Here comes ItalianPod

Actually just sold it, so there's got to be at least 1 person who'd be interested in BambaraPod :-)

just put my Learn Bambara method for sale on Amazon... never opened it, was still using audio cassettes but I don't think it would have been much different if it had been mp3.

Bambara is spoken by more than 10 million people mainly in Mali, also Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso - it's close to Malinke (Guinea) and Dioula dialects.

Grazie, Ken & the site looks good and all. But where were you in March when my wife and I took spring holiday in Florence and Siena? ;-)

Ci vediamo.

Dai.

What an interesting office Praxis Shanghai is going to be. I will watch for the Russian.

RJ

Yes, RJ teaching us about alcohol in the language of the masters. I'm in. ;)

As I have no talent for languages I don't even try starting them. Although I admit, once in a while 我偷偷得听一些xPod课 (FPod and SPod). But that is for entertainment purposes only. I just enjoy great hosts flirting with each other

The italianpod lessions i've listened to so far sound really good. Well done :)

rjberki, it looks like you might be in luck for russian.  Praxis is hiring Russian teachers- http://praxislanguage.com/about/jobs/

I use ChinesePod and have for a few years now. I'm also now a devoted FrenchPod user!

But, of course, I take breaks from FrenchPod to learn Chinese from the masters! 

henning and kencarroll,

You can count me as a student of cPod.  So now it's only fair to ask how many of you all are students of SpanishPod.... : )

Henning,

That's a great quetion. Let's see if we get a response.

Any cross-over between Cpod, Spod, Fpod and Ipod is a good thing.

Ps: can we really say Ipod here ?

Please excuse my curiosity:

are the hosts of the other xPods also students here at CPod?

Thanks for the great reponse to the launch of ItalianPod! We're really excited about the lessons we've got and we have tons of ideas for lessons we'll be coming out with in the future.

Stay tuned for our first elementary lesson this week!

Catherine

 Now come on, be sensible: there must be at least 1028 people that speak Yupik fluently! Just look at the number of potential customers you would have! For ChinesePod, there is about 4 billion potential customers, for YUPod, there would be almost 6 billion! What a market to be first in!

   A sample lesson would be

Waqqaa?  (How are you?)

Ehlmikun. (Fine)

Kittuucetek? (Who are you)

Anguutehnguunga. (I am a man.)

Ehlhlii-qaa kassauguq?  (Is he a white man?)

Qangnga, ehlhlii yuppiuguq. (No, he is Yupik!)

thanks bazza, I tried the russian. not so easy. I need to see it written down.

If you want an introduction to Russian. http://www.oneminutelanguages.com/ is pretty good.

I tried the Polish one. I think there's only 10 lessons for each language, so it's only about 10 minutes of learning material in total but it covers the absolute basics.

Reminds me of how Richard Feynman (nobel prize winning physicist and role model) wanted to learn the language of Tanna Tuva and travel there.

http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/index.html

tuva pod?

Actually I would like to learn Russian.

Bazza, after careful consideration, I agree... so what are we going to call it?  PuPod?  PunPod? :-)

As an act of off-thread penance, one of my nieces is taking Italian as a general ed class at Berkeley (California).  According to her, it is not an easy class to get into.  It seems that the language has an outsized appeal.

The more speakers there are, the more likely you are to meet someone who speaks it, so it's more useful to know.

I don't think you'd get more use out of Yurok than you would English, unless you lived in that village and never travelled.

No, less viable, actually. :,)

Out of the entire world of potential students, there are 190 million who we know for sure would have no interest in PujabiPod.

On the other hand, the potential market for Yurok is the whole world population minus 75.

If there were only 20 million speakers of Mandarin, would it still have the same popularity as a foreign language to learn? I think so. We're simply counting the wrong things.

BTW, ItalianPod: wow!

Punjabi has about 190 million speakers, so that's more financially viable. ;)

Oh, man, that's awesome! Only 75 speak Yurok. Well, Ken, ya betta hurry up before they die off. Their village chief better get that broadband hooked up pronto!

I thought Yupod would Yurok pod.  I mean, look at the target market.  There's only 75 speakers left.  That leaves how many potential customers?

Cinajit.

I was hoping Yupod for the Yupik language.

I'll take that as a "No, don't be so silly!". :P

Any plans for PunjabiPod? ;)

Thank you all very mucvh for the kind words and support!

Hi Ken！ 你好！好久没见。

I visited ItalianPod today while at the gym. And, you are right. You said in your blog:

In that vein, we launched ItalianPod today. The ItalianPod team are the youngest of the 4 teams with tons of smart ideas and creative energy. They have brought new levels of drama and culture to the lessons that I think are remarkable.

Catherine and Marco have a young and lively podcasting energy about them, yet a comfortable and humorous feel to their banter, reminiscent of Amber and JP on DA. Praxis Language is amazing. You've created a remarkably successful language teaching model and are leading the way in the industry. I am so proud of you all. I wish you all continued great success!

I visited ItalianPod.com and agree with michele that it's a great resource. Marco and Catherine are gifted teachers. And it's nice to see that there's already been a "soft launch" of sorts, which has helped to build up a nice little base of users who seem to be not only quite good at Italian, but also enthusiastic to help newbies.

When will the iTunes podcast feed become available? I followed the links on the site but they don't lead to anything yet.

This does help to explain why things are so quiet over at FrenchPod -- in terms of user posts and "admin" posts -- : Everybody is over at the Italian side waiting excitedly for the bambino to be born!

Hi Ken,

I've been on ItalianPod and I want to say here just two, or three, words: I like it!

The team, as you say, is the youngest there at Praxis, and that's a possible good starting point. I've listen to the first dialogues and they're all… fresh, correct and exciting.

Another point, I appreciate a lot Catherine's English pronunciation, which is quite well understandable for a non native English user like me.

I’m happy to see that ItalianPod, since the very first moments of its life, shows such a beutiful energy!

Everyone with some interest for Italian language should visit the site.

ItalianPod, 加油！加油!