My Chinese teacher, recently send me a link to a nice site with “learn Chinese” podcast. It is called www.chinesepod.com and everyday they make a new cast, in one of their 4 leaning levels, newbie, elementary, intermediate and advanced. There is also possibility to download the transcript with hanzi, pinyin and English translation. It features an Irish guy and a Chinese girl, chit chatting and performing and explaining Chinese dialogues.
It turns out that this phenomenon actually is available for various languages. If you are interested in Japanese you could try www.japanesepod101.com, or if you are struggling with English, you could try www.englishpod.com (same people behind chinesepod).
It has become kind of big to learn Chinese in the western world at the moment. A recent article in wired describes how elementary schools and middle schools all over the world now are increasing their Chinese offerings. And recent news here in Denmark confirmed that, for Danish primary schools. With that market growth it sure is interesting for the western world to do business there. Not only to move production facilities there, but the increasing amount of richer and richer buyers makes it a lucrative export market for high quality consumer goods.
But in order to really make the language a world language, I think someday the Chinese have to abandon or come up with an alternative for the characters (hanzi). The Korean people successfully abandoned it in 1945, and the Japanese now has two alternatives. The Katakana and the Hiragana alphabet. I think, the prospect of learning a couple of thousands new characters will keep many people away. Not me though, I am struggling with my first 100 at the moment.
April 6th, 2006 at 10:34
Brian,
Glad you like the podcasts. If you have any lesson suggestions just let us know. We’d be happy to accommodate.
April 9th, 2006 at 04:29
[...] Meanwhile, Brian Larsen at Bacon is Great had this to say: My otherwise kind of low tech Chinese teacher, recently send me a link to a nice site with “learn Chinese” podcast. It is called http://www.chinesepod.com and everyday they make a new cast, in one of their 4 leaning levels, newbie, elementary, intermediate and advanced. There is also possibility to download the transcript with hanzi, pinyin and English translation. It features an Irish guy and a Chinese girl, chit chatting and performing and explaining Chinese dialogues. [...]
April 9th, 2006 at 13:38
Brian Larsen at Bacon is Great
You’ve got to register that Trademark :).
April 9th, 2006 at 18:29
Yes, I am seriously considering it.
April 10th, 2006 at 08:46
Yes, it is a good site, I will learn English instead of Chinese. As I am a Chinese girl. Hope we can help each other on language studying.
April 10th, 2006 at 08:46
my email address: jiayuguo@gmail.com
April 10th, 2006 at 10:59
A fellow bacon fan:
http://bacontarian.com/
April 13th, 2006 at 10:40
hi,i think Chinese is very good!!!it can express many thing.and the language is wonderful in chinese…….
April 23rd, 2006 at 15:54
Hey Casper, i didnt realize it was you haha. So i removed my rather unplaced comment about the bacon guy.
And to you Rain. I sure hope the language can express many things. that is why it is a language!
April 24th, 2006 at 07:41
hey Larsen,in actually ,learn a laguage is very difficult,but if you try your best,it must be ok!!!and use it very easy!!!hope you verything is good…
May 8th, 2006 at 07:50
Mojn Brian
If you use e-mule, there is a wide range of titels available under the name Pimsleur, the feature a wide range of language courses, like arabic, spanish, german, chinese(cantonese and mandarin), japanese and french.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:36
Is there a learn danish podcast that anyone can point me in the right direction to?
August 13th, 2006 at 10:48
Unfortunately i am not aware of such a podcast at the moment, but it is definetly a good idea. I still listen intensely to chinesepod, it is really a great service. I will let you know if i found something.
January 4th, 2007 at 03:50
Sounds great! Podcasts are so popular now. I like to learn languages with different ways. Podcasts, flash animations, textbooks and etc. I know another very good website for learning Mandarin. http://www.activechinese.com. I have been using it to learn Chinese culture. It’s really cool…
March 18th, 2007 at 16:51
Hi!
I’m a boy from Denmark. I want to start a “Learn Danish podcast”.
If you are interested, please contact me by e-mail.
/Morten Olsen, Denmark
March 18th, 2007 at 21:12
Yes, and my e-mail is morten@baptistmail.com.
March 18th, 2007 at 21:15
Amen!
March 27th, 2007 at 14:42
I am English and work for a Danish company. It would be great to know a little Danish, even though everybody over there has a great command of the English language. And I think that a Danish podcast would be a great idea.
September 21st, 2007 at 08:53
Hi
Does anyone know if a danish podcast has been set up yet?? There seems to be some interest already and id definately be interested…
Leanne xx
November 1st, 2007 at 11:51
I grew up in Denmark but currently live in the US. Under our circumstances, we have not succeeded in teaching our children Danish (my wife doesn’t speak Danish either). Consequently, I would love a podcast for teaching Danish. I would volunteer to do the readings as well as publish them, if someone could make the readings available. I have no teaching background, so I would be a poor candidate for writing the lesson plan. Please reply to freeat12five@gmail.com if there is any interest.
Peter Kofod
February 10th, 2008 at 18:54
Sounds great! Podcasts are so popular now.
March 20th, 2008 at 11:11
I too would be interested in a Danish learning podcast. My boyfriend is danish… and guess what.. I have the thumb screws from his family to be fluent in Danish by the time we go back to visit them… oh, in 3 months time :P
January 17th, 2009 at 22:52
Danish learning podcast:
http://www.copenhagencast.com
I hope you enjoy it!