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A Review: EuroTalk Talk Now! Celtic Languages for Beginners

© Kelly Vincent

I've always been a bit cynical about foreign language courses on CD-Rom. Obviously they are better than nothing, but it always seemed that they didn't actually help as much as I expected. It's hard to learn to have a conversation with a computer that only "knows" certain things (i.e. just those the programmer coded its "brain" with). At this point, computers can't truly interact with us, and they can't understand what we are saying, so they can't correct us. But they are very good at spitting out information. So there are useful things computers can do for language learners, especially in terms of helping us acquire vocabulary. The company EuroTalk has capitalized on these benefits to create a great series called "Talk Now", language learning software on CD-Rom for beginners. These are available in more than 70 languages, including all of the modern Celtic languages except Breton.* The format is identical for all languages, so I will simply describe the software in general, without referring to specific languages.

What the Talk Now CDs offer is an excellent opportunity to master some basic vocabulary. There are nine vocabulary 'topics':

• First Words
• Food
• Colors
• Phrases
• Body
• Numbers
• Time
• Shopping
• Countries

Each of these topics is divided into four learning sections:

• Word Practice
• Speaking Practice
• Easy Game
• Hard Game

There is also the option within each section to 'Print Picture Dictionary', which prints a list of all of the vocabulary in that topic with an accompanying picture. The primary idea of the CD is to master all of the vocabulary by going progressively through each of the learning sections of each topic. The main screen of the program displays a pie-like shape, where each piece of the pie is a vocabulary topic. Little squares in each piece represent the learning tasks; these are white to start off with, but after you try each one, the squares are filled in. It is meant to be fun, and a cumulative score is kept, and the goal is to reach a certain value, which you can only reach by doing all of the different topics.

A basic strength of this software is the fact that you can change the base language. Although the default is American English, you can change it to any on the huge list of languages. This could be particularly useful if English is not your native language, or if you are learning a language similar to another one you already know. My friend (the one who recommended this series to me, actually), had already learned Scottish Gaelic and had to do some courses in Irish. She found it very useful to study Irish through the medium of Gaelic, because it made it easier to see both the

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