Welcome to Gaia! ::

Thanks for the link Regulus - as always I managed to not stumble upon the most interesting sites myself.

Right now I don't have the time to further investigate the site, but what I've seen so far definitely seems interesting. I especially like the fact that your lessons will be reviewed by other members (already wrote my first comment, which feels pretty good - finally a community you can contribute to right from the beginning). I'll definitely have to spend some time on it after work!

Glad to be of service to you two. ;3

Remember to friend me! D:

That is too cool. Nice site find.

I've noticed a lot of discrepancies in their lessons as well. Especially in the way of grammar.

They do have pronunciation, (what I mean is that they play audio of the words and sentences so you can hear how it's pronounced). Also tough pronunciations (with the standard pronunciation text) and other important things to note are usually posted by other people in the community, and go along with each individual exercise. You can see them off to the side, and such.

There aren't any clear cut guides, as I said for grammar or pronunciation, but I think if you're a quick learner, and can make do with little, then you can pull it off. =]

All of the "beginner" lessons follow the exact same formula. Man, woman, boy, girl, old, young, tall, short, fat, thin, plus verbs for "to be" depending on subject, and articles if they're required.

I went through the Spanish 101 just for kicks (I've taken 5+ years of Spanish classes), and they expect you to understand by context alone that "eres" means "you are" and "soy" means "I am." They also expect you to know that "el" is masculine and goes with "o" and "la" is feminine and goes with "a." And as Nisha Lan mentioned, they expect you to pull the translation for "and" out of thin air. That's fine for a supplement, but if you expect to use the site as your primary learning source, it's unacceptable -- but anyone who is truly serious about learning a language should be using multiple sources anyway.

I'm convinced that this site isn't so much a place to "learn" a language, but rather a place to share, practice, and expand your existing knowledge of a language. That is to say, it doesn't really teach you much, it simply reinforces what you know and gives you a way to learn a bit deeper (via conversational practice with others).

Heh, I've already spent hundreds of Euro/Dollar/Schilling/Mark (depending on time and location xp ) on books, CDs, programs and whatnot to improve my language skills, so I'll guess I'll just go with the offline-online combination.

Now I only have to find the keyboard switch on Linux - which, by the way, proves to myself just how very long it has been since my last foray into language lessons...

(ad first lesson: True, same with the Japanese version. They also never explain why the boy's the only one who uses "Boku" instead of the standard "Watashi" when talking about himself. Would have left me quite confused if this had been the first lesson I'd ever taken. But it does WONDERS when it comes to memorizing vocabulary. I'm really bad at it, but after a mere 20 minutes I remembered all of those I didn't know yet, and after 3 days they're still memorized.)

I prefer doing it the old fashioned way.

As German is my Minor in University, and as I am in Germany, it would be silly of me to pick up any other languages at the moment.