Monday, December 10, 2001		Kids chat

Cliparti: Accueillons amie! Fluppy: Hey Cliparti, what's that. Have you encrypted your message?

Cliparti: Not at all.

Windy: But that does not sound usual. Isn't it?

Cliparti: That's right Windy! It's not usual.

Fluppy: Hey, do not play riddles Cliparti. Tell us what's that?

Cliparti: Fluppy! It's not a riddle. I have simply extended a warm welcome to our friends in French rather than English as we normally do.

Fluppy: Gosh! So that's French. It's good, but how come you are speaking French today?

Cliparti: Its simple, I am learning French through the Internet and it is quite interesting also. Do you know that French is the most popular language in Europe and also very widely spoken.

Fluppy: Well! That's information for me. I thought it is English, which is spoken widely.

Windy: Hey Fluppy! This information is an incentive for you to learn French as you can make more friends over the Internet.

Fluppy: Well! That's right, but it could also be an added qualification for guys like you who may go abroad for further studies.

Windy: Right, but you stand to gain more.

Cliparti: Hey you guys have got a point for each other but none of you is interested in knowing, how and where I am learning French from.

Windy: Oh yeah! Please tell us Cliparti, how are you learning French.

Cliparti: I have found this interesting site www.travlang.com, where you can learn a large number of languages easily and effectively in a short span of time. Like I am learning French on this site, you can choose the language of your choice and can also choose the module suiting most for you.

Windy: What does that mean.

Cliparti: OK, If you want to just learn basic words used in a particular language, then you can select that particular section. First of all, I started from this section only and learnt some of the basic words like Welcome, I, We, you, god, how are you, husband, wife, daughter, son, thank you, yes, no, you are welcome, please, excuse me, hello, goodbye and lots of other words. As a beginner this information will be more than enough for you to learn. Once you complete this you can move on more detailed tutorials available on the Internet.

Windy: That's really good. So, you mean to say we can learn the basics of any number of languages.

Cliparti: Yeah! That's right you can learn a number of foreign languages like German, Spanish, Japanese, Afrikans, Italian etc. Hey! That's not the end of it as you can learn a lot of Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, Marathi, Gujarati etc. So, if next time I ask you kem chho, aap ... bolo chho Gujrati, do not get surprised.

Fluppy: Ha!Ha!Ha That's very interesting. Now I can learn the basic words of some of these languages and can impress my friends.

Windy: Really very interesting. But how do we learn the pronunciation of these words.

Cliparti: Very simple! On this site just click on the word and you can listen to how a particular word is pronounced. Also the translated version clearly shows the pronunciation also. Therefore pronunciation would not be a problem at all.

Windy: Then I think it would be the best.

Cliparti: Similarly there are other sites also like www.fodors.com/language, where you can learn any language in the most basic form. Also you can learn a lot of expressions and short sentences.

Windy: I also know of one site www.nll.co.uk. This site is somewhat different from the one we had discussed so far. As on this site you can learn a language in detail online on the Internet. On this site you can learn languages like English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, Croatian and other languages live via the Internet with qualified and experienced native-speaker teachers.

Fluppy: Well! I think we have enough of stuff to learn today. So let's get set go to sites mentioned by you and learn these interesting languages. Bye folks see you next week. 

— Ira Verma