{"id":6797,"date":"2019-09-25T15:32:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T15:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6797"},"modified":"2022-07-06T14:50:36","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T13:50:36","slug":"utalk-and-asterix-an-origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/utalk-and-asterix-an-origin-story\/","title":{"rendered":"uTalk and Asterix: An Origin Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today is National Comic Book Day, so if you can tear yourself away from stories of superheroes or zombies, then why not check out our very own uTalk origin story? Spoiler alert: there are no angry aliens set on wiping out half of the universe\u2019s population, but there are some comics involved!<\/em>
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Way back in the late 1980s, Richard Howeson and Andrew Ashe, the founders of uTalk, came up against their greatest nemesis: an inability to speak French. Oh well,<\/em> you might think, how important could that be?<\/em> Well, it was important enough that they founded EuroTalk (which would later become uTalk) in 1990, one of the first companies to use games as a route to language learning and, importantly at that point\u2014comics. 
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It\u2019s true! Search the web and you\u2019ll find some of the more vintage EuroTalk products, including Learn X Language with Asterix, where the Asterix comics have been translated into different European languages, with audio provided by native speakers. 
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Still, while uTalk might not produce language courses that include Asterix anymore, there are key elements from these original products that have become the core of uTalk\u2019s method to help people learn any language.
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Native-speaker audio<\/strong>: This is a big one! For every language uTalk makes available for people to learn, we record audio (in our London studio!) from two different native speakers\u2014one male and one female. This means you can hear all the words and phrases as they would actually be said out in the world.
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A template for different languages:<\/strong> You might not know, but one of the things that makes our uTalk app unique is that you can change the base language right there in the app. What does that mean? It means you can learn any language your heart desires from<\/em> any language you understand (or don\u2019t\u2014but that\u2019s on you)! You speak Yoruba and want to learn Galician? You can do that! We\u2019ve managed to develop this by having our translators use a template, working separately and then together to ensure that everything is as accurate\u2014and as true to life\u2014as possible.
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It\u2019s fun:<\/strong> Let\u2019s be honest, this is very important, right? If it\u2019s not work or something else we need<\/em> to do, then if it\u2019s not fun, why bother? For a lot of people, learning isn\u2019t associated with fun at all\u2014especially if it\u2019s the kind of thing you might have been made to learn in school\u2014but uTalk is one of the language learning companies trying to change that.
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Of course, now there\u2019s less Asterix around than there used to be here at uTalk HQ, but the games on the app are designed to have you learning in a way that doesn\u2019t feel like a lot of work. 
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And as for comics? There are still plenty out there\u2014and plenty of people use comics for language learning, too! How many people do you know who have started learning Japanese because they want to read all the volumes of some manga they just can\u2019t get enough of? French learners will surely be acquainted with Tintin (which has been translated into more than 70 languages, by the way). If you\u2019re learning English then there\u2019s plenty of comics for you to choose from\u2014all those superheroes from Marvel and DC, The Walking Dead from Image Comics; even Sabrina the Teenage Witch originally came from Archie Comics! 
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So, after you\u2019ve done reading your comics this National Comic Book Day, why not also have a go at learning a new language<\/strong><\/a>? Like comic books, our app features a wide variety\u2014over 150 languages for you to try. Let us know which one you choose on Facebook<\/strong><\/a> or Twitter<\/strong><\/a>; and let us know what you\u2019re reading, too!
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Today is National Comic Book Day, so if you can tear yourself away from stories of superheroes or zombies, then why not check out our very own uTalk origin story? Spoiler alert: there are no angry aliens set on wiping out half of the universe\u2019s population, but there are some comics involved! Way back in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,794],"tags":[1720,10,1718,1717,1719,32,48,124,1439,265],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8857,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6797\/revisions\/8857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}