exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5278 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 1 of 7 18 June 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged |
It looks as if the folks behind the [language]pod101 or [language]class101 will be starting up Hindi soon. I've poked
around on their site for Korean and Thai in the past, and noted they now have Hindi listed as "upcoming". They're
releasing Swedish, Dutch and Hungarian as well as 3 others in the next month, it seems--Hindi certainly appears to
be one of them.
I'll probably dabble with it briefly, since I'm checking out all the Hindi resources I can. If anyone has further
information, I'd be curious... When it's up, hopefully I can get a chance to poke through it and write some sort of
update or review, but wanted to share this.
HindiPod101 Site
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Grassmanian Newbie United States Joined 5507 days ago 4 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin, French
| Message 2 of 7 18 June 2011 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
I assume that all the Xpod100 sites are run by the same company. I would like to know more about the company as
a whole. Does anyone know the name of the company that sponsors these sites? Do they have a company webpage?
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unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6913 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin
| Message 3 of 7 18 June 2011 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
They're also planning on bringing out Indonesianpod101 and Hebrewpod101 at around the same time.
The company is called Innovative Language Learning.
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 4 of 7 19 June 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
I tried out Germanpod101 last year and hated it. The American speaker had an annoying accent in both English and German, and made irritating jokes all the time.
I haven't checked any out since. I might make an exception for Hindi, though.
Edited by Jeffers on 19 June 2011 at 12:41am
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exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5278 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi
| Message 5 of 7 19 June 2011 at 5:09am | IP Logged |
I'm happy with Korean, as they pushed it further along and it's much less "scripted" - there's certainly a script they
work from; comparing it to the beginning Thai one where you could tell the staff was reading from a script with the
staggered voices. They'll have a free week trial once it gets up (if they continue with their standard operating
procedure, anyway, when you sign up) and then free basic access.
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Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 6 of 7 19 June 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged |
Grassmanian wrote:
I assume that all the Xpod100 sites are run by the same company. I would like to know
more about the company as
a whole. Does anyone know the name of the company that sponsors these sites? Do they
have a company webpage?
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This is what I've been able to piece together about the company based on the website
and a few years on and off of listening to the podcasts:
Innovative Language Learning was founded by Peter Galante, beginning with
JapanesePod101. Peter has a doctrate in Linguistics from a Japanese university, and
was working at a Tokyo-based translation company called Erklaren when he decided to
make the podcasts with the help of some of his Japanese coworkers. Listeners of
JapanesePod101 might remember that he also participated in the podcasts as the English
speaker for the first few years, although nowadays he seems to busy himself with the
management of his company, while some more skilled (but less "colorful") English
speakers of Japanese record the podcasts.
Jeffers wrote:
I tried out Germanpod101 last year and hated it. The American speaker
had an annoying accent in both English and German, and made irritating jokes all the
time. |
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If you're not a fan of the "native speaker female + American male learner who makes
stupid jokes" format, then I'm sorry to say that in my experience, the [language]pod101
franchise might not be for you. However, the accent and skill level of the AML tend to
be quite good in the other languages I've heard, and they also tend to use only native
speakers in the dialogues, so I think GermanPod101 is an anomaly in these regards
(listeners of the other series, feel free to correct me). Here's hoping that the
HindiPod101 will employ an AML who is skilled in Hindi and provides more insights than
cringes ;)
Edited by Lucky Charms on 19 June 2011 at 9:02am
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 7 of 7 19 June 2011 at 1:29pm | IP Logged |
The problem with the xPod101 business model is that if you've seen JapanesePod101.com and you know how much archive material you can download for the cost of a month's subscription, any new course seems comparatively overpriced....
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