Now why didn’t I think of that? My little iRiver is always filled with learning material of the business type but I never thought of personal use. Doh! iTunes apparently has a great library of language podcasts.

I’m going to start the Mandarin one. Yes I know, why does Lynette need to learn Chinese? She speaks it (I speak 3 languages). But I don’t speak Mandarin – though I can understand bits and pieces of it. Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world and with China being more and more an economic powerhouse, I don’t think I can avoid this anymore.

Darn. I knew I should’ve paid more attention in Mandarin class when I was in school. I got a taste of this recently while in a doctor’s office, a Chinese man walked in and he spoke no English. The nurses asked if anyone could help. I told them frankly I can’t but I will try as best as I could and it was terrible! I really had to think so hard for each word and he didn’t speak my dialect. With broken Mandarin, I did finally get him through registration… barely.

podcasts