When I found Mango, a beta version of language learning website, I tried out the “French for English Speakers” to brush-up on my French lessons from high school. Sadly, I remembered almost nothing from those two years, but thanks to Mango, if I’m in France anytime soon (or Montreal) I can have a rudimentary conversation that begins with, “Bonjour! Comment allez-vous?” Hannah is presenting at a conference in Germany in November, so she might really be able to put these lessons to the test!

Here are the language options in Mango:

• Brazilian Portugeuse for English Speakers
• Angielski dla Polski rozmowcow
• Ingles para hablantes de Espanol
• German for English Speakers
• French for English Speakers
• Greek for English Speakers
• Italian for English Speakers
• Japanese for English Speakers
• Mandarin Chinese for English Speakers
• Pig Latin for English Speakers
• Spanish for English Speakers
• Russian for English Speakers

In each set of 100 lessons, you will learn to say the same phrases (except Pig Latin which is kinda random):

• Introduction
• Hello. How are you?
• I am well. Thank you. And you?
• Great, my name is ________. What is your name?
• My name is _________. It is nice to meet you.
• Nice to meet you too. Goodbye.
• Goodbye

I hope Mango survives the beta testing. My first suggestion for them? They really need to expand the lessons by adding more phrases — when I went to Mexico City a few years ago, the most useful phrases for me were, “No, thank you,” and, “I don’t speak Spanish.” Mango should definitely add those to the list. And maybe the word, “Chicken. Well, I had to cross out my previous assessment after it was brought to my attention that there are many more lessons (I had thought the lessons were the slides -oops!)

Also, if you are interested in the Chinese or Japanese lessons, you can’t view the symbols (or are they called characters, I can’t remember). Instead, they show up as little squares.