Mango Languages

If you’re looking for help in foreign languages, or if you just want to brush up on some common phrases before an overseas trip, look no further than our new foreign language resource, Mango Languages.

Mango is an interactive, online language-learning system that teaches conversation skills for English speakers wishing to learn a foreign language.  There are currently 61 languages to choose from, with more added every year.  It includes courses in common, modern languages like Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean.  There are also lessons for classical languages, like Greek or Latin, more obscure languages like Scottish Gaelic or Tamil, and even the most obscure language, Pirate.

pirate

Additionally, if you are a non-English speaker or would like to improve your English conversational skills, Mango also provides English courses in 16 different languages, including Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish.

Similar to Rosetta Stone or other interactive language software, each course guides you though a language using the most useful, practical phrases to communicate with other people.  Throughout each lesson, you’ll be learning vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and a little bit of the culture of the native speakers of that language.

 pirate2

The courses include audio recordings of professional, native speakers guiding you through each pronunciation.  If you have a microphone attached to your computer, you can also record your own pronunciation, and play it back over the instructor’s voice.  If you hover over a word on the screen, a phonetic spelling of the word will display, to help you sound it out. You can also make the narrator say it more slowly, by clicking each word.

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Mango is now available through Tech Library’s website, under Research–>List of Databases.   Off-campus users may be prompted for their Tech ID and password.  Once you have reached the Mango site, you must register with an email address and password to take advantage of the language courses, but you are not restricted to your Tech email and password.

For more information about Mango languages, see the video tutorial below or contact yer swashbuckling librarian.