Click to see the project description in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or German.

Help us re-invent language learning by creating the world’s first video dictionary, beginning with all the European languages.

We’ll travel across Europe in a double decker bus with a team of linguists, film-makers, coders and designers, and collect more than a hundred thousand micro-videos of native speakers using their language in context. 

These videos will feed into our award-winning language-learning app, Memrise, so anyone can learn languages through native speakers, for free.

Some of the wonderful faces from the videos we've collected
Some of the wonderful faces from the videos we’ve collected

About Memrise

Memrise is a language-learning app and website used by more than 6 million people to learn over 200 different languages. We use cognitive science and plenty of humour to make learning fun, and our team of 14 nationalities works passionately to improve it every day.

About video-learning

Everyone knows the best way to learn a language is by living abroad surrounded by native speakers, immersed in the culture of that language.

Our mobile video learning bottles this experience for you: every word or phrase you learn in a new language, you learn from a native speaker who actually says it. You’re constantly translating and responding to real native speakers. See how it works:

 miniatura de video del proyecto

Familiarity with 10k words and phrases is more than enough for fluent speech, and that’s the number of videos we want to create for each language.

Unlike any other language learning app, you’ll experience the personality of native speakers, how they actually speak, their many accents… and also their clothes, their culture, their landscapes, their humour, their quirks… basically all of the stuff that makes language learning fun in the first place.

Our itinerary around Europe

The target goal of £50k will allow us first of all to visit six countries: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. These have the most widely studied European languages. It will take us around three months for this part of the journey.

The route we'll take across Europe in part one of our trip
The route we’ll take across Europe in part one of our trip

If we beat our goal then we will be able to visit more and more countries and record more and more languages. Our dream is to go round 18 European countries, so you can learn any of their amazing languages directly from native speakers.

We believe we can say without exaggeration that this will be the greatest multilingual road trip ever attempted!

The glorious Membus, art-work by our designer Mathieu
The glorious Membus, art-work by our designer Mathieu

Why a roadtrip?

The Membus tour is the most effective way for us to create our vibrant, beautiful and gigantic video dictionary:

  • We can take a large crew of talented film-makers across Europe on the cheap
  • We can swiftly visit every variety of city, town, village and landmark for the greatest possible variety of people and locations 
  •  We can carry with us all of the energy and fun that any road-trip entails, which will help ensure the vids are hilarious and awesome
Filming native speakers in the wild
Filming native speakers in the wild

Why a Kickstarter?

This is a passion project, and a huge one at that ! To collect this many videos, to this quality, from this many people… we simply can’t afford to attempt it without the help of this Kickstarter. 

One of the things we’re most excited about is building a community around this project, and connecting with local volunteers in all of the European countries we’ll visit who’ll be excited to help build the video dictionary of their own language. 

So if you think this is a good idea and want to help people learn in a different way, check the rewards that we have with love prepared for you (every contribution makes a big difference!). And don’t hesitate to get in touch if you think you can help.

The rewards

About the Membus

The vehicle in which we’ll undertake this grand voyage is a vintage Bristol 1978 double decker bus minimally tweaked on the inside to accommodate a crew of 8 lucky souls (Our CEO went without pay for three months to finance its purchase).

Painting the bus with wet towels (CEO in the chair)
Painting the bus with wet towels (CEO in the chair)

How will the funds be used?

– To cover the basic expenses of the road trip for a crew of eight (fuel, food, paying our Hungarian bus driver Zoltan…)

– To get three sets of high quality cameras and microphones, to make sure those videos are both pleasing to the eyes and clear to the ears.

– Do some refurbishments to the bus (such as water-proofing, fixing the windscreen wipers, a seat for the driver, a cap for the petrol tank, curtains for privacy, a small electric heater).

Memrise Links

Facebook / Twitter

Photo Gallery

Panoramic view from the upper deck
Panoramic view from the upper deck
The upper deck (perfect for talks or parties)
The upper deck (perfect for talks or parties)
The bus ground floor, suited for deep conversations
The bus ground floor, suited for deep conversations
The driver's seat (not the driver)
The driver’s seat (not the driver)
The Membus at Latitude Festival last summer, performance by comedian Yve
The Membus at Latitude Festival last summer, performance by comedian Yve
Kids love the Membus!
Kids love the Membus!

Summary:
We’ll travel across Europe in a double decker bus with a team of linguists, film-makers, coders and designers, and collect more than a hundred thousand micro-videos of native speakers using their language in context.
See Campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/880674476/membus-tour-creating-the-worlds-first-video-dictio?ref=category_recommended
Contact Information:
Memrise

Tags:
Kickstarter, Reward, English, United Kingdom, Media & Entertainment, Industry verticals, Regions, Types of Crowdfunding deal, Language

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Source: ICNW

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