Learn Afrikaans through the New Testament

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Another test of mine, one of the many ideas I've had since installing learning with texts and thinking about the possibilities not just for learning languages as an individual but improving the teaching of others.

The premise is an easy one and you can read it here. Afrikaans is a language that is easy to learn but hard to find content in. It is easy to find written content in Afrikaans, and radio broadcasts and podcasts as well, but text with matching audio is nearly impossible to find in large quantities. The only place where this is possible is here, where the entire New Testament has been recorded in the language. The site is sure to note that it is religiously neutral, because there is no sense in scaring away any potential learners of the language.

Each post features a passage, and the length of the reading passage is 25 new words, or items, in length. In the beginning a single verse can hold 25 new things to learn, but as time goes on this length will grow. Names of places and people do not count as new things, of course. Learning with texts is the software that makes this possible, as unlearned terms are highlighted and all one has to do is count out about 25 and then this becomes the content for a single post.

I'm looking forward to seeing just how long it will take to reach 25 new words / items after a few books. By the Pauline epistles or Revelation it may even take a few chapters just to reach this, and that would considerably speed up the project.

While on a blog, a blog is probably not the best place for this after it is finished. If this is finished one day I'd like to compile the posts, licence it under Creative Commons and let others do what they want with it.

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