GoGo Lingo Blog

GoGo Lingo is featured as a new venture in this month’s issue of Stanford Business Magazine. Check it out here.

Thanks for the shout out.

This morning I woke up to a great review of GoGo Lingo on Wired.com’s Geekdad blog.

I met Brad Moon a few weeks ago at InPlay and was very impressed by him. Unlike so many other bloggers, Brad doesn’t write about things because companies pay him to review them. Instead, he genuinely seeks things that are interesting and sufficiently “geeky”. It’s so refreshing to be appreciated for all of the hard work, research, and brainpower that we put into making GoGo Lingo an entertaining language learning tool.   (A lot of people just ask us to “dumb it down”.) Thanks for the love, Brad.

It’s the 5th of May, and whether you are learning Spanish or not, many of you may participate in a Cinco de Mayo celebration.  Before I had a baby, this usually meant a few margaritas and some great Mexican food (we’re trying to keep Tali off the alcohol for a few more years so no margaritas for me this year).

One thing that I love about Cinco de Mayo, is that it is more of an American holiday than a Mexican one.  Contrary to popular belief, it is not Mexican Independence Day. It is a celebration of the Mexican army’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.  Granted the French came back and occupied Mexico only a year later  (they stayed for three years before withdrawing under pressure from the United States).  But that’s not the point.  The Battle at Puebla was significant because the Mexican army was outnumbered by the French 2 to 1.  Yet they still won.  So, I like to think of Cinco de Mayo as a celebration of the underdog being victorious in the face of a huge challenge. Even if you think you might lose, you gotta at least put up a fight.

But really, why I like Cinco de Mayo is that it is a true demonstration of how life is better because the world is becoming a smaller place.  Americans have embraced this date as a chance to celebrate our Mexican brothers and sisters. And to that, I raise my virgin margarita.

Last week, I went to Washington D.C. for the National Chinese Language Learning Convention.  Unlike the Latin conventions I used to attend in high school (I know how dorky can I get?), the NCLC was an inspiring, eye opening event. Chinese language learning in America is growing like wildfire- from 2004 to 2008 Chinese language learning grew over 10% per year and it is on track to be more popular than German and French. It turns out that the Chinese government has been sending Chinese teachers to America and subsidizing their salaries. Of course, this definitely helps the growth of Chinese but even still we don’t have enough qualified Chinese teachers to keep up with the demand.  I could feel it too.  As I sat through the various sessions of the conference, I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of the attendees were Asian.  In fact, I found myself feeling shocked when I saw a non-Asian there who could speak Chinese.

I realize that perhaps for many of us, there is a psychological barrier to learning Chinese.  It isn’t an alphabetic language and it just feels too foreign.  I’ll admit one of the reasons that I chose to start GoGo Lingo with Spanish instead of Chinese is because deep down I was a little afraid of Chinese.  During the conference, someone was trying to help me practice the 4 tones. After about 20 minutes he goes- “perfect! you got it!” Unfortunately, I didn’t think I was saying anything differently.  I could not even perceive the differences in the tones, so I am sure I couldn’t replicate it. For a perfectionist like me, that’s tough.

But the truth is, that we have got to get over this fear.  China’s position in our world and more importantly, China’s complex and fascinating relationship with the U.S. isn’t going anywhere.  I think about my baby and realize how much more she will be able to accomplish if she can speak Chinese. And what an opportunity I have in my hands to start teaching her now, when she can perceive the different tones and doesn’t know to be afraid of the language. (Actually, some studies suggest that that window for perceiving the sounds may already be closing for Tali.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have the  funding to develop GoGo Lingo Chinese right now. But I am going to start working with Tali to learn Chinese and I will start sharing the resources I find and the experience that we have. So yes, now we will be teaching Tali English, Portuguese, Farsi, Chinese and Spanish. She’ll either love us or hate us when she grows up…I’ll keep you posted.