languagelearning
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Learn Klingon from the comfort of your own planet
Can't figure out how to pronounce Qapla' or properly conjugate majQa'? Not sure what those words even mean? Well buy' ngop because Duolingo is gearing up to teach you. The language learning app has announced that it is working on a new course for a very alien tongue: Klingon. The company just needs to find somebody that actually speaks it first. The Federation-to-Klingon lessons aren't technically part of the core Duolingo framework as, say English-Italian is. Rather, it's being coordinated as part of the crowdsourced Language Incubator program. If you think you've got the linguistic chops to help develop this course (or just want to be notified when it's ready) head over to Duolingo and volunteer.
Robot dragon teaches kids language skills, battles impulse to terrorize city
Did you have trouble learning language skills at a young age? It's probably because you didn't have the right teacher. And by "the right teacher," we mean the right robotic dragon, naturally. This cuddly little mythical beast is the joint creation of researchers at Northeastern University, MIT and Harvard -- some of whom were behind the decidedly creepier Nexi bot. It's part of a National Science Foundation-funded program to help young children learn language skills, suggesting that forming a bond with a teacher plays an important role in the educational process. The dragon will be brought to preschool classes to help test out this hypothesis. Hopefully a robotic knight will also be on-hand, just in case.
