The CDs

Your baby needs to hear our CDs now -- you never can tell which languages your son or daughter may someday want or need to learn. Hearing these CDs when young can make this process much easier. Scientific studies have shown that an infant can easily acquire native pronunciation skills in many languages just by listening.

Knowing and using more than one language sharpens young minds. Even if you want your child to learn just one foreign language, hearing the languages on our CDs will help develop broad pronunciation skills.

Try our CDs risk-free for 90 days. If you are not absolutely satisfied, then simply return them for a full refund. To date, none have been returned (since 1996). They are not available in stores.

Three 6 hour MP3 CDs are provided as a set -- each CD contains 3 hours with background music and the same 3 hours without music. The background music is varied and includes Mozart, Brahms, Gershwin, Debussy, Sibelius, Ravel, Bach and many modern composers.

For each language, a short series of words such as -- "root, branch, stick...leaves, moss...chilly" is repeated over and over by pairs of native speakers -- first by a woman and then by a man -- to create a long "language-string." By using pairs of speakers, a range of permissible pronunciation is provided. The vocabulary used is varied and practical.

The advantage of using this format is that the meaning of the words is known regardless of the language being heard. For about 85% of all households world wide, the "native" language used is one of the 25 and thus it provides a guide for infants in these homes for the meaning of each language-string. Many children continue to listen to our CDs when they grow older.

Also included with the three basic CDs is a free 2 hour MP3 CD with 100 popular songs in these 25 languages. The songs are to be played at a special party (and then for another year and a half or so) when an infant turns 6 months of age. Since a baby begins to discriminate against languages which are not heard after age 6 months, this party -- an Akilo Party -- helps to broaden familiarity with these languages.

These language materials were developed over a period of 12 years (since 1996) and rely upon basic research in the field with contributions by faculty and staff at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. It was decided that these audio materials with their special formats were badly needed and deserved the time required to make them. Infants in more than 50 countries now listen to them.

According to a recent publication by Prof. Jenny Saffaran, it appears that there is a strong relationship between the retention of pure pitch (musical) capability and the native language of a child (also see the Wikipedia reference; language). Retention of pure pitch capability by an infant or young child should be routine if an infant or young child hears a "pitch-sensitive" language (like Thai or Chinese) during its early years. Both Thai and Chinese are on all of our CDs.

The titles of the CDs are the days of the week -- "Monday", "Tuesday" and "Wednesday". A different, general vocabulary was randomly assigned to each set. Play one daily for your child in any order -- on any day of the week.