Behind the Babbel Blog
Find below our “Babbel Blog Manifesto”
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Babbel Blog, edited by Mara Goldwyn and Lorenz Matzat
All content is licensed under Creative Commons (by/nc/sa)
Contact: blog-at-babbel.com
www.babbel.com, “Learn Languages Online”
Lesson Nine GmbH, Großbeerenstr. 81, 10963 Berlin
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Mara Goldwyn
is up nights wondering why in Spanish there’s only one word for both fingers and toes (dedos), what constitutes an adverb in German, and what the implications of Arabic having so many words for “soul” are. An American based in Berlin, Germany, Mara has been a globetrotter and language enthusiast from an early age on — and has written about everything from radical politics to finger foods in places as far flung as Buenos Aires, Madrid and Santa Fe, New Mexico. As co-editor of the Babbel Blog, she specializes in etymology, “lost in translation” issues, foreign language learning and use in pop culture, grammatical conundrums and especially colorful swear words, among other things. Email her at 
mgoldwyn-at-babbel.com or follow her on twitter to tell her about translation blunders, strange encounters living abroad or, you know, to just tell her off in your language.
Lorenz Matzat
conceals his interest in videogames by writing about their educational potential. His topics at Babbel Blog are the tech-stuff, the “e” in eLearning. Like Mara he lives in Berlin, and besides co-editing this site he works as a freelance journalist for newspapers and online-magazines. If you stumble upon talking machines or software with a personal life, mail him at lmatzat-at-babbel.com.
Babbel Blog Manifesto
There is much to be said, and many people who have something to say, about language. So let’s talk about talk, let’s speak in tongues and of tongues, let us conjugate and construct.
The German Swabian verb “babbeln” has some diverse meanings. One is “to talk enthusiastically or excessively”, while another is “to reveal by talk that is too free”. The Babbel blog proposes to do both.
One can imagine the cacophony in the aftermath of the fall of the Tower of Babel. But then if one were to zero in on one particular voice and listen closely, whether it was speaking in Pashto, Spanish, Chinese or Akkadian, surely there was a coherent story there.
The babbel blog project takes its cue from babbel.com (www.babbel.com), an ambitious project to facilitate worldwide communication through accessible language learning online. We sort through the many voices, talk about talk, learning and technology enthusiastically — perhaps a bit excessively. Might the overall impression be a Babel? Maybe, but communication has always been a tall order. At babbel blog we go voice by voice, and feel confident the combined hum makes a chorus.
Through a both playful and vigorous investigation of language related topics from didactics to diphthongs, portable electronic translators to e-learning, language integration policies to language acquisition theories, software to archiving, translation snafus to wordplays, foreign language use in pop culture to linguistic curios, we hope to reveal something as well. The free talk, via original interviews with primary sources and additions from our readers, offers something up until now absent in the world of language themed blogs: information direct from the horse’s mouth (in whatever language given horse might be speaking).
The new century brings with it more possibilities to get back to that biblical pre-Babylonian idea of the universal language, and also more challenges. At Babbel blog we are particularly interested in the opportunities that new internet and mobile technologies offer in a world of countless languages, as well their cultural repercussions. New ways of speaking, communicating, teaching and understanding emerge that are odd, exhilarating and beg to be talked about.
We look to our readers to speak up, to teach us, and help us construct and conjugate a new language peculiar to this blog: not so much a babble but a Babbel. We’re lingua-philes, we’re techies, we’re a bit kooky, we’re sharp. We’re thinking you are too. Talk to us.
