So i finished reading Tim Ferris’ “The Four Hour Work Week” and one of the several things he’s mentioned is learning a language. Specifically, he talks confidently about how any language can be learned in 3 – 6 months.
This got me thinking. From my Chinese heritage and my broken Cantonese (or maybe i’m just shy and lack confidence? I certainly understand when others speak the language!), i should really make sure i know how to speak Cantonese. I’ve been making frequent trips to Hong Kong lately too and it’s alot of fun.
Then this lead to another thought: SPRING. This was my first research project (SPRING is short for “Speech Pronunciation Improvement via Games”) and how the goal was to teach Hispanic-speaking children the English language. We did this by merging games and a speech recognizer. The kids would play the speech-driven game, say the word while the game recorded them, and analyze it. In no time, the kids got feedback on how they pronounced the words and improved the next round!
I could certainly use something like that. So i explored my options, and i came across this site with free Cantonese lessons and it’s pretty neat. The user interface is elegant, the audio player is nice and the recordings are very good quality. I certainly plan to spend more time on this before i head to Hong Kong this December. I definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to brush up their language skills (don’t know about reading/writing). I only have about 3 more months, so i won’t really be able to go through everything. Still, it’s the idea and concept to have another language under your belt. I did look up internships for Google in Hong Kong, but the branch isn’t technical…
Anyways! The link above is neat for those wanting to learn on their own, and don’t want to worry about academic pressures and grades.
