This is somewhat the typical "haven't posted for a while"
I've been listening to Chinese and Japanese on and off just changing my environment. Made some progress on Mandarin while I was in Taiwan for a month in Dec/Jan.
I have a TW friend who speaks about six languages with a high degree of fluency. That's German, French, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean. He swears by the Hippo Family Club method which he picked up in Japan. I researched it a little online, but seems rather hype-ish. He lent me his English copy of their "Anyone Can Learn 7 Languages" and I read it, but it's still been difficult for me to figure out how this acquisition things works.
Today he gave me a copy of the recordings (7 cds worth) because he was under the same impression as me when he first heard of it. I started listening to the CDs and I have to say I am actually impressed.
Let me give a break down of how it works. Each CD is the same story (Approximately 50 min) presented 7 different ways.
The first way is this:
K= Korean
G= German
J= Japanese
C= Mandarin
S= Spanish
E= English
F= French
1K 0:23
2G 1:00
3J 1:58
4C 1:43
5S 1:17
6E 1:35
7K 0:42
8F 2:20
9S 2:48
10J 1:56
11E 1:22
12G 1:15
13C 1:05
14F 0:38
15K 1:56
16J 1:31
17G 1:21
18F 0:42
19S 0:31
20K 1:38
21E 1:03
22C 1:34
23F 1:31
24J 2:53
25G 1:09
26S 4:28
27C 1:41
28G 1:11
29K 0:43
30E 1:02
31F 1:06
32J 2:12
So the other 6 CDs have an equivalent structure, so you get every part of the story in each lesson, but they are all mixed up. I like this. The intent is just to have this going as your environment and attempting to mimic it over time. I will try this for a month and see how it goes. Hopefully this will act as a resource for the near lack of information about Hippo as well. I am impressed after finally seeing their materials, but wasn't until I actually heard the audio. Full speed, native speakers, not foreign language material
