I'm thinking about learning a new language

I took 3 years of French when we lived in New Orleans (3rd-5th grades). Well, not really 3 years, but sort of. We had English class M-W-F, and French T-Th. It's served me well. I aced 2 years of high school French without opening a book. I'll let you draw your own conclusion about the level of academia in high school French in GA.

Then there was 2 years of Greek in college, but no one speaks Koine Greek around here. Or anywhere else, other than Bible colleges and seminaries. It's the language of the written New Testament, though, and it's handy for translating that especially pesky passage--was the wine Jesus made fermented or not? Go to the original language!

I've got lots of reasons for learning a new language.

I'm the chaplain for the State College Spikes, the short A minor league baseball team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. That means lots of young men who speak only/mostly Spanish. Our church also takes a yearly trip to the Dominican Republic, where Spanish is a big plus.

There are lots of Russian families in Centre County. Speaking Russian would let me interact with them. There's a whole apartment complex right across the road from where we're planning to build the new church building. It'd be cool to build some good relationships there.

And sometime in the future we're planning a little trip to China to pick up our daughter. We've never met her, or even seen a picture. But I'm guessing that a little conversational Chinese would go a long way come next spring.

Mango has launched in beta, and I've already worked through a lesson in Spanish (Abbey taught me pretty well last spring), and in Russian (I want to impress Julia and Pavel.) Mango offers lessons online, at your own pace, with audio in the following languages:

• Spanish
• Russian
• French
• Italian
• Mandarin Chinese
• German
• Japanese
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Greek
• English for Spanish speakers
• English for Polish speakers

Anybody want to join the foreign language club?