MyGengo, a low cost translation company recently published a report covering the state of affairs in the language learning industry for 2009. Some of the interesting points and statistics revealed is as follows:

• Chinese, Spanish and English represent only 30% of the worlds spoken language by population. But these languages make up roughly 60% of the internet users.
• The translation industry is expected to grow by roughly 11% per year over the next 5 years.
• Since 2008, Russian and Arabic online audiences have grown over 1000%, which Chinese close behind.
• Language Translation market to reach $25 Billion by 2013 with a compound annual growth rate of 10.8%.

Here is the whitepaper from the folks at MyGenga.

When creating the movie Avatar, James Cameron turned to a USC linguistics professor named Paul Frommer to create the language of the Na’vi tribe of aliens inhabiting the planet Pandora.
 
There are several resources that cover the Na’vi language. The LanguageLog has a great overview of the Na’vi language. There is also a Learn Na’vi Language wiki.

Frommer talks about the making of the Na’vi language and explains the main perils as follows:

“If you allow everything and the kitchen sink, you get a mishmash, it sounds like gibberish,” Frommer said. “An analogy is cooking and deciding how you are going to spice up a certain dish. If you put everything you have on the shelf, you get a mess. If you are judicious you get something good. In language, sometimes things are defined by the absences.”

The finished product sounds, to some ears, vaguely Polynesian, while others hear the rhythms of African languages in it. “Someone said it sounded German to them, someone else told me Japanese, and I think that’s good. If everyone were saying one single language then it would be bad,”

 Here is More Information on the making of the Na’vi language for the movie Avatar.

 We have to admit, Google Translate rocks. It now supports 51 total languages after recently having added Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh and Yiddish.
 
For those who don’t know, Google does translation of words and phrases into multiple languages, using human translators and a technology that facebook has been trying to patent.

So, are we at Phrasebase scared that Google is going to steal our lunch. Yes, of course. But then again, Google’s pretty much stealing everyones lunch lately.

So why don’t we just throw in the towel and give up? Because at it’s core, Phrasebase.com is completely different from Google Translate. Here is how:

1) Phrasebase focuses on language learning not on translations, although our e-phrasebook of translations is a vital asset to assist in language learning.

2) Google Translate does not have audio files depictiing pronunciation, Phrasebase does.

3) Google Translate does not have alternative spellings, so for example, when you get a translation from English to Japanese, its written in Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji… Who is the average person suppose to read these characters and know how to pronounce it? They can’t. Phrasebase depicts the english-alphabet spelling of words and phrases as well as the script version, to help users with pronunciation and memorization.

4) Phrasebase allows for customizable e-phrasebooks. So you can create your own e-phrasebook and keep a list of the words and phrases that are most important for you to learn.

5) Phrasebase has developed it’s own technology that prioritizes the importance or words and phrases for language learners. We tell you from most to least important, what words and phrases you should focus on to most quickly learn your target language.

6) Phrasebase has a language learning community, allowing you to connect in real time and do language exchange sessions with other language learners around the world, real time, live online with audio and video.

7) Phrasebase has flashcard memorization tool that keeps track of your language learning progress.

Phrasebase supports 75 languages, Google Translate only supports 51.

9) Phrasebase depicts complete conversations, natural common colloquial dialogue that you can learn in order to reinforce what common answers are to common questions, thereby helping you anticipate what is being said and how to respond.

10) Round-tripping. Try it for yourself. Here is an example below.

ENGLISH ENTERED: Here is the problem with Google Translate. You can’t round-trip translations. For example, I will translate this paragraph from English to Japanese, and then from Japanese back to English, let’s see what we get?

GOOGLE TRANSLATE YIELDS: ここにGoogle翻訳を使用して問題がある。あなたがラウンドすることはできません往復翻訳があります。 例えば、私は日本語にして、再度日本語から英語からの私たちが取得を参照して聞かせ、英語からは、この段落の翻訳でしょうか？

JAPANESE TO ENGLISH, GOOGLE TRANSLATE NOW YIELDS: Here there is a problem using the Google translation. You have to round the round trip can not be translated. For example, I have the Japanese, see Give us get back from English to Japanese from English, the translation of what this paragraph?

We still love Google Translate, it’s an incredibly useful utility, and will only continue to grow and become more useful. We just hope they never plan to build apps in it allowing it to be used for language learning.

The German based Lesson Nine, the language learning company behind Babbel.com recently announced to their 500,000 users that they have switched over from a freemium to a pay to use business model. Managing Director Markus Witte stated:

Babbel is now a paid service. Freemium doesnt work for us.

Now, only the first section of an online language learning course can be taken for free as a trial demo. Full access to the course will cost between $6.65 and $11.95 USD per month. And this doesn’t mean the ads will go away, as Witte puts it:

The users are our customers, not the ad providers. We actually tried to launch Babbel 2.0  as a partly ad-sponsored service but it just doesnt work.

Babbel was funded by Kizoo AG and VC Fonds Berlin in 2008 and then again in 2009 it secured 1 million Euros in financing from the Berlin ProFIT program. The Babbel team currently consists of thirty-five full-time and freelance employees.

Babbel has revamped their language learning material and revamped the Basic and Advanced Vocabulary courses, creating several new courses and exercises. Much of the material is now licensed from well-known publishers or produced by teachers and language experts. By increasing the quality of the material, babbel hopes to retain users for longer.

Despite being in early development and only currently supporting Mandarin language, Lingt.com had a review of their language learning website written up by techcrunch and saw their traffic jump a huge amount.
 
Right before the article, Lingt had an Alexa ranking of  3,245,881. One week later, it plummeted to 388,600. The lower the Alexa ranking the more traffic a website receives.

The website EnglishCentral.com raised $3.5 Million USD in funding from an unknown source according to a SEC Filing. EnglishCentral is already backed by  Google Ventures and Atlas Venture and provides English language learning by utilizing a text to speech software which analzes the students voice and makes sense of their pronunciation in order to give them feedback as to how accurate they are speaking.

Here is a list of language learning websites and their alexa ranking, indicating the relative amount of traffic each site gets daily. The lower the number, the more traffic.

livemocha.com = 4,080
englishtown.com = 5,769 (english only)
smart.fm = iknow.co.jp = 13,540
italki.com = 14,361
wordie.org = wordnik.com = 31,127
quizlet.com = 31,766
edufire.com = 32,228
babbel.com = friendsabroad.com = 46,163
lang-8.com = 47,548
mylanguageexchange.com = 50,651
talkenglish.com = 58,923 (english only)
busuu.com = 59,859
flashcardexchange.com = 61,063
byki.com = 71,926
langtolang.com = 75,462
globalenglish.com = 95,737 (english only)
english-at-home.com = 115,135 (english only)
myngle.com = 116,739
grockit.com = 120,769
phrasebase.com = 121,682
polyglot-learn-language.com = 123,450
englishcentral.com = 145,367 (english only)
lernu.net = 146,062
lingq.com = 153,652
myhappyplanet.com = 153,100
unilang.org = 165,410
palabea.net = 170,839
mangolanguages.com = 197,415
languagelab.com = 304,788 (english only)
fluentfuture.com = 354,000
verbalplanet.com = 355,814
lingt.com = 3.2m down to 388,600 in 1 week after techcrunch article.
bywifi.com = 505,033
xlingo.com = languageexchange.org = 684,356
linguaphone.co.uk = 722,553
lingro.com = 724,431
loqu8.com = 753,074
lingozone.com = 789,998
langolab.com = 816,910
kantalk.com = 840,334
learn10.com = learnitlists.com = 1,038,326
vocabsushi.com = 1,333,544
tandemcity.com = 1,448,998
toniks.com = 1,547,653
idapted.com = 1,640,835
voxswap.com = 1,932,566
samespeak.com = 3,275,556
livetranslation.com = 3,278,514
ingolingo.com = 6,482,345
neurolanguage.com = 6,909,753
foreignlanguagefriends.com = 7,441,878
doyouspeak.com = 10,122,444
babalah.com = 22,900,000
language-buddy.com = extinct

The F-word seems to be mainstream in the USA. It started several years ago with “friggin” or “frickin” being socially acceptable and heard often on reality TV and talk shows.
 
And now it appears (at least in Boston) that many radio stations don’t censor out cuss words. One station dedicated to hip hop was leaving in all the lyrics uncencored, and there were some draw droppers. Yet another station had a caller call in program, and all kinds of cuss words were being tossed out left and right, even several F-bombs, it seemed, just for being able to get away with it now.
 
The Oxford University Press just released it’s 3rd edition of The F-Word,  here is some insight to the book. 

In a thoroughly updated edition of The F-Word , Jesse Sheidlower offers a rich, revealing look at the f-bomb and its illimitable uses. Since the fifteenth century, no other word has been adapted, interpreted, euphemized, censored, and shouted with as much ardor or force; imagine Dick Cheney telling Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy to “go damn himself” on the Senate floor–it doesn’t have quite the same impact as what was really said. Sheidlower cites this and other notorious examples throughout history, from the satiric sixteenth-century poetry of James Cranstoun to the bawdy parodies of Lord Rochester in the seventeenth century, to more recent uses by Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Ann Sexton, Norman Mailer, Liz Phair, Anthony Bourdain, Junot Diaz, Jenna Jameson, Amy Winehouse, Jon Stewart, and Bono (whose use of the word at the Grammys nearly got him fined by the FCC).
Collectively, these references and the more than one hundred new entries they illustrate double the size of The F-Word since its previous edition. Thousands of added quotations come from newly available electronic databases and the resources of the OED , expanding the range of quotations to cover British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, and South African uses in addition to American ones. Thus we learn why a fugly must hone his or her sense of humor, why Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau muttered “fuddle duddle” in the Commons, and why Fanny Adams is so sweet. A fascinating introductory essay explores the word’s history, reputation, and changing popularity over time. and a new Foreword by comedian, actor, and author Lewis Black offers readers a smart and entertaining take on the book and its subject matter.

Concord Massachussetts is a historic town in the USA. It is home of the minute men who fought off the British leading to the independence of the United States of America in 1775. 
 
There are many terms that the Minute men used which are still used today in modern American English. Here is a sample taken from the Concord Magazine.

A musket was usually accomplished and paid for in three parts - lock (firing mechanism), stock (wood), barrel (metal tube). Once completed the item as a whole was given to its owner. Today when one obtains an item with all its parts, it is owned “lock, stock and barrel”.
 
If militia man Thaddeus Blood placed his musket in the safety position (half-cocked) then entered battle, he had better remember to advance to full-cock or the weapon would not fire and he would be in trouble. A person “going off half cocked” now means not successful due to lack of preparation and forethought.

Nathan Stowe might prime his weapon (small measure of powder in the pan), load the main charge to the barrel, fire and only have the priming powder explode. This was known as a “flash in the pan” or misfire. Today, the term means a sudden brief success not likely to be repeated or followed by a greater success. 
 
Thomas Munroe, tavern keep, might use chalk to mark upon his wall the bill of a patron who wished to pay at a later time. This was a reminder to collect owed money. Something is “chalked up” to experience in our world meaning that while unfortunate, it is not regretted but an attempt will be made to insure it does not happen again.
 
Grog was a cheap 18th Century drink of rum and water invented by a ship’s captain to water down sailor’s daily liquor ration in hopes of ending drunken brawls. Today one who consumes too much spirits may appear “groggy” or mildly intoxicated.
 
Keeper Ephraim Jones might yell to rowdy patrons to “mind their p’s and q’s” (pints and quarts of drink) and today the term still refers to watching ones manners and conduct; behaving properly. 
 
Today, a “rule of thumb” is a way to accomplish a task based on experience rather than theory or careful calculation. A colonial brewer (without a thermometer) would dip his thumb into a mixture to determine when the liquid was the right temperature to add the yeast.

If we receive unexpected good fortune (usually money) it is called “a wind fall”. For Jonas Bateman in the 1770s it meant that trees or limbs were blown down and easily obtained for firewood.

Purchase Brown, 1770s farmer, would “ear mark” his animals with a distinctive brand to denote ownership or purpose.
 
Citizens would gather annually on muster day to watch the militia drill, enjoy food and drink, socialize and have a fun time. They had a “field day”.
 
When John Buttrick, Jr. retired for the night, he probably would sleep on bedding of straw and thus in today’s usage he would “hit the hay”.
 
Meliscent Barrett might have the rope supports between the wooden sides of her bed frame tightened (no metal springs) to insure a good night’s sleep. As today, she would be requested to “sleep tight”.

When next you hear a modern idiom, ask if it has origins in the 18th Century and might have been used in 1775 Concord.

Ever wonder about the origins of the word O.K.? Here is an excerpt from Word Wide Words that explains it.

OK is without doubt the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even by people who hardly know another word of English. Running in parallel with its popularity have been many attempts to explain where it came from — amateur etymologists have been obsessed with OK and theories have bred unchecked for the past 150 years.

Suggestions abound of introductions from another language, including the one you mention. Others include: from the Choctaw-Chickasaw okah meaning “it is indeed”; from a mishearing of the Scots och aye! (or perhaps Ulster Scots Ough aye!), “yes, indeed!”; from West African languages like Mandingo (O ke, “certainly”) or Wolof (waw kay, “yes indeed”); from Finnish oikea, “correct, exact”; from French au quais, “at the quay” (supposedly stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially selected for export, or a place of assignation for French sailors in the Caribbean); or from French Aux Cayes (a port in Haiti famous for its superior rum). Such accidentally coincidental forms across languages are surprisingly common and all of these are certainly false. Many African-Americans would be delighted to have it proved that OK is actually from an African language brought to America by slaves, but the evidence is against them, as we shall shortly learn.

Some other theories I’ve seen mentioned: it comes from Old Keokuk, the name of a Native American Fox chief; from German Oberst Kommandant, “Colonel in Command”, because some German army officer fought on the colonists’ side in the American Revolution (names such as General Schliessen or Baron von Steuben are mentioned but cannot be linked to real individuals); from the name of a freight agent, Obadiah Kelly, whose initials often appeared on bills of lading; an abbreviation for Open Key, popularised by early telegraphers; or from the initials of Orrin Kendall biscuits supplied to the Union Army during the Civil War. A particularly persistent and long-standing theory says that President Andrew Jackson used to write OK to abbreviate the illiterate “ole korrek” on documents, a grievous calumny on a well-educated man. None of these theories can be supported with documented proof.