ARE YOU STRUGGLING WITH EUROPEAN LANGUAGES?

WELCOME TO THE WOOLLY MONKEY!

Why do people get discouraged?

Does anything work?

Why is this different from all other language learning aids?

• Written by a learner, not an educator.
  Educators know the language very well. They want to present it to you in all its glory. They want to be sure that you make no mistakes and know all the little wrinkles that every language has. As a beginner, you must use your time wisely and concentrate on language that you are likely to use.


• Your tablet teaches you pronunciation!
  Good pronunciation is vital. WoollyMonkey relies on text-to-speech engines on your computer or tablet, not feeble attempts to imitate foreign pronunciation with English analogies, like vee gate ess eenen for wie geht es Ihnen.


• Inspired by phrasebooks
  Phrasebooks are good in that they provide correct phrases for a person with only a smattering of the language. The downside is that the phrases are fixed: you can’t easily modify them for your own needs.
  This project looks a lot like a phrasebook but it explains enough grammar that you can adapt the phrases to your own vocabulary.


• Concentrates on the structure of the language
  There is no way I can predict all the vocabulary you will eventually need. You might be interested in railways, opera, dog shows, dressage, scuba diving, mountaineering, or fishing. Whatever your interests, there are a small number of structural language elements that every speaker neeeds. In grammarians' terms, they are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners, and they only exist in limited numbers, which are known as "closed sets" to mathematicians and sofware coders. I can select a subset of adjectives and verbs for you, but nouns are so numerous, a selection is daunting. I have chosen examples from travel needs, including particularly cityscapes and food. (If you are vague about grammar terms, see the page called grammar)
  This works because most people’s speech consists of simple phrases, joined together will words like well, you know, so anyway, and then you know, she said.


• I cut corners shamelessly!
  You have get started, as fast as possible! Many mistakes can be tolerated! (Except mistakes of pronunciation). If you get a plural or a past tense wrong, people will still understand you. What is a serious mistake to an educator often makes no difference to the person in the street. You have to use your time wisely, perfection can wait until you have a good grounding in the structure.
  

Who am I writing for?

• You learned a language some time ago in school or college. You can still understand some of it when you read, but you struggle to remember words and phrases fast enough to speak naturally, and they didn’t teach you useful tricks to cover up ignorance.
• You have tried to follow a self-study course or an evening class. You dropped out because it was too difficult, too hard to make the time commitment, you did not progress fast enough, or it was just plain boring.
• You have learned one foreign language and achieved a passable level of fluency, now you want to learn another one. Your second foreign language is much easier because you are aware of the way other languages differ from English. You are looking for a “quick start” because you are in a hurry, and you know what you want.
• You are a business traveler who is starting to feel at a disadvantage. You are failing to develop a rapport with your counterparts during those all-important lunch breaks. Or you suspect that they are taking advantage of you when they speak among themselves (they probably are).

What's next?

UNFINISHED -- WORK IN PROGRESS