Hi listeners!

Looking for new language to study?

Currently, there are 27 InnovativeLanguage.com languages that you can learn the fast, fun and easy way! And now that we’re done updating our lesson layouts, we’ll be adding even more languages!

There are 2 new language sites and a whole lot of new content on EnglishClass101 coming July 1st and we’re revealing them here first!

What are they? Based on user requests, we’re introducing British English, Persian, and Swahili. These new additions will bring the Innovative Language family to a total of 29 sites!

British English? That’s right. We have EnglishClass101.com just for our English learners.

British English itself has over 58 million speakers in the UK and opens you to over 780 million English speakers worldwide. It’s the world’s lingua franca! This July, you’ll find British English lessons on EnglishClass101.com as an alternative to the current American English lessons. However, if you’re a native speaker and want to brush up on your British accent, feel free to stop by as well!

British English Lessons start July 1st. Click here to visit EnglishClass101!

Persian is also known as Farsi. The good news? It has no articles, no cases, and nouns have no gender. In short, grammar will be easy and breezy. It also opens you up to over 110 million speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. And since it’s part of the Indo-European language family, it’ll help you get a head start on Arabic (ArabicPod101.com) and Hindi (HindiPod101.com) as well! The bad news? You need to wait ‘til the site is launched!

PersianPod101.com Coming Soon! Click here to sign up for the wait-list!

Swahili is the easiest African language to learn for English and Arabic speakers. There are no lexical tones and it’s spoken just as it’s written. With over 140 million speakers, Swahili is the official language of Tanzania, Kenya and is the lingua franca of East Africa. We’re happy to have it as our first African language at InnovativeLanguage.com. And if you know what Hakuna Matata means (it means no worries), you’ve already started learning!

SwahiliPod101.com Coming Soon! Click here to sign up for the wait-list!

P.S. July 1st is the day! Stay tuned for PersianPod101, SwahiliPod101 and new British English lessons!

Today, we bring you another blog post from Motoko, JapanesePod101.com lesson creator, host and Office Party Planner! Motoko will be sharing more bilingual posts on our blog, so check back often and leave a comment!

Hi everyone, Motoko here!

Today I’d like to tell you about the welcome party we held recently. This spring, we welcomed four new team members: Ice, Gabriella, Paloma, and Raul. To introduce them briefly, Ice is a member of the video team; Gabriella and Paloma work on content creation; and Raul is a member of our IT team.

The welcome party was held at a Japanese shabu-shabu restaurant near our office. The restaurant’s traditional Japanese-style design was quite nice. The great service was also a pleasant surprise for us—waitresses in kimono and a waiter assisted at each table with cooking the shabu-shabu properly.

Shabu-shabu is a type of hot pot cuisine where people cook the vegetables and meat by themselves. So diners usually put the vegetables into the hot water in the pot. Diners also pick up the finely-sliced meat (pork or beef) with their chopsticks, then cook the slices by swishing them in the hot water. The name “shabu-shabu” actually came from this swishing action, and is an onomatopoeia, as the swishing makes the sound “shabu-shabu.” Did you know that?

At the restaurant, we did the “shabu-shabu” by ourselves. After all, that’s the most important part of having a shabu-shabu, right!? But the waiters helped us cook the other ingredients, which was very handy for the shabu-shabu beginners.

Have you ever had shabu-shabu before? If you haven’t, please try it at least once!

(Apr 2013)

Today, we bring you another blog post from Motoko, JapanesePod101.com lesson creator, host and Office Party Planner!

Hi everyone, Motoko here!

Today I’d like to tell you about another listener visit we had recently. We had a JapanesePod101.com listener come to visit us in the office. This was the fourth visit for me, but I still felt nervous!

This is Matt. He was visiting from California.

I had heard that he came to Japan for a holiday. But it seems that it was more of a special trip for him, because guess what? He came here to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. His girlfriend is Japanese, and he wanted to meet her parents. It sounded like a big event to me! But Matt kept smiling the whole time and said he was alright. I thought he was brave.

I guess that Peter probably felt more nervous, because he knows that it’s one of the big events for men in Japan to meet their girlfriends’ parents!

I was very happy to receive the souvenir he brought. It was popular Girl Scout cookies from the United States. One packet was chocolate mint flavor, and the other was peanut butter. I liked the peanut butter ones more than the choco mint.  Thanks, Matt! We all enjoyed them.

Matt, did you have a lovely time with your girlfriend and her parents? I hope so.

(May 2013)