Language Learning/Digital Dialects

I was attending my french language class today and we were counting numbers up to 20. Our tutor emphasised the fact that when you begin the 11 for onze, 12 for douze, 13 for trieze etc, it is important to stress the ‘ze’ at the end of the numbers. It is like using our ‘teen’ in English.

We were using an excellent website called Digital Dialects. This site includes free-to-use games for learning 80 languages. Within are games for learning phrases, numbers, vocabulary, spelling, alphabets and verb conjugation. It is primarily aimed at learners of a beginner and lower-intermediate level, with a couple of games aimed at a more advanced learner. Subjects include phrases, greetings, colours and with 20 more including past tenses, time and days of the week. The really valuable part for me is the way you can listen to the correct pronunciation. Without this, as I’ve learnt from past experience, you can be completely misunderstood – an affliction that can affect speakers of any language. Indeed, on one of my tutorial CDs, a native French-speaker makes a rather unfortunate hash of telling the startled listener that “…this will ‘elp you to fuccus!”  ;-/

www.digitaldialects.com