Background: German firm Babbel.com has just bought out British FriendsAbroad.com - but Brit owned Learnitlists.com is there to make you learn using the methods of the ad industry.

English speakers don’t exactly have the best reputation for speaking a second language. Those that do are the exception, rather than the rule. But, now is the time to try, because learning a new language just got a lot more convenient. The learnit widget is a new service which helps you pick up 10 new words every day. It uses the thinking of the advertising industry, and you can find it on all over the Internet.

The old fashioned, Brits Abroad way of communicating with “Johnny Foreigner” was to talk loudly, and, if that didn’t work, shout. With 750 million people around the world learning English, it’s easy to see why native speakers can get away without learning the local lingo, so why try?

Nicola Robinsonova, from learnitlists.com says that the number one reason given by learnit users, is, because it’s fun! Brain fitness and career opportunities are also important, but pleasure was the number 1 motivator for language learners. Learning a language for love was also important, with many learners saying that they were inspired to learn because of their partner, or family.

Why now? We are seeing rapid technological development. There are a host of new products being created for the growing market of online language learners. Many of these are currently free, or available for a small charge. And though 80% of the Internet is in English, there are lots of materials in other languages, such as tv and radio stations and local newspapers. These days you can be immersed without leaving your computer. You can swap languages with native speakers on several language sites such as German based Babbel.com.

One tool,  the Learnit widget, began with its founders, Mike and Nic, moved to a small village in South Bohemia.

“We’d been learning Czech for 18 months before we moved. Our classes were great - but, lacking time, we skipped class & didn’t do our homework. As Czech isn’t a common language, there weren’t so many resources available for it online. We created Learnit out of our own need, so that learning a language is part of our day, not something that takes extra time. We now offer 22 languages (the long tail), so not just the most popular ones like French, German & Spanish.

“I get to see 10 daily words in lots of different places: my email & twitter accounts, blogs and language sites. They’re on Facebook, my desktop and we have a screensaver as well. You can even subscribe to an SMS service to get the words sent to your mobile phone every day.”

The inspiration for Learnit came out of Nicola’s experience as a researcher for the advertising industry. “We are using the techniques of the advertising industry to help people learn what they want to.” says Nicola.

The learnit widget spins out user generated lists around the Internet through an affiliate scheme - this means that any publisher can put an ‘advert’ on their site which holds the content selected by members of Learnitlists.com. Sponsored slots are also available to spread the content even further.

The English language is the lingua franca around the world, arguably the UK’s most successful export. If you want to get on in business or a career you need to be able to speak English. In many countries, such as the Czech Republic, you need to be fluent to get a place at University.

Nicola says that this affords great opportunities to native English speakers: “if you have an education, and a willingness to travel, you’re pretty much guaranteed work in any country. Native English speakers are like gold dust.”

“With the beginnings of a new language under your belt, you can make changes to your life… blog from Seville, for example, or create a web 2.0 startup from South Bohemia!”
Ends

Contact nik@learnitlists.com

Welcome to Learnit!  Do you want to get better at a foreign language? We can help. We’ll give you 10 words a day to learn.  You’ll see them around the Internet. We’re on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll send you a daily email, too. You will see your words on many sites. Any publisher can join our affiliate scheme to help you learn your daily words online.

Learnit uses the science behind advertising to help you learn. Use our services for free, or you can subscribe to extras such as a virtual teacher like me,  daily SMS,  and our screensaver too. Learning gets clever with learn it. Join us now!

We thought it was time we looked again at this fundamental question.  Over the past 9 months we have developed the widget, guided by the requests of our members, and the limits of our own resources.

We have added:

• ‘listen’ word recordings (provided both free - user generated, or from a speaking avatar via a subscription service)
• A test
• Grammatical info
• Multiple languages
• ‘write’ common phase translator
• ’share’ - directory of useful language resources
• twitter feeds (providing the words as RSS as well)
• a facebook application

We are currently developing:

• a daily email (free)
• sms service (pre-register via the ‘my account’ page on the widget, $0.20 US per message)
• a screensaver ($4.95 US)

For us, the most exciting part of the project is the use of the techniques of the advertising industry in learning - to this end we are building partnerships with other sites so that we can maximise the number of times a day you will come into contact with the materials you want to learn. Please get in contact if you have space to join our affiliate scheme - making the learnit daily words available in a variety of standard advert sizes.

Tim O’Reilly is like a rock star in geek terms.  I should go ask for his autograph.

We’re really doing the conference on the cheap. Via couchsurfing.com we are staying at the house of a young Berlin entrepreneur - one half of want2do.de.  We have hall passes for the event - significantly cheaper than the full pass, but without the opportunity to attend the many workshops and talks - which is why it’s a bit of a surprise to be listening to Tim now.  At least I think it’s Tim. Don’t think he employs a lookalike yet, though I can only see the back of his head.

To cut costs we are also making extreme efforts to get into any web 2.0 expo evening events with free drinks.  We missed out on the legitimate tickets to the pitch party last night (as with the geek girl dinner on Monday - the event was sold out before I heard about it) so had to resort to the black market.  So my first introduction to somebody who transpired to be a prominent Berliner VC was in the form of him ’sneaking’ me into a party. Sorry organiser guys - we’ve travelled a long way to be here & it’s super important to be meeting people in this great environment.

UPDATE:  Just sat it the back of this car with Tim O’Reilly. I am such a groupy.  And took the opportunity to pitch Learnit at pitchstop - organised by Arne Hulstein.

Learnitlists.com is certainly not a destination site. We expect our members to see the widget & word content in a variety of different locations - such as their igoogle homepage & other language sites, as well as via our affiliate advertising scheme (which is taking some time to organise!).  The emails serve the dual purpose of giving members an additional exposure to their daily words, as well as reminding them of their goal of learning a language. We all know that good intentions aren’t always enough - sometimes we need somebody to nag us a bit.

We are starting slowly with the emails - this is now being sent out to our first 100 founder members, and we will increase this number once we have gauged reaction and ironed out any creases which arise. So far, so good.

The email service is free to all our existing members.  Members can unsubscribe from the service at any time by following the link at the bottom of the email.

The next trick we are going to pull from our sleeve is a daily SMS service - so you can get to your daily words when you’re not at your computer, or without mobile WIFI (this scenario may be tough for some to imagine, we know, but not everyone has an iPhone!).

To pre-subscribe, click on the ‘my account’ link at the top of the widget. Select ’subscriptions’ and enter your mobile phone number, including the area code in the box. To unsubscribe, all you have to do is delete your phone number. Easy.

The service costs just 20 cents (US) per message or will be included in the premium subscription.  Learn by SMS will be launched as soon as we have enough customers - so preregister now if you want it!

This quote from Kennedy clearly shows two things. Firstly that it is dangerous to use a direct translation without checking this with a native speaker, and secondly, when you make mistakes while speaking in a second language, native speakers don’t really mind. We like the fact that others are trying to communicate in our language. When Kennedy was in Berlin talking about ‘an island of freedom’ they didn’t care that he said ‘I am a jam donut’.

We are really excited to be travelling to Berlin next week to attend the Web 2.0 expo.

Currently we’re trying to work out where to stay. Hopefully Mike Butcher will let us put an ad on the CrunchBoard and some kind fellow entrepreneur will put us up. I can’t wait to see Berlin for myself.

Shortly after an item on  Go’ morgen Danmark this morning, we were contacted by a translator, Kinne Bassett, who was willing to verify the Danish translation on a future invoice basis (ie we’ll pay her when we can). 

We are incredibly grateful for this help in making the widget really useful for language students in Denmark.

Interest from Copenhagen is a surprise because we recently had to remove Danish from the widget. A user informed us:

‘If you think you can just pick up any little dictionary or tourist guide and become professors in language, you are just too much. At least you should not be allowed to take money for your services. I looked into this because I thougth this could be something for my sister in law who speaks Spanish and want to learn Danish, but if she tried this out, people would at best not understand a thing she would be saying OR at worst laugh the rear out of their troussers.’

In light of this harsh criticism we immediately removed the ‘beta’ Danish translation from the widget.  We will put Danish back in as soon as we can have the language verified by a professional translator.

The Google powered machine translation of Danish was not good enough. Currently Welsh, Esperanto,  Tagalog, Hindi, Afrikaans and Latin are still in beta, but the other available languages have been verified by a professional translator.

I am now trying to find out where the new Danish registrations are finding us. I suspect that our new Danish visitors are using the widget to learn languages other than English as most Danes already speak English.