language

In the past I've written about Babbel for mobile and Rosetta Course (mobile version of Rosetta Stone) for language learning when you have spare time. Now another contender enters the ring, and has a lot of promise.

Duolingo turns learning a language into a game, more so than the other apps. You are given a few hearts (representing your health pool) that you don't want to lose during the learning levels. Hearts are lost by answering questions incorrectly. Once you finish a lesson with hearts remaining, you'll earn an achievement to track your … Read more

Rosetta Stone touts itself as one of the fastest and easiest ways to learn a new language. However, its learning system also carries a rather steep price tag: $300-$500 for the complete set. Of course this price is without any specials/discounts the company may be running at any given time. Still, if you're going to spend that kind of money on a language course, you might want to try it first.

The Rosetta Stone Web site offers a free demo of its software. Though, if you're thinking of learning in your free time, you might consider … Read more

Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome.

Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.

It's all part of the gradual arrival of Google's vision to build a Star Trek-style search engine, in which the computer grasps what people want and answers them. Eventually, expect Google to let people initiate a … Read more

OS X is localized to a number of languages, and with a few settings changes, you can set the OS interface -- as well as many programs -- to display in a different language. This is handy for multilingual types, but if you have inadvertently changed it to a language you do not understand, you might find it quite difficult to revert.

Fortunately, while the languages change, the layout still stays essentially the same. To switch back to your preferred language, you will need to follow these steps:

First go to the system preferences by opening the Apple menu and … Read more

Google updated its Google Translate app for Android today to version 2.6. The new version, available for Android 2.3 and up, supports the translation of vertical text in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese with your camera. The big news, however, is that it finally supports offline use with downloadable language packs.

To download one or more of the 50 available language packs, go to Menu > Offline languages, then tap on the pin icon next to the languages you want to download. You'll then be prompted to choose whether to download the files over your mobile data network … Read more

When Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger met Steve Jobs in 1982, it sparked a chain of events that monumentally changed Apple's design philosophy forever. It wasn't just a change in how future products would look -- Esslinger ushered in a change of mindset and a unified design language across products.

Esslinger's new book, "Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change," available today in the U.S., delivers some fascinating insights into those crucial early years at Apple.… Read more

One of my favorite things about watching old movies is hearing how people might have spoken in eras past -- the expressions they used, their old-school smack talk. But what did the languages from thousands of years back sound like? Hollywood, as far as I know, has yet to make a movie in which characters talk in authentic proto-Austronesian.

The language nerd in me, was, therefore, excited to discover that scientists from UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created a computer program to rapidly reconstruct vocabularies of ancient languages using only their modern language descendants. … Read more

Some people use the left, some the right, but which side of the brain do you primarily use for language? It may seem like a trivial question, but for one thing, if you ever have to undergo any type of brain surgery, the answer can help avoid damage to speech areas.

While lab tests can provide the answer, an app that involves a few minutes of concentration works just as well, according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Furthermore, a version of the app for patients with schizophrenia trains them to improve their focus so that when … Read more

You might be familiar with the term "megabyte."

For some, though, it represents an emotional megadeath.

You might know what an ISP is, but some need ESP in order to explain to themselves what this actually means.

This, at least, is the conclusion of a deeply disturbing piece of research, performed in the U.K. on behalf of Carphone Warehouse's Geek Squad. … Read more