Today, I received 3 separate e-mails from ChinesePod, SpanishPod, and FrenchPod, all delivering the same announcement. Currently, everybody can have access to all their lessons. Starting from next month, people with free-membership will have access to newbie lessons only.

This change does not really affect me much, for I have decided to go “natural” a few months ago and quited listening to learner’s materials such as language lessons. But then I would expect in the next few days, the Praxis servers will be bombarded by people trying to get their last “free lunches”.

When I look at the language learning market, it always amazes me how people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for language books, tools, and classes, but they expect everything free from the Internet. One thing I have found from the online language learning communities in the past year-or-so is that, free stuff has no good quality. Contents or services that are of good quality that are free are either being paid for by someone else already, or they are going out of business very soon.

A particular “free lunch” mentality spreading across the online language learning communities is the concept of “free tutoring” services. All free online language exchange communities are for you to practice what you have learned, not to be tutored. You may fire up conversations with many native speakers, but don’t expect them to be committed in tutoring you all along your language learning journey.

I recently came into contact with eduFire, an online paid service which hooks up language learners with native-speaking tutors. The tutors would decide the tuition fees, the learners would choose his/her tutors, and eduFire would take a small portion of the fees for its service. While I cannot guarantee the success of this business, I believe it has a healthy business model to last.

I have been impressed by the quality of the Praxis production since the early days of ChinesePod. Her later sister “Pods” only continue to raise the bar even higher. I think they have all the right to start charging users. After all, it starts from $5 US a month!

Incidentally, I read from the LingQ forum another day, that someone complained about the inconvenience with his a free-membership limitations. Come on, the basic membership only costs $10 US per month! He complained that he could not afford it. Well then, I had nothing to say.

There is no need to grumble when the free lunch is gone. In the end, I think it all comes down to a single question: Does the service actually worth it?

While Steve has recently upgraded his MP3 player to an iPod Nano 3G, I am considering selling mine.

No doubt, an iPod Nano is an extraordinary device for language learners. It is portable, it can play both audio and video clips, and the lyrics display comes in handy when you need to read the accompanied texts. I upgraded my 2G Nano to 3G last November and had been using it everyday. Last month, my mobile phone contract was up, so I got myself a new phone, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. This unit is a genuine MP3 player. One can tell by the fact that it provides an 3.5mm headphone jack. Shame on the other so-called MP3 mobile phones, which still require an adaptor to connect to the headphone!

The greatest advantage of having an MP3 player/mobile phone combo is the convenience of having 2 gadgets in one. I have to carry my mobile phone with me anyway. Now, I don’t need to carry an additional gadget to listen to my audio files.

Another great feature I love is the external speaker. I don’t always carry my earbuds with me. Sometimes, I want to play the audio clips to other people. An external speaker just makes my life much easier. I always wonder why Apple does not provide it in its iPods. I am sure it is not difficult to put one in.

Another feature, which does not seem as useful now, but will soon in the future, is Bluetooth. The days of plugging/unplugging is over for me. I now sync up my unit wirelessly. Very soon, I will add Bluetooth ability to my car stereo, so I can listen to my favourite language clips as soon as I get into my car. I will also be able to do other wonderful things in the coming future when Bluetooth devices become more affordable.

After about 2 weeks of possessing my new 5310, I found my iPod unsync-ed for almost a week. In the past, I synced up my iPod everyday. I realize it may be a good time to sell the unit, before it worths less than its protective case. I know I am going to miss it though.

This year, Québec City celebrates its 400th anniversary. This is of course a good opportunity for the Canadian francophones to promote their culture and language.

Although the official opening ceremony was held today, many celebration activities have already been undertaken nation-wide in the past few months. There was a festival held in downtown Toronto 2 weeks ago, but unfortunately I could not make it that day. Ironically, I went to one in Vancouver a few weeks ago while I was transiting there.

The timing was perfect. The concert started at 8pm and my flight was at 11:30pm. As I was walking toward the Francodome, I was met with a volunteer handing out some flyers. She explained to me the event, and I acted as if I just knew about it. I stayed for about half an hour and left to catch my flight.

It was a free concert. The scale of the event was smaller than I expected. There were about 200 seats in the Francodome, and it was half-filled when I went in. As I looked around, I truly appreciated the efforts the volunteers put in to make the concert successful.

When I was outside the Francodome, I overheard someone near me, presumably a Canadian anglophone, asking his friend a question: “By the way, what is a francophone?”

In my last project at work, we dealt with a US telecommunication company. We had a team consisted of about 6-7 colleagues from the US and 4 of us from Canada, all ‘locked’ in a conference room somewhere in the vicinity of Seattle.

Since our client was a telecommunication company, the word ‘Mobile’ came up extremely frequently during our discussions. It was very interesting to notice how different people pronounced the word differently. In brief, people from the US pronounce the word as ‘Moble’ (rhymes with ‘Noble’). The rest of the world pronounce it as ‘Mobile’ (rhymes with ‘File’).

This means all the representatives from our client said ‘Moble’, as for most of our US colleagues. The only exception was a colleague with an Indian heritage. On the Canadian side, 3 out of 4 of us actually spoke English as a second language. Somehow, we naturally adopted to ‘Moble’ right from the beginning of the project. We just follow how the client said it with no complaint. The only person insisted on saying ‘Mobile’ was a native Canadian (meaning born and raised in Canada).

I came back to Toronto afterwards and talked with my boss about the project. She was another native Canadian, so she said ‘Mobile’. But then I found myself kept on saying ‘Moble’ and couldn’t switch it back!

I remember I was in another project many years ago. The team consisted of mostly Americans, with only a few of us from Canada. There was an issue with a database flag ‘Z’. Our US colleagues would say ‘zee’, but our Canadian colleagues, in attempt to keep up with our Canadian pride, would say ‘zed’. Somehow, everyone insisted on pronouncing it his own way and no one bothered to suggest to unify the pronunciations at least in the discussions. At one point, I was shocked to hear my team lead, a native Canadian, began to say ‘zee’. From then on, I knew we had lost the wrestling.

As a matter of fact, the ‘Z’ alphabet was once used as a Shibboleth. It was
known in American history and popular culture for distinguishing American males who fled to Canada from the US to escape the military draft in the 1960s. But thanks to the American cultural influences in the past few decades, such as Sesame Street and the Alphabet song (American version), ‘zee’ is now adopted more and more by many young Canadians.

Due to business reasons, I had to travel to Seattle back-and-fro in the past few weeks. I came back to Toronto each weekend stopping over at the Vancouver Airport. In the Memorial Day long-weekend, I had trouble connecting to an immediate flight from Vancouver. I ended up spending 6 hours in Vancouver. I went out to have a dinner in Richmond, which was just next to the airport. It had been more than 13 years since I visited Vancouver.

It was a pleasant experience, so I decided to try it again. Last week, I stopped over at Vancouver for 6 hours, and this time purposefully. I went to the downtown area. One place I visited was the Sophia Books, probably the only multilingual bookstore in Canada.

Sophia Books is not a huge book store, but it surely has plenty of books, magazines, and other media. French and Spanish are the 2 major sections. There is a large Japanese section right at the end of the room. Other languages fill the rest of the store. There are also up-to-date newspapers from different countries available.

I spent about half an hour in the store and picked up 4 books at the end: a Japanese magazine for my wife, a Spanish bilingual book for myself, and 2 story books for my daughter (1 French and 1 Spanish). Some books seemed a bit overpriced, but the rest are reasonable. Overall, the visit is a memorable experience to me.