I tend to work on Surface Languages in fits and starts depending on what else is going on in my life, and also when I have ideas of how to improve it substantially.

I’m reasonably sure I’ve come up with a way of improving SL immensely, of taking it to the next level, of making it more useful to more people … etc .. etc…

Firstly, I’m going to finish what I am currently working on. I’ve added  Portuguese (European) and Albanian to the list  of languages. As yet these both lack audio, but I hope to add the Portuguese audiosoon – maybe by the end of next week. I don’t want to commit to a timescale to Albanian as it is not so easy to find someone  to record the audio.

I’m also going to add a language learning game, or maybe two. I have the ideas in my mind and just need to code them. Easy peasy, fun to do and fun to use. I hope …

So far. So good.

Secondly, and this is the ‘take SL to the next level’ part, I’m going to add a whole new section for people who want more than ‘get by’ type language.

For you programmers reading this I’m writing it in php and this section will live under sentences.surfacelanguage.com or something similar. The rest of this site is written using Ruby, but for various reasons I think php will be a better fit for this.

Naturally, I can’t write language courses in multiple (or even a single) language, and it isn’t feasible for me to pay people to do this.  I don’t think it is even particularly useful. There are lots of cheap courses out there already (the Teach yourself) type books etc, which are good places to start. There is also a lot of good information and interesting resources. It is certainly possible to learn a language for free or more or less for free.

But there are gaps.  I have an idea which will (fingers crossed) be an incredibly useful learning aide for people who are moving from beginner to A1 start of A2 type of language learning level for a language.  I’ve highlighted learning aide because this is what it will be. An extra resource. An aide to learning.

I think that anyone learning a language should use many different resources and this will be another free resource. I don’t think there is anything quite like it out there.

I’m excited about doing this. I just need to finish the bits and bobs above and do a bit more thinking.

Other news. For those who read this and the previous entry, if anyone did, and the stats indicate this is unlikely, our dog has now recovered, and is back to full speed when chasing balls, sticks and birds.

He has never even come close to catching a bird, but I guess hope springs eternal. He is a ‘bowl half full’ type of hound.

Tomorrow, he has his boosters, and we discover whether his diet (he is a bit chubby according to the vet) has been a success.

I’ll keep you posted.

Peace,

MF