The LanguageGuide.org Blog

The 'Speech Challenge' now supports voice recognition on Google Chrome although it's not yet supported on IOS. Go to an interactive picture page such as insects , one of my favorites. (ou  les insects pour les étudiants de français),  After clicking on the 'Speech Challenge' button, click on the microphone toggle on the top bar, and confirm that you wish to use the microphone. Say the name of the selected insect! Upon hearing your voice, the correct word is uttered allowing you to make a quick comparison of pronunciation and word choice. Interacting  with the page this way is a lot more fun than clicking on the page or play button. Please let me know if you experience any issues or see other problems since quite a few changes were made to the scripts.

One of the objectives of the vocabulary guides is to help you become an expert in particular domains. Several years ago when I was living in France, I found that I was totally at ease conversing about certain topics, but really struggled talking about chores and housekeeping with my French roommate.  The housekeeping pages on the French Vocabulary guide were the fruit of these vocabulary struggles:  " la buanderie " (the French version of the Utility Room), Messes , Chores , and the Laundry . If you learn the vocabulary on these pages you'll be able to describe messes, cleaning and chores with sophisticated, precise vocabulary.  There are also versions for people learning English. Go to the English vocabulary guide, select your native language in the upper left hand corner, and go to the Home section.

The interface for the French complimentary vocabulary pages have been updated. Feminine adjectives now appear in a pink rectangle to the right of the masculine adjective.

A new Hindi vocabulary guide is available.

Languageguide.org  has a new more intuitive, mobile friendly interface. The changes have been progressively rolled out over the last 6 months so if you're a regular user of the site you're probably already familiar with it.  The Welcome Page The welcome page of the site has a completely new look. Every hour the background image changes, hopefully giving users wanderlust and more motivation to learn a language.   Visual Vocabulary Guide The image based pages have been refreshed. Now whenever a part of an image is referred to, for example the shell of the turtle in the Reptile & Amphibian Vocabulary , it will appear in a circle or shape that has been shaded in such a way that it appears to be floating over the page. Two red buttons appear at the top of the page - the Speaking Challenge and the Listening Challenge. Rather than trying to simply absorb the vocabulary, I encourage you to attempt each page's challenges. If you have activated game mode , yo...

A version of the pictorial vocabulary guide for learning English is now available as a free IOS and Android app . The app includes a 'game' which will soon be integrated into languageguide.org  and the interface has been revamped to be mobile friendly. More languages will be available as apps in the months to come.