Interview
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 [...]
Jason Lutes: “Making the leap from cold history to something that feels more alive”
The recently published “Berlin - City of Smoke”, playing in 1929/30, is the second book in an eventual graphic-novel triology. Its creator, Jason Lutes, talks about diving into German history without speaking German.
You hadn’t been to Berlin before you started the comic - How did you make a picture for yourself?
I did about two [...]
Opening up your ears and letting it make sense: Interview with Berlin novelist Anna Winger
Anna Winger, novelist, photographer, mother and all-around Berlin renaissance woman, talked to Babbel Blog about her recent novel “This Must be the Place”, writing between languages, multi-lingual motherhood, and her new US National Public Radio series “Berlin Stories”. She will be doing a live reading at 9:30 pm on November 26th at Kaffee Burger in [...]
Voting from Spanish to Yup’ik: Rights for language minorities in the US presidential elections
Bryan Sells, an attorney with the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) spoke to Babbel Blog about the legal provisions made to facilitate voting for non- or limited- English speakers in United States, especially in light of the upcoming US presidential election .
Click here to hear the interview with Bryan [...]
“The words should roll out of the mouth” - On the dubbing of “The Wire” in German
For the original interview in German click here.
Frank Schröder is one of the two authors of the German dubbing of the acclaimed television series “the Wire”. In an interview with Babbel Blog, he speaks about the difficulties of translating the dialogue-rich series, which portrays the day to day goings-on of the police and drug dealing [...]
No judgements: Global Language Monitor tracks political buzzwords, filters through Obamarama and surges out of the quagmire
After posting last week about the CNN story proclaiming that Sarah Palin spoke at a higher grade level than Joe Biden, I was curious about the organization that made this assessment, and what they thought it meant. Now that curiosity has brought Babbel Blog together with Paul JJ Payack of Global Language Monitor to [...]
Of words, wudz, dialects and accents: The “man of a thousand voices” speaks in tongues
Actor/dialect coach Robert Easton as the Klingon Judge in Star Trek VI
Click here to hear the interview with the dialect coach Robert Easton (mp3 - right click to download)
Robert Easton has been working in Hollywood and all over the world for over 42 years “strengthening dialects” and “curing accents”. Ever wonder how Al Pacino [...]
“Trying to get them to use modal verbs while they’re being chased by a bear”
Todd Bryant on language learning within the online game World of Warcraft
Interview with Todd Bryant (mp3- download with right click) Transcript below
Why did you start using World of Warcraft in the classroom in 2006?
I think I started to think about games whenever Sims Online came out ….I don’t know if you remember it or [...]
