Life seems to have stalled at the moment, so reviews and languages are definitely the way forward. Today, I'm reviewing World Nomads Spanish Language Guide - which is an app that I have on my iPod.
World Nomads is a company that, primarily, isn't a phrasebook/language software company. They are, primarily, a travel insurance company - their tag line being ''Keep Travelling Safely". So, bearing that in mind, my first question is 'how does this app help me to travel safely?'
Arguably, it is hard for an iPhone/iPod/phone app to keep you safe, especially when it is a phrasebook/language guide. The 'travel safety' and 'travel health' sections of the app are fairly thorough, especially in comparison to other apps of a similar nature. Admittedly, I do find those sections in the Spanish phrasebook by lastminute.com slightly more thorough - especially the health section. In this respect, they do stick to their motto of ''keep travelling safely'', although I hope they're not using this as their main hook.
Moving onto the other sections, unlike with some of their other language guides, every section has audio alongside the written text if you tap the little box the word is in. With some apps, I find it incredibly frustrating how audio is only available on some phrases - especially because a pronunciation section is incredibly rare with a phrasebook/language guide style app.
The sections are as follows: basics, instructions, directions, transport, places to stay, travel safety, travel health, food and eating, numbers, times and dates, and flirting. There is also the option to upgrade to the Language Guide Plus.
The title 'Language Guide' is perhaps a little misleading - this app is absolutely a phrasebook. I assume the 'Language Guide' comes from the fact that you can opt to take a 'Language Lesson' in which you will hear an Australian pretend to be foreign (the Croatian one is incredibly cringeworthy) and another Australian receive a lesson in the language while in a random situation (Croatian was someone had hurt their leg).
As with all phrasebooks apps, this one is not going to match up to if you were to go out and purchase a whole phrasebook. Luckily, this version of the app is free. The Language Guide Plus version costs £1.49, which I have never downloaded because my level of Spanish is way above the level of the app.
Because of my level of Spanish, there are a few things I question - firstly, the app translates 'Internet' to 'Internet/la web' and 'Email' to 'Email'. I have only ever heard Internet as Internet or la Red, and email as un correo electronico. I also don't understand why these are in the basics section - alongside 'yes', 'thank you' etc. Secondly, the app seems to like making use of different tenses and conjugations. For instance, it would be just as easy to say ''Hay habitaciones?", but the app says "Tienen habitaciones?". The travel safety section also has the translation for "Those drugs aren't mine!" - now, maybe it's just me, but if you've been caught with drugs in a foreign country, you're probably not going to be holding it together enough to get our your iPod/phone and look the phrase up... Finally, the flirting section only has two phrases in it, with a third box suggesting you upgrade to the plus version. I find this a little odd, because I can't imagine anyone reaching that part of the app and deciding they want to upgrade for more flirting phrases. There are more free apps (Lingopal lite, for example) that do this.
Overall, it's a pretty good app. I personally wouldn't buy the plus version for reasons already stated (level of Spanish), but the free version is worth a download. If you're downloading one of the less popular languages, audio will probably be missing - even the German app has audio missing...as does the French.
Have you used any of the World Nomads Language Guides? If so, leave us a comment to let us know how you got on with them :)
Besos ♥
Rachel
First off, I'm really not well at the moment so I apologise in advance for the lack of sense in this post.
Soooo, Linguastars. What an insane two days. We arrived at something like 9:45 on Tuesday 12th and had an icebreaker session to get to know the group. Our first impressions of everybody else? Well, we all had to make animal noises at people and 'find someone of the same species'. I was a chicken...I can't make chicken noises. Awkward. We then got given a bunch of balloons and straws and had to try and make the tallest tower out of what we had. Ours was, well, rubbish... The majority of our building time looked like this >>>
After balloon building we separated into language groups and the Spanish group went and sat in a computer room for about half an hour attempting to figure out what we were doing as our 'stand in teacher' didn't speak Spanish. We ended up doing some research on Universidad de Córdoba, which is apparently somewhere near Malaga. I'll warn you now, just for future reference, there is no information at all about catering at the university anywhere online. Guess what my research topic was...
After that, we went to an AMAZING Linguistics taster session with a cool Bulgarian woman. We talked a bit about grammar and sentence structuring in English, and then we did some Vietnamese grammar. I seriously shouldn't have enjoyed learning Vietnamese grammar quite as much as I did, but it was SO cool. Chim nyo ku'ng thay chim to - the little bird also perceives the big bird. And then we talked about Latin alphabets vs. Cyrillic alphabets and Chinese alphabets.
After lunch we had a terrible World Cinema taster session with a guy who just read out a research essay for an hour about western films. It was basically media theory but he got several bits wrong. From there, we went to our second Spanish session where the teacher, María, had us ringing her friend in Spain and asking him questions in Spanish. She started the lesson by talking about how she wanted to break down the fear barrier that language students have so she decided the best way to do that would be to make us ring her friend. As you do. It was a really odd experience but lots of people said afterwards that it did give them confidence, and it definitely did for me.
In the evening, we did 'University Challenge' in random teams. The best round was the playdoh/pictionary round where we'd be given random things to model and the rest of the team had to guess. I think my most random object was 'piano'. We also had to make a team mascot out of sweets... meet Nemo.
Wednesday began with presentation preparation in Spanish. We decided ours was going to be 'Cita a Ciegas' (Blind Date) where a uni student had three potential flatmates to choose from a lineup. After Spanish we had Russian (:D) where we learnt some of the Russian alphabet and were taught some basic words and phrases. The aim of the lesson was to demonstrate that learning a foreign alphabet, like that of Russian, doesn't have to be 'scary' or 'too hard'. By the end of the session, I was able to remember a fair amount of the letters.
We then had a UCAS workshop which was, well, dull, and then another Spanish session to finalise our presentation preparation and rehearse. My group ended the day with Interpreting, which was also quite a cool experience. We had to take it in turns to try out the different types of interpreting (English to English) including going into the booths and using the headsets or having to remember the entire speech and recite as much of it as possible.
The day ended with presentations and certificate-giving. Our presentation definitely got the best audience reaction...if only because Adam (one of the student helpers) was interpreting for everybody and couldn't speak any Spanish. I was the contestant that ''hated everything and only liked animals and fish''. It's interesting having to shout ''odio el helado'' and throw a fake ice cream across a room in front of complete strangers when you're losing your voice (if anybody reading heard me today, you may now understand why I could barely speak...) The two other girls in the picture are Carolina (in blue) - the shy one, and Becky - the insane one. Becky was one of my actual flatmates for the night we spent in Charles Morris halls and Carolina, I believe, was part Portuguese/had been brought up speaking Portuguese.
Overall, the two days were absolutely exhausting, but amazing at the same time. It was SO, so good to be around people with a passion an obsession for languages. There was one random guy who sat with us for lunch on Wednesday who asked if he could look at my apple juice bottle because it had Norwegian on the label. Yes! That is absolutely the sort of random thing I would do too.
Today was the second Induction Day at college and I was in English Language then on the Amnesty stand at the Enrichment Fair. More on that when I'm less ill.
Besos ♥
Rachel
Monday was 'back to college day'. Meh. I hate that place with a passion. Apparently, one of the SLT just left to open a B&B for gay people. The place is also literally just a building site at the moment, D block is having building work done, A block is having building work done and, better yet, C block is being...demolished. Wow. It really is an ancient building though, and everything is just yellow. Ew.
I don't really have anything interesting to write. I've just finished a class presentation on D'Nash that me and Amy have to present tomorrow period 1 :) James (@Juicioo on Twitter) listened to the songs we were considering for our ''lyric quiz'' and I think it's safe to say he likes them, haha :) I have, however, had 'A-Amanda' stuck in my head since Tuesday. I personally think instead of presenting the PowerPoint, we should just teach everybody the dance moves from the video, but whatever...
Oh, yeah, Amnesty office. Ha. What a joke. Basically, next year we have to share it with the Geography department. I wouldn't mind as much, but one of the staff in the department is none other than my tutor, Tim. Awkwaaaard. We've had to move loads of stuff down into an unused classroom while Geography moves in a bit and then we'll have to move it all back. What a farce. Especially since Jade and I go to Poland next Wednesday and then Tim goes to India with World Challenge on the 4th. None of us have planned this well...
Other than all of that, this week had been both rubbish and dull. I'm thinking of making another appointment with the counsellor because I need to vent and have nobody to vent to. Hmm.
Besos ♥
Rachel
1) Welcome to my slightly new layout/house style :) I already prefer this so much more to the previous thing I had going on. The spacing/paragraphing issue doesn't stand out as much anymore either, so the OCD side of me isn't as angry at Blogger, haha. I've also added some pages that are currently very much work in progress but they'll get better with time, I promise.
2) After talking about languages with James from my Spanish class yesterday, I downloaded Byki Portuguese and have already learnt a few little phrases. I love how similar it is to Spanish and how I can understand verbs already because they're similar to the Spanish (i.e. estoy = I am in Spanish, estou = I am in Portuguese). I've also been carrying on with the Swedish a little bit and it's going fine. For some reason I feel really inspired to learn languages at the moment, but I can feel myself holding back until my Psychology exam is over with.
3) Tonight has carried a tiny, tiny reminder of what my life was like this time last year. The emotions I've managed to repress for quite a while kind of randomly and suddenly came out while talking to Aiden earlier/well, we're still talking now. It's nice to catch up with people that you used to know inside-out. He was always the person that I could pretty much tell everything to and he'd listen, so I kind of missed having someone that would do that (other than Fern).
4) I've been totally addicted to MZW by Måns Zelmerlöw this week, I heard Hope and Glory on Rix FM on something like Monday and then I've just been listening to the whole album on repeat all week - plus Mohombi - Coconut Tree and Martin Stenmarck - Tonight's the Night. Swedish people are significantly better than us Brits at pop music ;)
Besos ♥
Rachel
Moving onto the other sections, unlike with some of their other language guides, every section has audio alongside the written text if you tap the little box the word is in. With some apps, I find it incredibly frustrating how audio is only available on some phrases - especially because a pronunciation section is incredibly rare with a phrasebook/language guide style app. 
As with all phrasebooks apps, this one is not going to match up to if you were to go out and purchase a whole phrasebook. Luckily, this version of the app is free. The Language Guide Plus version costs £1.49, which I have never downloaded because my level of Spanish is way above the level of the app. 
