As I wrote last month I have been dabbling with Mike Campbell’s Glossika courses. I continue to be impressed. I can honestly say that I have made more progress in less time with Glossika than I have with any other language method. It’s not perfect, but for a motivated learner with limited time and some background in the target language, it is very, very efficient and worthwhile.
Shortly after I published last months post, Mike Campbell posted a video on his site on how someone could use a Glossika course with NO background in a language. He outlines his own experience with Armenian and how he dove into it in the video below.
One of my initial criticisms of Glossika was that it is not suitable for absolute beginners. Mike has proved to me through his beginners method above that it IS possible. (Thanks Mike!) Clearly it does take much more work as an absolute beginner, but clearly it can be done.
So yes, I have become addicted to Glossika. Since my last post I have purchased the Swedish and Finnish courses and have been working through those in my spare time. Its refreshing to see how much Swedish I am able to understand as a result of my past study of Norwegian. ( Danish, ugh, that’s a different story. I can’t even grasp a single Danish word watching Borgen, and that has subtitles!!). I have also purchased and am eagerly awaiting the Vietnamese, Dutch and Turkish courses.
Again, I’m really impressed with the extent to which Mike is reaching with these courses. According to his website, in the next year he hopes to complete and release courses in:
Turkish, Tatar, Azeri, Turkmen, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur, Kalmyk, Mongol, Manchu, Korean, Japanese.
Adyghe (Circassian), Georgian (Kartuli), Chechen
Mandarin (Mainland, Taiwan), Northern Wu (Shanghai), Southern Wu (Wenzhou), Eastern Min (Fuzhou), Southern Min (Taiwan, Chaoshan/Teochew), Hakka (Sixian, Hailuk), Yue Cantonese (Hong Kong), Tibetan, Dzongkha, Burmese.
Saisiyat, Atayal, Seediq, Truku, Sakizaya, Nataoran, Amis, Pazeh, Kaxabu, Thao, Bunun, Tsou (Cou), Kanakanavu, Hla’arua (Saaroa), Siraya, Rukai (Mantauran, Thakongavadane, Teldreka, Vedrai), Paiwan, Puyuma, Kavalan, Tao, Ilokano, Tagalog, Cebuano, Indonesian, Balinese, Javanese, Sundanese, Malay, Malagasy, Maori.
Vietnamese (Northern, Southern), Khmer (Cambodian).
Thai (Standard, Isaan), Lao
Tamil (Standard, India Colloquial, Sri Lankan), Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Telugu
Ossetian, Kurdish (Kurmanji, Sorani), Persian (Iran), Dari, Tajik, Pashtu, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi, Nepali, Odia (Oriya), Bengali, Assamese, Khasi, Sylheti, Marathi.
Slovak, Czech, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bulgarian. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish.
Romanian, Galician, Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Catalan, Spanish (Castilian), French, Italian, Albanian, Greek, Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic.
German, Dutch, Afrikaans, English (American, British, Australian, Scottish), Scots, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (Bokmal, Nynorsk), Faroese, and Icelandic.
What’s amazing is not just the sheer number of languages Glossika is tackling but the fact that most of these are seldom studied languages with few educational resources. Many of these languages are also endangered which is admirable from a language preservation standpoint. What an undertaking. I highly recommend that you support Mike and Glossika in this ambitious endeavor!
Mainly-Magyar! ( & a whole bunch of others... ) 
That looks really cool! I’ll have to check it out. I noticed, however, that there are no African languages.
Hopefully they will get there eventually! We need good Somali and Oromo courses!!
I’m so impressed that they have the Wenzhou dialect. My family is from Wenzhou and despite growing up hearing it, I still find it quite difficult to speak fluently. Pronunciation is so different from Mandarin and just…hard. I may just have to purchase the pack so I can stop sounding like an idiot at family functions haha!
Ah yes, the dear ‘weirdo’ among Chinese languages…but at least you have someone to hear from!
I’m planning on learning one of them (I speak Canto&Mandarin), but I haven’t had a good reason to, so among the Glossika offerings I’m stuck between SH (too bad they don’t have Suzhou haha), Wenzhou and TW (probably not though).
I bought the Wenzhounese pack a little while ago and have been working through the GSR files when I have the time. It’s such an interesting language!
If you do buy it, I’d be really eager to hear what a native speaker things of the accent on the recordings. Some of the other language packs have received criticism for having weird accents and translations, so it would be good to double check this one.
Ya know, I think the people criticizing the accents on the Glossika courses are making mountains out of molehills. I remember someone blasting the Italian course because the speaker had a “Milanese” accent. So what?! It’s perfectly good Italian!
Go to the site Lingholic and read the review of Glossika. You will be able to listen to some selections from several languages including Italian.
I listened to the Italian and, like several who commented there, believe that the woman who is speaking has a speech impediment. In addition, and this is true of Spanish and some other languages, many of the sentences are simple translation from English into the target language. They are not how a native speaker would express the thought in their own language.
I believe that this is how Glossika can churn out so many courses in so many languages. They are not asking how the speaker would naturally express the thought; they are translating it which is a major flaw. You will come out sounding weird at best; like someone who is translating from one language to another at worst.
In addition, if you watch videos of Mike speaking in any language except English you may notice as I have ( Chinese, Spanish) that he speaks very fast. In the Spanish video, he was speaking about twice to three times as fast as the native speaker!
Speed does not equal fluency.
I bought the Mandarin Taiwan course since I lived there and studied Chinese there. I know how it is supposed to be spoken. In addition, Mike Campbell cut his teeth there with Chinese and I trust his girlfriend who made the recordings with him to have done a good job.
This is a very helpful method for learning languages but it is very good to know some of its drawbacks, too.
I checked out Glossika’s Spanish program briefly. It proves they put out at least some quality products. The long tail of resources for less-studied languages may be a mirage, though. I looked at the Taiwanese Hokkien program (they call it “Min Nan” or something like that). Just “lightly re-lexed” Mandarin “pronounced” in Hokkien. Mandarin sentence patterns, Mandarin thought patterns, even Mandarin vocabulary. Buyer beware.
Useful info. Fortunate me I found your website unintentionally, and I am surprised why this twist of fate did not took place earlier!
I bookmarked it.