App for learning foreign language through your native language
When my daughter was a kid, going to library is a usual routine. Hong Kong libraries have lot of interesting books for children of all ages. We usually take Picture books with lot of colorful pictures for words. From that time, I had the idea of coming up books like those for Indian languages. After 12 years, I could came up with some books that enables reader to learn a foreign language in their native language.
The first book was Learning Tamil through Japanese language that catered to those Japanese who visit Tamil Nadu. Mrs. Shalini Sandeep helped me in this project.
I started with online books on learning Cantonese through our Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Gujarati. Thanks to all my friends who volunteered in getting the proper native words for my 250 words list. It was released in Neighborhood Advice Action Council’s TOUCH Center website and in my own blog.
Similarly for learning Mandarin/Putonghua online books were prepared and released on a blogsite.
All the books are available online in CCG website too.
Thanks to the Malayalam Association for Art and Culture who helped to print and publish the same and distributed to their members. Later on online Kannada and Hindi versions were launched during Kannada Sangha Event and CCG-CIBS Day events.
After the advent of predominant mobile usage, thought of making an App to learn languages. There were many such Apps in the market. But most of them were for adults. Started with my idea. It was a long journey. Took three years to come to a shape. We named it as Globol meaning Global Speaking (bol in Hindi is speaking). I started with a Hong Kong developer company in the month of January 2015. It was my second semester of Ph.D course. It looked very progressive initially when I got the attractive screen designs. But then it slacked and took more than 9 months to come up with a complete App. But there was a sudden twist. The coder who was just 28 years old passed away with some heart ailment. Then the Hong Kong developer company cannot proceed with this project and it came to a stop.
But my wish in coming up with the App did not vanish. I kept on hunting for some App developer who can work within my budget. I earmarked some of my Ph.D stipend money for this. Finally found one in Coimbatore in January 2016 through Mr. Thilakraj. I was in my fourth semester of Ph.D working on my Ph.D little more seriously. Here again the initial things went on well. But started to slack down after six months. Android version was up in 2016 November. But the app was very slow in retrieving the data. I requested for faster retrieval. The developer had to work more and more and got stuck and also got busy with other projects. The follow up on this project deteriorated and reached nil point when I had to work on my Ph.D thesis. Whenever Globol comes to my mind, I message the developer asking about the progress. It went on and here we are at the end of second year with the second developer. The Android App is up ultimately on production 23.11.17 on Google Store after a long struggle.
Please download the App, use it and give your feedback. It is listed under ‘Aham Solutions’ on google playstore. This App enables to learn foreign language through native language. Currently it offers 8 languages English, Cantonese, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. It has little more than 500 words with attractive pictures. The medium of transcription is in English. Words for 7 more languages Korean, German, Sanskrit, Bahasa, Tagalog, Swahili and Nepali are ready. Once the sound files are ready, they will also go online. More than 20 volunteers have worked on this project.
App can be downloaded free of charge. Advertisements on top and bottom are implemented to generate revenue from the app. This generated revenue is earmarked for educational services for needy in Hong Kong and India. Your support in this project would be much appreciated.
The iOS version is under development and will be launched soon. Looking forward for some funding in developing this App where the medium of transcription will be in the native language as well. I am planning to submit this project on crowdfunding platform to generate some fund.
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