Learn Chinese in Just 5 Minutes For $20 | 4th of July In Taiwan

Curious about what the background characters mean in the Olympics? Pick up one of these kits and teach yourself Chinese in a weekend.

Lazy me, I was doing a LinkedIn search reconnecting to old acquaintances from old squadrons I’ve been in (Shamrocks) and ran across the profile for this product.

I’ve been meaning to find a quick way to pick up kanji style languages and this looks perfect. These small word magnets are really cool. This is also going to be my hot Christmas gift this year as well since the price is only $20.

Learn Chinese Faster with IdeoLingo Word Magnets. Better Than Flashcards!

IdeoLingo® - Better Than Flashcards

IdeoLingo® is a Southern California-based company that develops fun and innovative study aids for students learning languages whose words and concepts are represented by ideograms.

These languages include but are not limited to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Localizing For Dummies: Use MadCap Lingo

Of course MadCap Software has put a focus out for their localization services and their program Lingo has accolades for Chinese localization through XML.

With a strong Asian customer base, GPRO makes its technology solutions—along with the supporting documentation—available in English, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese versions. Since April 2008, GPRO has used the MadCap Lingo integrated content authoring and translation memory system together with MadCap Flare for content authoring and multi-channel delivery.

Where it once took up to six months to deliver a documentation project, GPRO now uses MadCap Lingo and Flare to complete the project in just one month.

Clearly Technical Communicators don’t have to learn Chinese in order to do documentation, however it’s just SO COOL that I recommend it. My philosophy is to pick up any bits of language that you can. When you’re done, IdeoLingo would even look cool on your fridge.

A Little Sight Recognition Goes A Long Way

While in the Navy, flash cards weren’t portable enough for me and my retention could have been better. Even so, while running around Hong Kong during Christmas 1994, my friends were (easily) impressed with how I was the first to find the subway, never got lost, and always found good food and cool stuff. After I got out of the Navy, sitting at the computer and crunching through exercises just didn’t fit into my time schedule. 

And then there’s my cautionary overseas travel tale… Now everyone can see how I got to be such a fan of eLearning software - cuts down on the travel hell.

Stand-up Training Culture Shock | Avoiding Gaijin Syndrome

My interest in cultural situational awareness was revived in 2000 with a last minute Fourth of July business trip to Taiwan. Those guys at Novatel Wireless must have really trusted me a lot to send me off by myself. Then again, the trip meant missing 4th of July stateside. For the millennium bash.

My favorite holiday, Fourth of July, was now a casualty of the sales contract specifics. And my status as junior man in the Applications Engineering department.

I’d watched the inflight movie Mission to Mars about seventeen times prior. This was due to my two month whirlwind onsite client support and product training tour courtesy of Novatel Wireless. They showed it again on the flight down to Taipei.

I’d never been to Taiwan but had previously been to Japan and Hong Kong. This time however, I was on my own. On my own after being picked up at midnight by one of the engineers in a Hsinchu technology park that looked like any other suburb. In a hotel that made Motel 6 look like the Hilton. With three channels on the TV and no CNN.

At least the hotel was across from the office I would be going to in the morning. 

I didn’t understand a thing anywhere. Three years before that Bill Murray movie Lost in Translation described utter culture shock I was living it for three straight days. A few books, no internet in the hotel, nothing to read or watch on TV, and no magazines in English.

Adding jet lag to that meant total sensory deprivation. My Palm V didn’t have enough juice to make a decent eBook and of course the travel charger cord was not the right type.

Of course the great thing is that GEEK is spoken globally, and the engineers I met with were really cool - even if most of the communication was one way with one guy translating. Once we got into AT command sets for the wireless modems it was like binary code between computers; we understood each other perfectly in machine language.

Of course there were no fireworks on the Fourth of July. I couldn’t even find a beer near my little Motel 6. That’s fine because by 4pm I was exhausted and crashed big time until 4am.

Things perked up after I made my way to Taipei. After a three hour bumpy taxi ride through back roads and past rice paddies I checked into a plush Starwood / Sheraton and had an hourlong shower.

Walking the city streets was amazing, and I tried my best to get lost. Blending in could have been a bit easier for me, I looked only about six inches taller than average but my surfing tan gave away my Western heritage. A deep California tan made me stick out about as much as I would have in Denmark. ;-) 

The good news was that I had learned to memorize the airport airline signage on the way out so I knew where I needed to come back to… That saved me on my return because the ticket desks were switched out as contracting airlines came and went.

I had to watch Mission to Mars yet one more time as this airline showed it on the return leg. Best thing ever, the DVD player was broken and we got to watch Mission to Mars…

Over and over and over. Three times, yes, three times in one flight.

Only just this year did I watch Mission to Mars again. I’d blocked it from my memory not unlike a traumatic train wreck it seems. I didn’t even recall the ending. Some eight years later it was surprising and pleasant, just like the first time I saw it. 

Back To The Review…

One of the IdeoLingo founders relates how the concept came about…

I experimented with several software programs but none allowed for hands-on manipulation or rearranging words and characters. Magnets seemed to be the perfect solution. I found a company to produce the magnets and asked my Chinese teacher to help me develop the initial vocabulary list.

A year later, production on these magnets began. After a quick self-tutorial of Adobe Illustrator, six proofs later and one test print, the first IdeoLingo® Chinese Magnet Kit was produced in Spring 2006.”

Free Consulting for IdeoLingo: Try PC and Flash

My recommendation for IdeoLingo might be to develop an expansion pack based on Windows, to help aid navigation of localized PC screens. Giving the tiles Windows colors would also be great marketing.

Another technical usage of these pre-existing Adobe Illustrator files might be for a Flash-based tutorial for use on a mobile phone or PDA. Something quick to enhance the study, nothing expensive. Adobe Illustrator files output to Flash, and keeping the screen size small enough to view with clarity would be simple. Keeping the same color scheme makes it easier to see in bright light, and gives a downloadable format that opens another sales channel.

IdeoLingo Analysis: KISS Rule In Force

What I find interesting is that first, this is a complete home developed product. Second, it’s cheap, portable, easy to understand. Third, the primary color usage is brilliant.

Keeping it simple, simply works in this application. There’s enough data here to navigate around Hong Kong or Taipei and count your change accurately. Plenty for a gaijin like me (yes, I know that’s a Japanese term) to get himself around and simple enough to learn on the 14 hour flight to Taiwan or other destinations.

For the price they’re asking, IdeoLingo is on my Christmas list for my more adventurous friends!