libraries ★
They offer 60 languages (72 if you include dialects, $20/month for any or all). They are free at many libraries in the US and Canada, and their site will search for a library near you. They show spelling in English and in the target language, and audio. The apps have an automatic setting to play continuously, but there are few repeats, and far more explanation in English than time learning the language. They cover only very introductory conversation, varying widely among languages, and no longer publicly list the topics they teach, so you have to try it to find if they teach what you need.
They say sentences fast, but then go word by word, and you can click any word to hear it slowly as many times as you want. They color-code words in English with the same color as the corresponding word in the target language. They explain a few grammar concepts as needed and explain how the grammar differs from English.
They compare graphs of your voice with a native speaker, but like BBC they do not say if they are graphing volume or pitch. My graphs did not appear at all in Cantonese on Chrome, and were too small to read in Mandarin on Internet Explorer. No scoring of pronunciation is given, just the graph.
Unfortunately they mix a wide variety of complex words and subtle distinctions into the beginner lessons.
For example the first lessons in Chinese and French teach a variety of greetings: hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, etc., but the Chinese lesson says most people use ni hao. Why start with so many words which the learners will forget from lack of use? The lesson on numbers has only a few randomly chosen numbers embedded in long conversations, such as the price of a Ming vase or the cost and distance of a taxi ride. These are much harder to remember than a series of practical sentences like: how much is the rice? how much is the map? along with answers structured to teach all numbers from zero up.
The French lesson on numbers does address a map, but still has only a few numbers lost in a sea of other conversation. Some lessons, like the French one, also include a movie where you can choose English and/or French subtitles, and lessons to teach the dialogue word by word. The subtitles are shown too briefly to learn from, the controls are too dim, and the dialogue is not widely applicable, and so not worth all the time spent teaching it word by word. The accent in the Canadian French lesson sounds just like the accent in the French lesson for France, and not at all like Quebec.
The first Swahili lesson is much simpler, with just hello, how are you, answers, and "my name is." They introduce morning and evening later, but never teach numbers.
They use English to teach most languages. They teach English itself in 19 languages: Arabic (Egyptian, Modern Standard), Armenian, Bengali, Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin), French, German, Greek, Haitian creole, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese.
Web+Apps, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, Free at libraries ★
They offer 60 languages (72 if you include dialects, $20/month for any or all). They are free at many libraries in the US and Canada, and their site will search for a library near you. They show spelling in English and in the target language, and audio. The apps have an automatic setting to play continuously, but there are few repeats, and far more explanation in English than time learning the language. They cover only very introductory conversation, varying widely among languages, and no longer publicly list the topics they teach, so you have to try it to find if they teach what you need.
They say sentences fast, but then go word by word, and you can click any word to hear it slowly as many times as you want. They color-code words in English with the same color as the corresponding word in the target language. They explain a few grammar concepts as needed and explain how the grammar differs from English.
They compare graphs of your voice with a native speaker, but like BBC they do not say if they are graphing volume or pitch. My graphs did not appear at all in Cantonese on Chrome, and were too small to read in Mandarin on Internet Explorer. No scoring of pronunciation is given, just the graph.
Unfortunately they mix a wide variety of complex words and subtle distinctions into the beginner lessons.
For example the first lessons in Chinese and French teach a variety of greetings: hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, etc., but the Chinese lesson says most people use ni hao. Why start with so many words which the learners will forget from lack of use? The lesson on numbers has only a few randomly chosen numbers embedded in long conversations, such as the price of a Ming vase or the cost and distance of a taxi ride. These are much harder to remember than a series of practical sentences like: how much is the rice? how much is the map? along with answers structured to teach all numbers from zero up.
The French lesson on numbers does address a map, but still has only a few numbers lost in a sea of other conversation. Some lessons, like the French one, also include a movie where you can choose English and/or French subtitles, and lessons to teach the dialogue word by word. The subtitles are shown too briefly to learn from, the controls are too dim, and the dialogue is not widely applicable, and so not worth all the time spent teaching it word by word. The accent in the Canadian French lesson sounds just like the accent in the French lesson for France, and not at all like Quebec.
The first Swahili lesson is much simpler, with just hello, how are you, answers, and "my name is." They introduce morning and evening later, but never teach numbers.
They use English to teach most languages. They teach English itself in 19 languages: Arabic (Egyptian, Modern Standard), Armenian, Bengali, Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin), French, German, Greek, Haitian creole, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese.
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