Parrot Time Magazine

Aurora, CO, July 11, 2017 - A family in Aurora, Colorado, took on the challenge to help Syrian refugees learn a new language on their online language platform, LingoHut. With the help of a Syrian professor living in Homs, Syria, LingoHut now teaches in Arabic. LingoHut teaches 11 of the most crucial languages to assist Syrians during their transition.

Refugees and their families struggle as they adjust to new communities, cultures, and languages. Being unable to communicate in a country is a serious impairment, and without communication, it can be tough to get along with new neighbors. The language barrier has always had a big impact on refugees and immigrants, but with LingoHut's free and accessible.

As LingoHut's co-founder, I know the difficulty of being forced out of home. I was 13 years old when I fled Nicaragua’s civil war. I came to America alone; these were incredibly scary times for me. I could not communicate with the family that took me in. I could not explain my needs, nor share my fears; I was scared and alone. That is exactly why I developed LingoHut; to help other not feel so alone.

LingoHut teaches basic vocabulary to fosters pronunciation skills through their unique language learning platform. Today LingoHut presents in over 50 native languages, helping a wide scope of immigrants and refugees begin their journey developing strong communication skills.

Steve Kaufmann, noted polyglot and founder of the language learning site Lang-Q, celebrated the 10th anniversary of his YouTube channel, and several members of the language community wanted to help.

Benny Lewis, along with polyglots Lindsay Williams (Lindsay Does Languages), Olly Richards (I Will Teach You a Language), Conor Clyne (The Language Tsar) and more, put together a video in the style of a news broadcast, for "PNN" (Polyglot News Network).

The entire project pays homage to Kaufmann while incorporating humor throughout. For example, Conor Clyne is listed as the wardrobe consultant for Kaufmann and proceeded to show the statistics for the kind of shirts Kaufmann wore and the results of a poll on them.

Benny also played with the argument of which is the better learning method: every media item such as films, music, books, etc goes into the process of learning, called input, and the idea that you should speak as soon as you can, not focusing on being correct at first, known as output. Benny's site, Fluent in 3 Months, is a major proponent of the output method, while Kaufmann (The Linguist) focuses on language comprehension as the core method.

First, he showed an animated weather map with clouds bearing Kaufmann's and Benny's head bumping up against each other. Next, he showed comical pictures of two boxers fighting, with the icons for the two sites in place of the boxers' heads. Finally, he had Kerstin Cable (Fluent Language) introduce a debate about which is better with Jana Fadness and Judith Meyer (Learn Yu) as the panelist.

With the sleek and professional look, the video is an excellent way to recognize Kaufmann's contributions to the community. Although this was likely just a one-time creation, we hope to see similar videos like this in the future.

To watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc18raCldt0