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The scary way to learn French, Spanish, or English.


Halloween conjures up scary images. Scare and horror are often associated with the season. All over the world, the concept of Halloween has always been related to what can send shivers up the spine. Blood and gore are some of the most common images presented and evoked to represent the Halloween touch.

Looking at the list of Billboard.com’s top ten Halloween songs, the images of the devil, witches, the grim reaper, nightmares, hell, werewolves, death, and monsters are the common themes. Paranoia towards these images seems to be the overarching popular impression of the Halloween concept.

Multilingual Books foreign movie section has great scary movies, for more choices read on.

Billboard.com’s top ten Halloween songs may be the all-time most popular Halloween music across the world’s populations.

At Number 10 is the good old rock and roll “Witchy Woman” by the Eaglesabout a lady casting a spell. The song was 1972’s No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Coming next at Number 9 is Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With the Devil.”Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” is Number 8. The song speaks of paranoia while one constantly looks over the shoulder. “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cultcomes in at Number 7. It is about a man trying to invite his girl to join him in his death-friendly ways. Hip-hop Halloween music is Number 6 with “A Nightmare on My Street” by D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince (a.k.a. Will Smith). This is about Freddy Krueger, the villain in “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Number 5 is the black-metal song “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” comes in at Number 4. Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” is Number 3, while “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers is Number 2. The top Halloween music according to Billboard.com is Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” It is the most-downloaded Halloween music of all-time, with digital sales of over 2.8 million.

Assuring frightening thrills and fun are Yahoo’s best Halloween movies of all time. These exciting movies include “Fun Size” (2012), Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie” (2012), “The Possession” (2012), “Casper” (1995) with Christina Ricci, the Halloween classic for all ages “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (1966), “The Witches” (1999) which is based on the book by Roald Dahl, “Beetle Juice” (1988), “The Goonies” (1985),
the Harry Potter Series, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), the all-time kid-scary “Monsters, Inc.” (2001),“Hocus Pocus” (1993) with the three witches played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler and Kathy Najimy,“The Addams Family” (1991), Demi Moore’s “Ghost” (1990), “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) with Johnny Depp, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), “Young Frankenstein” (1974), “Corpse Bride” (2005) with voices by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, “The Craft” (1996), and
“Ghost Busters” (1984).

The scariest movies of all time will have to include the bone-chilling “The Shining,” an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. Other spine-tingling Halloween movies include the aptly-titled “Halloween” series with its countless gory murders, “Poltergeist” with its unforgettable haunted home, the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series that madeFreddy Krueger the all-time favorite nightmare,“Alien” which is the ultimate horror-sci-fi movie, the black and white film“Night of the Living Dead,” the blood-curdling “The Exorcist,” “Seven” that explores shock and fright, and the raunchy musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” What is probably the ultimate of all Halloween movies is “The Silence of the Lambs” where the chilling portrayal of Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter the Cannibal is pitted against Jody Foster’s FBI agent Clarice Starling’s steel of nerves.


After a break to enjoy the 7 days of summer in Seattle we are back with fun news for you.



Sign Language Glove Invented by Ukrainian Students

A group of Ukrainian students have developed a glove that when utilized with a smartphone app, enables hearing impaired people to communicate with the hearing world. The gloves have multiple sensors, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a compass which translate finger movements into verbal words. EnableTalk was inspired by the 2012 Microsoft Imagine Cup which challenges students to create solutions for real-world problems. The Ukraine quadSquad won the $25,000 grand prize for this year’s competition and have the hopes to mass produce the gloves, with a projected retail cost of $200 per glove. While the gloves will come with a general library of common signs used for American Sign Language, users will have the ability to customize and program even more gestures into them. The potential for the EnableTalk gloves to break down the language barrier between the hearing and non-hearing world is enormous and will open many doors of communication that otherwise have been ignored.

Peace-
The news this week provokes the realization once again that peace is the answer. The effects of the violent memes, guns, and wars, are becoming more clear by the day. How to respond? With peaceful action and thoughts. In any language peace is the answer!

La paz es la respuesta Peace is the Answer השלום הוא התשובה السلام هو الحل Vrede is het antwoord สันติภาพคือคำตอบ Mir je odgovor

The Sea Monster Project– Free Books for Charities
In our quest to help children read worldwide and to make sure that there are books to read in hard to find languages, Multilingual Books is working to publish Sea Monsters and other cool children’s books in 100 languages. In addition with every order made from the Multilingual Book site we will give a book to a charity. If you know of a charity that could use bilingual children’s books let us know or have the email us.


We have been writing a lot in past weeks about languages on the verge of extinction. This week, these languages received a boost on the most precious piece of Internet real estate one could possibly imagine: a link on Google’s homepage.

The Web powerhouse has launched the Endangered Languages Project, an endeavor to support, teach and protect languages from disappearing.

Google is billing the project as “the world through 3054 lenses” and aims to prevent the loss of scientific knowledge, cultural heritage and general information that accompanies the end of a language.

Featured on the website this week is Koro, “a language previously unknown to science that was documented in the mountains of northeast India. It is spoken by no more than 4000 people.”

EU Vey!

As if the struggling monetary union and the rise of nationalism were not enough, a study by the European Commission found that only 42 percent of teenagers within the 27-nation EU are conversant in a foreign language.

According to the BBC, Sweden holds the honors for being the most adept at learning a language; 82 percent of Swedish teens are fluent in a second language; Malta, the Netherlands, Estonia and Slovenia also faired well.

England, France, Belgium, Poland and Spain were at the bottom of the list.

My Dog’s Southern Accent

Have you wondered if animals of the same species speak the same language despite geographical distances? I certainly have, and researchers the Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania certainly have as well.

And the answer is, yes, they can, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Research suggests that the overwhelming majority of animals are born knowing how to speak their species’s language. It doesn’t really matter where those animals are born or raised, because their speech seems to be mostly imprinted in their genetic code


It is often suggested that the best way to learn a language is to find a romantic partner in the language you would like to learn.

Lacking direct human contact, eroticism may be the next best thing in learning a foreign language, or at least that appears to be the theory behind SexyMandarin.com.

Much to the chagrin of Chinese feminists, the risqué new educational site features scantily clad young ladies speaking Chinese in salacious poses.

Nevertheless, SexyMandarin’s self-described “unconventional” language teaching method has proved successful in terms of the number of visitors it has attracted to its website and YouTube channel.

Switzerland: A Nation of Monolinguals?

In what would seem to be a very surprising result, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation has reported that only 16 percent of the population in Switzerland declare themselves to be multilingual.

This either demonstrates a very high level of modesty amongst the Swiss or deflates the long-standing impression among those outside of the country that the Swiss can easily jump from language to language.

The study by the country’s Federal Statistics Office “found that 91.3 per cent of the population speaks a national language (German, French, Italian, Romansh) as their main language, a figure which remained stable in the decade from 2000 to 2010.”

Where on Earth Did You Learn to Say That?

I must have been a very late starter when it comes to learning bad words. If memory serves, I was seven when I uttered my first four-letter no-no.

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “A new survey says that almost a half – 42 percent – of children first use bad language by the time they’re three! By the time they get to kindie, more than 90 percent of children have already uttered their first rude word.”

Joe Twitchy, CEO of the Australian Childhood Foundation, says in the accompanying interview that laughing when you first hear your child swear is most natural yet worst reaction from a parent.


Happy Ending for French Publishers and Google

A six-year battle between Google and leading publishers in France has been resolved peacefully, according to The Financial Times.

The two sides said they had agreed a “framework agreement” under which French publishers can strike their own commercial arrangements individually with Google, which will exchange information with publishers instead of scanning French books without consent.

French publishers and authors had accused the search giant of scanning works without consent. Now each publisher can decide for itself whether or not to release a work on Google.

Most importantly for both sides, the deal opens up a new potential source of revenue, particularly for rare and out of print books.

Les Capitales de Quebec

Baseball-loving Francophiles suffered a major setback in 2004 when the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals.

The words prise (strike), manche (inning) and circuit (home run) are now heard by fewer and fewer listeners.

Nevertheless, aficionados of both baseball and the French language need not despair. The Quebec Capitales of the CanAm League will fill in any linguistic gap left behind by Les Expos.

And what’s more, they are only half a game out of first place.

Sea Monsters

Crowdsourcing Translations

Earlier this month, Multilingual Books put out a call for translations for a enthralling children’s book entitled Sea Monsters.

The response was overwhelming. In less than two weeks we have received professional translations for the work in Italian, Hindi, Bengali, Hungarian,
meaning you can now purchase Sea Monsters bilingual children’s book in over 10 languages, and shortly in 100 languages.

You can receive a free copy for Sea Monster with any order from Multilingual Books. Multilingual Books will also give a copy of Sea Monsters to a charity everytime anyone orders from Multilingual Books. Get yours today!