Author Archive
Fiery Tongues on Pfingsten
Monday in Germany will be a day off. It’s Pfingsten.
In England known as Whitsun, or in the US as Pentecost, we at Babbel thought this was worth giving a mention since it’s got to do with some business that concerns us: Speaking in many languages.
It’s celebrated 50 days after the resurrection of Christ (Easter), and [...]
Babbel.com at Next ‘09
We’re very pleased that we’ve been selected to present for the start-up track this year at Next09, which will take place in Hamburg May 5 and 6. Next is an annual networking and trend conference for the European web industry.
The theme of the conference this year really resounds with Babbel: the idea is “Shared Economy”. [...]
Magic, “mumblecore”, and not exactly talkin’ bout my generation: Interview at the Berlinale with Andrew Bujalski
One film the Babbel Bloggers caught during the Berlinale (February 5-15) was “Beeswax”. This is American auteur Andrew Bujalski’s third feature, which premiered on Monday, Feb. 9th. His genre, if it can even be classified as such, has been coined as “mumblecore”. But as a talk with him made clear, in his work and in [...]
Library to go: Google books go cellular
While I have long since forgone interactions in the physical world in favor of their counterparts/improvements online — listening to the radio, going to the videodrome, banking, learning German, just to give a few examples — one thing I can’t bring myself to throw into the dustbin of materiality is a good book.
But also as [...]
A few words about Obama’s language
Obama is a language master, not many would disagree. Even at the inauguration, when renowned grammatical stickler Chief Justice John Roberts spontaneously corrected a split-infinitive in a fixed constitutional text when swearing him in, Obama righted the snafu in the act not just for legal accuracy, but for flow.
The speech that followed was rather [...]
The Big “1″: Babbel.com celebrates its first anniversary
Polyglot happy wishes to Babbel.com that hasn’t stopped talkin’ since it launched in January 15, 2008! (Pictured at a little birthday shindig from a hazy last night in Berlin above.) Have any multilingual birthday wishes? Comment away… and check out some of behind the scenes features below to see a bit more how the intuitive, [...]
Inside Babbel.com: Curiosity is Key
The Babbel Blog team took a short trip on the UBahn over to the Berlin office of Babbel.com, the interactive language-learning platform, to speak with Ulrike Kerbstadt (right) and Sylvie Roche (left). They are Just two of the folks responsible for the learning content at the website. Click here to listen to the interview that [...]
Martes trece, bad luck in Spanish
Babbel.com is closing in on its first anniversary on Thursday, the 15th, when we will be launching an ‘Inside Babbel’ series chronicling a bit of the goings-on behind the scenes at the language-learning website. But we thought in the meanwhile we’d give you the heads-up on a slightly older anniversary today, which would be the [...]
Liebe Deutsche, liebes Denglish: Germany named love destination for “expats”
Reuters Africa picked up on a little tidbit from a dubiously scientific survey by HSBC International Bank on the “expatriate experience abroad”: Apparently Germany is the number one country in the world for expats to find “love”, with a quarter (24%) of expats located in Germany marrying a local. Germany also came out as the [...]
Have the users think what you’re doing is great: Simon Murdoch on online services today
Babbel.com, our humble sponsor, recently acquired and joined forces with the online social networking site Friendsabroad.com. We caught up with Friendsabroad founder Simon Murdoch to talk a bit about this phenomenon of online language learning and the internet biz in the wake of the crunch.
Babbel Blog: Please talk about Doyouspeak.com and Friendsabroad.com. What are [...]
