Join the Praxis team. We're hiring!

제 이름 듣렀어! Yes, I'm a regular at koreanclass!

But I still listen to EVERY CPod lesson though, even if I don't post as much as I used to. Keep it up guys!

日本語も頑張るぞ！

sounds really cool

@ kuaize

thanks for the encuragement!

I guess I record something about me (that should be easy...) and than I write something down before (!) I record the demo lesson (maybe with a dialouge where my voice is modulated two ways [voice a = heliumeffect voice b= sounding like a Goau´ld (I love stargate...) ] ) ^_^

I notice that the LanguagePod sites now have a space where you can enter your email address ("Want to be the first to know when "language*Pod launches?")

The URL's just *Language*Pod.com - for example www.frenchpod.com

I also notice that the arabicpod.com domain has now been bought by Praxis, but russianpod.com is still owned by a web hosting company.

Hey JP:

My friends and I are actually trying to launch a podcast teaching Filipino, with inspiration from Chinesepod and Spanishpod (my goodness, you guys are our idols!!!). We tried naming it PinoyPod, but it turns out, a podcast on Filipino culture based in Cali already got the name. We named it KalyeSpeak instead.

Bill, yup, there's a huge market for Filipino in the States, especially in Cali.

Interestingly enough, Filipino (or the main dialect Tagalog) is a hodgepodge and mixture of Spanish, English, native dialects, and some Chinese.

FilipinoPod (PinoyPod!) would be a relatively small international market (compared to Spanish), but you could potentially corner the market; there are only a couple of textbooks available on the language, and they are all pseudo-functionalist.

Also, there are millions of Filipinos living in the Philippines itself outside of the Tagalog-speaking regions that speak English, but not Tagalog.

(No, I don't belive Praxis is ever going to pick up TagalogPod, but 50 to 500? Naku, talagang paglo-lowballl na ito, ha? My God, huwag na mag-underestimate ninyo sa amin. hmph.)

jpvillanueva,

I would recommend something with the word "Tagalog" (emphasize "ga" syllable..with an "ah" sound using 1st tone in Mandarin) in it, as that is the name of the language (chillosk, please correct if I'm wrong).

So, I have to admit that I am biased as I have a Tagalog immersion probram going on at my house here in the states.

There was a certain language maven (name begins with "a" ends with 8) that expressed an interest in learning Tagalog as well.

Regards, Bill M.

I'd love to see a VietnamesePod, I converse with Vietnamese people every single day and these consultations are seriously hampered by the language barrier. I haven't found any decent material that could help me get beyond newbie.

It's absolutely awesome (is that still a slang term? ;-) My older British compatriots keep telling me that's the case, but I'm doubtful) that you're turning to your audience for applicants. That's web 2.0 at its best!

"# Masters Degree in linguistics, education, or Language"

Wow - you need someone who sounds like Ken, with his "chunks of lexis" etc.? ;-) Speaking as someone who has quite some of experience in both education and language acquisition, I'd say a bachelors degree should in fact suffice. Fluency, enthusiasm and the ability to explain well is way more important. A good accent is just as imperative - neither too tinted by dialect, nor, in the case of the language that is not the speaker's mother tongue, too much of a foreigner's accent, which can be extremely annoying for the listeners. Forget what I just said, who am I to give Praxis Language advice? :-P

"# Teaching experience and strong academic foundations" Just being curious: What would qualify as "strong academic foundations"?

If only I hadn't got a position in the UK...I'd actually have applied...Shanghai is soo far away. I know a native speaker of Arabic who might be willing to go all the to China, though, so if that position is still vacant, I'll persuade her to send in her CV.

@Excuter - I'm sure you can muster up the courage to send it in. Why not take a short extract from German radio etc. and comment on that as though it was the monologue of a lesson, repeating the phrases and translating them - so that you basically fulfill Jenny's and Ken's role at once? Stick to key elements of the Chinese/SpanishPod format, yet not too rigidly. Make your personality stand out. "Mache dir Stichpunkte, damit du nicht den Faden verlierst". (Jumping on the bandwagon... I've never seen so much German in one thread.) I'm sure you've thought of all this before, well, just my 2p.

@henning - "GermanPods occupying the (albeit spacy) bathroom" In Shanghai? I hope not the loo with the squat toilet. Otherwise you'd be condemning "deine Landsmänner" to a horrible fate :-) And why spacy (=stupefied)?

"For the native French speakers, we're looking for people from France only." That's surprising, after all, there are more francophone people in Canada/Africa than in France and on top of that, their accents don't differ *that* greatly as far as I can tell. You may want to be careful with FrenchPod; they're is already a wealth of fairly good podcasts available. Perhaps you could concentrate on the underrepresented languages first?

Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm really looking forward to your new Podcasts, especially Arabic(with a writing system that almost rivals Chinese, at least in beauty), Japanese("Heroes" sparked my interest ;-) ) and Russian (my mom will be thrilled to hear this. She studied it in school but was terrible. After all, she actually passed her final exam by repeating the questions of the examiner with a slight variation. Well, I suppose forcing students to learn a language in order to create bonds with a political/ideological ally won't make them get all too enthusiastic about it).

I sure hope there'll be a Praxis Pass equivalent that allows you to combine at least two languages.

Good luck in your endeavour!

ahum...just to comment on this topic close to my heart again: I´ve prepaired my application for the Lead Host of Germanpod, but didn´t send it up to now, because I´m working on a demo mp3 and I´m recording and rerecording it and I don´t come to an and... a monolouge isn´t as easy as a conversation between two people...any advice?

Hey JohnB, if the job isn´t taken jet let me know please.

Yes, I agree with rsmith91. I would have a language request, too. Only I guess 50 or even 500 grateful learners are not going to pay the salaries of 3 to 4 full time staff for XYpod.

How many premium subscribers are necessary to make any Languagepod financially viable?

Sorry, but I just can't see TagalogPod or FilipinoPod being a big money maker for Praxis. But you never know...

Do we call it TagalogPod, FilipinoPod, or PilipinoPod? Either way, I'm ready to sign up for the Practice Plan.

Tagalogpod would sound good to me as well!

chillosk,

Interestingly,Tagalog may be more widely spoken in the US than Mandarin (especially SoCal).

I'm on board for Tagalopod!!!

Wow sounds great. arabic would be a cool one to learn a bit of.

personally i'd love to see indonesian-pod. I learned it for a while but there is a serious lack of online resources for it.

great job! what about other Asian languages, like FilipinoPod (i'm up for that!) or ThaiPod.

how about FiipinoPod? hahaha, I'd volunteer straight away!

CPod (or should I say Praxis) - have you had any success finding people for these roles yet, or are you still looking?

Have you got any idea about when the new languagePods are going to be up and running? I can't wait!

oops, sorry, that should have been auntie68 (ie, not y). Fell into my own trap, didn't I :-)

The secret is to read, really read, either "y" or "ie", then you'll never get us confused, even when we morph slightly. ;-)

Thanks for the flattery Aunty68, but no, I'm afraid my only claim to fame in Cantonese is boisterous enthusiasm. I've only studied it for a few weeks so far but it's a bit hard to do alone. I'm still trying to find/create a local teacher or practice helper, but so far no success yet.

Yup, this afternoon I picked up two really nicely-done (and ring-bound) photocopies of my hard copy of "Cantonese 400" which I had ordered last week. Felt so good...but it also a bit guilty. To get the copies, I had to tell the photocopy woman about five times (truthfully), looking her in the eye, that I had done everything in my power to contact the copyright owner, to no avail. She is still suspicious, I think.

I really wish people would take interest in such valuable out-of-print textbooks, and put a bit of money into reissuing them with revisions to bring them up to date (espeially those awful C60 audio cassette recordings!!!)...

Hi kriskringle. That's a nice thought! But to be brutally honest, it doesn't help that Cantonese is a very inward-looking dialect. It is so easy for Praxis to find qualified Mandarin teachers for CPOD. But it would be really difficult for them to find "qualified" teachers for Cantonese, simply because Cantonese speakers have never been very interested in teaching their dialect to non-Cantonese speakers. Hanyu Pinyin makes such a huge difference; and it's not really an option for Cantonese... Meanwhile, I've just made myself two very nice bootleg copies of my personal (paid for, original) "Cantonese 400" (20 lessons) so that I don't need to worry about losing my only copy of an out-of-print classic that I really depend on. I converted the three C60 audio cassettes to MP3 format some time ago. It's such a shame...

Hello auntie68. Thanks for the link. I see that has already been discussed before. I hope they read through your comments again and change their mind. ;)

Ah. I was "Auntie" until I changed my user name to "auntie68". AuntySue is different person;, she is THE Queen of Cantonese. Your family's linguistic background is so interesting!

Chinese, work, family, Chinese and Chinese are just about all I can handle now.

However.

I have already studied German and Russian; my sister and her daughters speak Cuban Spanish at home; my younger daughter and her Parisian-Spanish husband speak Parisian French, and most of their friends speak Quebecois (if that's how you spell it). My mother and cousins speak native Yiddish, although not quite as often as before. My father spoke Russian (his second language), but when I tried to converse with a fellow graduate student (lo, those many years ago), he sneared that I spoke Russian like a Jew.

So, I'll download the German and Russian elementary podcasts, but I won't be studying them. Just sort of refreshing my brain.

The one I'm really excited about is Arabic. I want to get used to hearing it. I want to understand some very basic phrases and the way the structure of the language influences the structure of the culture. And I want to learn how to say the difficult Arabic sounds hear when someone speaks fluent Arabic.

Yes, I love languages for themselves, but they are also keys to open the locks of each culture.

New subject: Aunty68, how come you're not Aunty or Aunty Sue anymore?

Sandra

Hey, don't push Praxis - they are already doing a great thing for us language lovers! =)

I can't wait, I'm so exited! My friend and I have been looking to learn the six U.N. languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and French). We also love Japanese. And this is a dream come true! I will certainly recommend Praxis pods to her.

I do agree with Joachim. There are some languages that just need extra coverage on grammar. But you don't have to listen to me - I'm not a teacher of any sort. ;) Actually, I have no good reason to learn German or Italian. I have too many languages to learn besides these, but I have certainly become more interested.

I'm behind this project all the way! Good luck!

Hello sebastian and kriskringle. Just in case you were curious, this very long thread on the Praxis Blog probably covered just about every argument that the Cantomaniacs like me (as "Auntie") made to Praxis, but unsuccessfully:

http://blog.praxislanguage.com/2007/06/13/other-praxis-languages/

Thanks and take care...

I'm with sebastian here. Extend the site and enrich it with the local Shanghai dialect and Cantonese.

I prefer Bayrisch or Wienerisch to Hochdeutsch any time. ;-)

Mm, i was hoping for other Chinese dialects like Cantonese. Could be done by extending the current Chinesepod site a little bit.

@ excuter, henning: Bitte Hochdeutsch und nicht Bayrisch oder gar Schwäbisch!

@all: I am curious if and how the Praxislanguage way of teaching a language without too much emphasis on grammar will work for languages like e.g. German and Russian with their ideosyncratic grammar patterns.

Arg, excuter.

Dann lieber Hochdeutsch mit leichtem Hanseatischen Einschlag...actually I am always glad, wenn my ears can take a rest at the weekend dialect wise after a long work week in Stuttgart.

Hi Henning, meine Muader kummert fall aus der nähe von Nürnberch, aber i hob´s halt net g´lernt. I kann zwar a bisserl so re´hn aber des is net des hochdeutsch des i normalerweis sprech gell.

John B I never had to write a resume in english so that will take some days ( and Googeling), but I´m working on it!

Thanks to all of you for your compliments and very positive constructive critisisms. You have all been helpful and I look forward to talking with all of you more. It feels great to be in the company of people who love language as much as i do if not more than I do. You guys talk about languages I have never even heard of sometimes.

If anyone out there speaks Zuni Indian I have been dying to take my study of this language further.

Thanks again and here's to the future

By the way: Is there still room in that building?

I know, it is not of my concern, but I just have a vision of the FrenchPod team residing in the stairway, the ItalianPods getting a table in that creepy elevator, and the GermanPods occupying the (albeit spacy) bathroom.

scotts23,

German has grammar? I thought there are only correct or wrong sentences which feel "OK" or "not so OK" ;)

Just kidding. Sometimes clear grammar can make learning a lot easier. The exception-driven language Chinese is sometimes very hard to grasp.

user42006,

the bulk discount is the Praxis Pass. If Praxis does not rise the price, it will become a very valuable option.

Well, for those, who have 19,3 hours free time a day to learn languages (I myself will be busy with Chinese for probably the following 10 years).

Bruder Bassman,

es tut mir leid, da habe ich wahrscheinlich zu viel Kaffee getrunken und etwas rasch getippt, habe das gar nicht böse gemeint. Dein Deutsch ist wahnsinnig gut.

Anyway, I think it's great there are so many multilingual people here! I am in awe of all of you.

And I wish Cpod best of luck with the expansion of the empire -- just take care not to expand too quickly, potentially eroding your brand, which is associated with fun and quality.

Lastly, I don't think I'm bringing up a new point in saying that German, being a highly inflected language, probably is going to demand a different approach, with more emphasis on grammar points. I think you'd need to have some sort of online grammar guide from the start. Of course, maybe I'm being too old-school about this.

Ouch! user42006, you are right that JapanesePod101 and KoreanClass101 are not connected with CPOD.

Btw, they're not exactly "imitators"; JPOD101's creator, Peter Galante, has been quoted in press interviews giving full credit to CPOD (and Ken Carroll especially) for helping him to get set up. He didn't simply take what he wanted, he asked for it. They actually do some things better than CPOD does...

If your loyalty to the Praxis brand allows you to try the product of a "friendly rival", they're really not bad. They've just launched a third one, for Italian, which even managed to satisfy my fussy advanced learner needs.

Good luck!

Now I'm confused. I thought Japanese101.com was a chinesepod production? Now I find out that they want to do their own. Same for Koreanpod101 or whatever it is. Similar style. If there are going to be imitators that look so similar, maybe chinesepod can put up a list of what they actually do have.

Otherwise I'll be signing up for stuff left right and center and I won't know what is what.

Also, no matter how many languagepods there are, I want to sign up for all of them. Will there be a bulk discount??

Please.

hi johnb. Thanks! I think that 99% of my "concern" was for me! Hope your "very best" is enough! Looking forward to trying ArabicPod when it comes out...

Goulniky, the studio equipment is a real killer to telecommuting, I think, and the other points that Frank brought up are true as well. Plus, having everybody in the same place does build a sense of camaraderie, though it is at the expense of hiring efficiency. Thankfully Shanghai is one of "the" places to be right now, so there are lots of qualified people willing to come (or already here).

Auntie68, thanks for your concern about us! While nothing is ever certain in life, I think it would be fair to say we learned a lot from our first attempt at Spanish, and it's reflected in the success that SpanishPod is now enjoying, and all of our other stumbles have been valuable lessons as well. Rapid expansion is doubtlessly going to test us in ways that we haven't be pressured before, and we'll do our very best. :)

rsmith91 -- I would expect that the rollouts would happen as fast as they reasonably can. As goulniky pointed out, finding native Arabic speakers who are willing to live in Shanghai is going to be a hard fence to climb. goulniky -- I'm all for telecommuting. I've done it at various jobs, and with a site that has no (or very few) tangible products, it would seem to make perfect sense. But it doesn't, really. Their studio set-up is far beyond what any amateur could afford or accommodate. Also, given that these files are needed on a timely basis, having to upload files to servers only to later discover a glitch or a pop on the audio that needs to be re-recorded might cost them time they don't have. And, of course, there's the small matter of needing both hosts in the same place. Last, there's the matter of accountability. It's the number one reason most employers don't offer the option.

Has anyone checked out the new URL's yet.. there's not much to see other than logos, though it does tell us what the color scheme of the website will be (German's orange, Italian's purple, Japanese is pinky-red, French is blue, and Praxis don't even seem to have bought ArabicPod.com and RussianPod.com yet)

Here they are:

http://www.frenchpod.com/

http://www.germanpod.com/

http://www.japanesepod.com/

http://www.italianpod.com/

And the two that don't look like they've been bought yet:

http://www.arabicpod.com/

http://www.russianpod.com/

Praxis, what is the timescale for releasing all the new xPod sites? 6 months? A year?

I'm looking forward to it immensely.

hehe, actually I think a woman is probably better suited as a host for learning a foreign language. Seems to always be easier that way, not sure if it's got to do with frequency range, speed or some deep, motherly feeling :-)

Yes,

goulnik would be the perfect host for FrenchPod!

On the Arabic subject - there's a podcast (i think SPanish101?) that does "dialect podcasts" to show the differences. Considering something like that may be beneficial, even if it's only a podcast once every 2 weeks with a variant.

And JohnB - by the time I'm done with my college schemes, there'll be degrees in international business and marketing in there too. ;) I'll just wait to submit my resume til then. ;)

Will keep my only comment in French to JohnB who seems to be facilitating recruitment here, mais qui s'affiche toujours comme responsable du projet groupes 88 ce qui est un peu décourageant, espérons que ce soit de bon augure... Sorry about that digression -- I was wondering whether CPod had considered a distributed approach to staffing, where the different language teams wouldn't have to be colocated, i.e. not all be based in Shanghai or not all the time. I'm not underestimating the value of coffee machine or mooncake discussions, but I'd think it would be a lot easier to identify qualified staff in the respective countries than in that hyper-branchée, 21st century Asian metropolis. After all, you don't need much more than a broadband connection, a laptop and a couple of microphones to produce / distribute podcasts. I am also wondering how you'll be going about recording dialogues, finding actors / students over in Shanghai? Would seem to me that initial training and regular visits could do the trick, and setting up a small center in Southern or MittelEuropa would make sense there...

Your rationale for going "all-Egyptian" for the ArabicPod, when it was explained to me, really made me worry because I couldn't help worrying that, "... and they think they can teach Arabic as well as CPOD can teach Mandarin?" because it seemed like Praxis hadn't thought things through as far as you could have/ should have. No disrespect meant. If you launch ArabicPod well, I'll be one of your most diligent Premium subscribers...

Dear johnb, you will do your best to make sure that CPOD doesn't overreach itself with all these new languages, won't you? Especially when it comes to any languages of which the core Praxis team knows... next to nothing?

I'm still very aware that the only smashing success (from "Day 1") which Praxis has enjoyed is Chinesepod, which may have had a lot to do with Ken Carroll's many years of experience running language schools in Shanghai successfully, not to mention living in China, being married to a Chinese national, and raising his daughter in China.

Spanishsense is great today. But didn't it need a fresh start because the first version was so far "off" the CPOD standard? Even I, THE language enthusiast, was not impressed by SpanishSense version 1.0. I recall that it all only clicked after we heard that John Pasden, who has several years of Spanish under his belt), stepped in and was getting involved in SpanishSense.

johnb, I'm not expressing these views just for the sake of being negative. I really admire what CPOD is doing. But please don't even forget how much all that big-sounding talk about SpanishSense grated on loyal users who were forced to deal with some horrible conditions in CPOD because the team bought into its own salestalk and (crazily!) tried to do a V2-V3 transition at the same time as it was releasing a shoddy SpanishSense 1.0, to a lot of fanfare. I bet you will do things differently this time, if only to avoid the pain and suffering that you earned from loyal users during those bad times. Sincerely.

My question remains: Are you really, absolutely, confident that Praxis will be able to handle new languages in which the core team does not have any special personal expertise?

Is there a good English pod site? Would be good to have something to recommend...

"... nicht wirklich schwer zu LESEN... "

Yeah, sure... (not).

bassman835, if you are self-taught as you say, I'm totally, utterly, absolutely in awe. You linguistic animal, you! I read something in German most days, by habit, but I have never, ever written anything in that language before before it's just too scary. Thanks for the inspiration!

Bitte duzen wir uns. Ich fuhle dass alle meine Freunde und Bruedern sind.

Herr Bassman835,

Machen Sie sich keine sorgen.

Deutsch ist nicht wirklich schwer zu LESEN. ;)

Ich bin froh, dass so viele leute die jetzt Chinesisch studieren, kann auch auf Deutsch. Wunderbar. Ich fuhle jetzt nicht so allein in meinen Leidenschaften. = )

Tut mir leid an alle die gut Deutsch sprechen kann, vielleicht habe ich ubertrieben, "ziemlich fliessend zu sagen" im ehrlichkeit, hatte ich gar nicht erwartet, irgendwer mich zu verstehen. hahaha

Wow Henning,

HanseaticPod or HansaPod could be great !!!

Excuter, hört sich nach einer interessanten Perspektive an. Aber dann fehlt noch ein süddeutsches Gegengewicht, ansonsten wird das noch zu einem HanseatenPod mit Stolperstein-"S"...

Dat wolle'mer doch net.

;)

was ein kommentar alles lostreten kann... anyway, please tell me what papers I have to send and I send them in right away! China watch out I´m coming ^_^

bassmann,

Ich bin auch Amerikaner und muss leider mit unserem lieben Henning übereinstimmen ... 对不起！

I only have a certain amount of wittiness available each day. I have to be careful how I ration it out. :)

john,

your answer's too serious for me. i was hoping for your movie madness-like witty remarks. i'll just have to find time to come to shanghai and visit with the team.

Artkho,

Yup, sorry about that. Because the new language teams are small (just four people) all of them need to be able to do some of the recording. The dialogues are normally recorded by the CRM and the Academic Developer. ChinesePod is different because we're surrounded by people that can speak Chinese, but for the other language all of the positions need native speakers.

dang, even the customer service representative internship requires bilingual skills. i was willing to entertain the idea of moving downward the ladder just for the opportunity of working closely with jenny, amber and connie. ;-)

I bet there are enough out there interested in PolishPod...

Maybe Praxis will one day provide "Pods" for rare or almost extinct languages (e.g. native American, or African languages). There just has to be some international body that sponsers this kind of activity (because this cannot be done as a commertial venture).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers#50.2C000_to_100.2C000_speakers

The domain "CherokeePod" is not yet taken

lol moloch, I wonder who set that up.

bassman,

Deinem Post nach zu urteilen wären vermutlich Upper-Intermediate-Lektionen auf DeutschPod genau richtig für Dich. Die Ausgangsbedingungen sind schon nicht übel, aber der Feinschliff fehlt noch: Fehlerquote (v.a. Grammatik) müsste runter und Du solltest Dich noch ein wenig vertrauter mit der gängigen Deutschen Ausdrucksweise machen...

Ich bin Amerikaner, und ziemlich fliessend auf Deutsch, aber selbst gelernt, Kein Lehrer oder Schule, nur Liebe fur Sprachenlernen. Taglang, lerne ich nur mehr Sprachen. Obwohl ich nicht total fliessend bin, ich glaube, ich koennte sehr gut dieses Rolle spielen.

hahahaha just mad I won't qualify

Hyunwoo Sun 老师 is totally delicious! Oops, hope that didn't sound disrespectful, since he is my teacher on KoreanClass101. Even though I am only a newbie, I listen to all his audio blogs because I don't need to be fluent in Korean (or know all those words!) in order to know that this is how friendly, well-educated Koreans sound. He has a deep knowledge of Chinese characters, by the way... whether as hanja or kanji (he is fluent in Japanese too), or as plain old Chinese characters. Thank you HW 老师!

Oh, now that's a hoot. :-)

By the way, our resident Korean Blogger for ChinesePod, Hyunwoo Sun, is one of the talented folks behind koreanclass101.com. I'd expect nothing less from him.

French, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese These are probably good choices. There are good (NOT "great") podcasts for French (Sabastien's Classroom), Italian (Learn Italian Pod) and Japanese. Not really anything significant for German (although Deutsche Welle has some truly stellar resources). Nothing for Russian that I'm aware of, except someone doing a "Teaspoon" of Russian. Arabic -- I won't comment on.

You're welcome, bazza. Don't be surprised to bump into some old friends from CPOD in the "comments" to the KoreanClass101 lessons. Eg. maxiewawa. Yes!

Bazza, Looks like the folks over at PolishPod have heard of you.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

bazza, have you tried koreanclass101.com ? It's by the same people who do JapanesePod101. I started doing it "just for fun" when it launched, a few months ago, fully expecting to lose interest (or get overwhelmed) in a matter of weeks. But somehow I'm still there, and even getting comfortable with the pace despite being a lazy git who only listens to podcasts once. The quality of their teaching seems to be as high as CPOD, unlike the sister site JapanesePod101. For what it's worth...

hi johnb. Thanks for your friendly (and forgiving!) answer. I really do hope that Praxis will do a bit more research on this. Please, please review your decision to go "all-Egyptian" in your approach.

Native Arab speakers are intensely conscious of national accents, can be prone to stereotyping (to put it mildly), and this approach virtually guarantees that you will "pigeonhole" your learners in some way or other, for better or worse. Do you really want to do that?

Please don't let yourself be swayed too far by the usual arguments about needing "four or five ArabicPods". Simply not true. There is sort of a tendency on the part of Arabic speakers to over-emphasize the uniqueness of their own vernacular. And yet at the end of the day, they can all switch on the TV and watch Al-Jazeera, which has evolved an Arabic version of a "mid-Atlantic accent". Doesn't that cable network regularly have talkshows featuring Arabic speakers from different countries?

Why not go for the Al-Jazeera-standard Arabic? I'd bet that your students would have easier access to Al-Jazeera, than to -- say -- an Egyptian TV channel. From the point of view of building up comprehension skills, it's probably more useful for your students to learn to tune their ears to the language of Al-Jazeera. And at the same time, they can get some valuable exposure to the techniques used by Arabic speakers to "tune down" their vernaculars in order to facilitate communication.

Do please take a look at how the guys at ArabicPod.net deal with the differences (it does come up). I'd say that they do as good a job as JP and Liliana do at SpanishPod keeping the different kinds of Latin American Spanish free of tangles.

Thank you for considering this, at least!

Shame there isn't going to be Korean or Polish.

John:

It may be a little early to ask this question, but can you comment on whether or not the Praxis Pass (or something like it) will exist once these other services are launched? I wouldn't mind being limited to choosing two languages if the price stayed the same. You could do more, I suppose, but honestly, who has that kind of time?

Excuter, seriously, send me your resume and we'll start talking.

Auntie68, we're not in the business of rejecting anybody out of hand :). However, Egyptian Arabic does seem to be the most widely understood today, and while it would probably be better to start four or five ArabicPods to cover the variations, we needed to choose one to start. That said, we take every resume on a case by case basis.

it's just copy and paste with a pinch of talent!

I always thought you were going to start JapanesePod or maybe FrenchPod, but SIX at once! Wow!

I'm particularly looking forward to Arabic. Even if it's only half as good as ChinesePod, it'll still be amazing.

So it is true! Looks like I'll be spending some sleepless nights trying to decide which language to do next...

Yeah, being mono-lingual sucks at times like this!

John, I am your man....whenever you start EnglishPod!

Oh oh, I have just re-read my previous posts, and am wishing there were some way to make them sound friendlier. sorry johnb...

But it is your business, after all, so please don't mind me!

dear johnb, I just read your full post (oops!) properly (oops! oops!), and have to say that I'm a bit shocked. Why this insistence on an "Arabic" host from Egypt? This decision would have been readily understandable say... 15 years ago -- when Egyptian colloquial Arabic was the most "international" vernacular, but why today? Does this mean that you would reject out of hand, a very bright would-be host from -- say -- Dubai or some other equally progressive and international "gulf state", or even a Jordanian who speaks beautiful Arabic and who (quite typically) may have been educated in international schools in Beirut or Cairo or Amman? This is incomprehensible to this humble Auntie. I simply can't believe the words that I am reading here on CPOD.

I love these guys!

hmmm...Germanpod...native speaker? check! Languageloving? nearly unstoppable!

where to sign up? starting when?

Dear johnb, if you are going into Arabic, I really, REALLY hope that you will find a way to work with the guys at ArabicPod.net, who are managing to do a superb job with that language despite being under-funded and... amateurs. They do a particularly nice -- and effective! -- job with one very difficult aspect of learning Arabic, which is helping learners to find a path between "colloquial/regional" Arabic forms and formal Fussha. Just my 2 cents' worth...

Thanks, darcey. Maybe after graduation... :)

Well, while I'm going to be going fulltime into university, I won't be applying, but I am thrilled to see Russian and Arabic, as they're two languages badly underrepresented in the internet and I would love to learn them with the Praxis/*LanguagePod method. I'd also be thrilled to finally be able to listen and appreciate the Advanced levels of a language (French & German).

Good luck on hiring, and I can't wait to start tuning in!