The Whole World is Learning English

So much of the internet is in English that netizens worldwide are learning English.
EN 101 is THE site on the web for easy language learning. Their main product is English language classes, but you can also learn Spanish, Russian or Chinese and the courses are taught in all the major languages of this planet. There are translation scripts available, but nothing beats understanding the original language that something was written in. And even the best translation programs can come up with some very funny results if you go from one language to another . . .to another . . . to another. . .or another before returning to the original. It's sort of like the old children's game where people sit in a circle and one person whispers something to the next person who passes it on around the circle until it gets back to the start and bears very little resemblance to what was originally sent.

Kids learn languages easily and retain what they learn. A second language learned as a child gets "hard-wired" into their brains. I learned German before I learned English and even though for years I suppressed it and did not consciously understand German, it all came back when I took German in High School, and has been there whenever I've needed it since. One side effect is that every other language I have studied, I've spoken with a German accent. (Considering the current world situation, that might be safer than speaking with an American accent.) Having been bilingual as a child also made it easier to learn other languages and made it possible to retain them. I still remember most of my 2 years of French taken over 40 years ago, (and the one semester of Russian a few years later.)

So give your kids a head start with a subscription to EN 101. Their new Kids 101 makes learning fun. Check it out today.

"typos" Discussed

We had an interesting conversation about misspellings on web pages in the weekend conference for Magic Highway Traffic Exchanges. The majority opinion was that misspellings stand out and hit the reader in the eye. They tend to distract the viewer from the message of the site, and detract from the impression of authority and professionalism that the site owner should be trying to project.
But, just to show we are all human, one of the members who was quite vocal in the discussion managed to misspell her own name when entering the prize drawing.
Looks like we all need a good proofreader. :-)