Mina-san, 本当にありがとうございま～す！

Thanks for all your great submissions! We’ve got so many that it looks like we have our work cut out for us. This will be no easy task!

Chiba Lotte Marines? Wow! That’s my team! It’s my Japanese friend’s team! They won the Japan Series two years ago — the same year my other team, the Chicago White Sox, won the World Series. Talk about an exciting October!!!

I can’t wait to hear what you have planned!

My Feed — how much space will it take on my computer if I decide to add more options (I’m a Premium Subscriber) . . . kind of a dumb question, but . . . hehehe

I was going to suggest Coolio St. Cool’s Linguatorium, but I don’t think it’s for everyone.

“Allons enfants de la Patrie…” - we are having French, that’s amazing!!!

I’m thrilled! You’ve been working really hard! It’s really the time to make some choices, because it’s becoming impossible to keep up to date with all those languages.

I can see that possibly your next language will be Arabic, right? I’ve always wanted to learn some Arabic, but I’m with my hands full with what you’ve uploaded so far.

Thank you for this great Sunday news. I just did not receive any e-mail about the contest, was it just for Premium members?

またね。頑張りましょう！

Yeahs!!!! I can’t wait to have French, Arabic and Russian !!!!

I hope the new language pod101 does not have too much advanced audio blogs. What is the point of having so many audio blogs…if they have 700 lessons like Jpod101, it will be a good idea to have advanced level like audio blog…but for the new pod101…the focus should be on the beginners.

Oh and congrats on the new sites! Great to see you guys branching out into traditional Western languages too! Not just Korean or Japanese.

I strongly suggest all the new pod101 series to focus on just one level at a time, esp. during its inception. I believe you need beginners, it is beginner that brings you most of the income right? For language like French, Spanish, German and Italian, if I achieved intermediate level, why should I spend money subscribing to Pod101 series when there are tons of free materials out there for intermediate level learners. My 2 cents.

Hello,

Is it possible to apply for the French teaching position?

I’m a French native-speaker from Belgium and a longtime listener to JP101 (3 years I think). I would love to work for them on a podcast like that…

Markystar, should I send my resume?

Also, sorry for the double post but I had to bring this up. Hopefully someone from one of the “pods” will read this. I have noticed each new 101 you create the home page always has comments from “listeners” etc when it is impossible that listeners made those comments and having pics from PC Mag and so forth. I think that is a bit misleading to consumers and not good business practice. Someone else bought this up and Jason said “it may have just been overlooked as the same template is used for all sites” but this has happened for each new site you guys have put up. Just in case you don’t realise this is happening I thought I better let you know.

While I’m writing this - how on earth do you get from www.japanesepod101.com to www.japanesepod101.com/index.php I see no visible link anywhere and I am afraid new users might think they have to sign up to get access to the sites. You may want to make it a little clearer.

Anyhoo, just some constructive criticism - thanks for the website it really has enhanced my learning of Japanese. I love it!

Mina-san

I see that this comment stream has become a place for feedback regarding the new language streams and I hope it is ok if I use it for this purpose as well.

I would like to urge JPOD101, or whatever they will be called in the future, to exercise patience and restraint with these new ventures or they will become just another language teaching machine. Each language needs to find it’s own balance and this will take a while. And I agree - do we need French and German when there are so many resources out there which already work suceesfully?

Those who discovered JPOD101 in its early days will probably agree with me that what kept us coming back was essentially the formula Dickens used to propose: ‘make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait!’

We laughed at Peter and co.’s (apparent) clumsiness or unusual predicaments, we cried with Chigusa being disappointed in iLove, we waited for the next instalment of each riveting story. In addition, the community side and the free delivery was the core of the site - Japanese is a tough language and having to pay would discourage many. I think this was well understood by those who started the project.

JPOD101 worked because of the chemistry of the presenters and the quality of the contrasting American and Japanese sense of humor - this will be different for each language as each reflects different cultural backgrounds. I do hope that this remains understood at the core of all this development.

Plunging into a different language market is difficult - the competition is different, for a start. Japanese did not have many good interactive sites available and has the reputation to be a difficult language for all foreigners. Italian may be much easier to tackle for a Spanish or French listener and there are so many more opportunities to learn, not least conventional schools and relatively affordable courses. Also for these European languages there already are sites with similar approaches so their appeal must be not so much for being a unique proposition as for being a BETTER proposition.

My wish for all of these initiatives is that all the sites may be able to retain the community feel that makes me thing of JPOD101 people of my friends even if I am only one a hundred thousand listeners. I always get thanked for my suggestions and Peter never misses a chance to let us know how much they value our contributions.

Let’s hope this atmosphere will always remain at JPOD101!

Gambatte kudasai!

mikuji

PS: as a native Italian speaker I must say that I really enjoy the advanced features in the new site - they are informative and they address that section of Italian speakers who wish to brush up their language - that is they get the meaning but need to refine their expression. There is more such listeners for Italian than for Japanese or Korean, so I can see the logic in including this at the start.

Using this language as an example one would find Italian (or French of German) more difficult if one is Japanese than if one is Spanish (a Spaniard will guess most of it without studying! a Korean will be totally baffled by the simplest of sentences untill some study is done) so it is difficult to pitch things at the right level.