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Jewish brothers at Mango Languages
help create an online course so
Chaldeans can learn native tongue.
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Ryan Fishman
Special To the Jewish News
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14 June 13 • 2013
N
o matter your native
tongue, when you call
Mango Languages, chances
are the Teshuba brothers are listen-
ing. One message, left for CEO and
"Linguapreneur" Jason Teshuba, 37,
was all it took to get the company to
develop a Chaldean course for its lan-
guage learning software.
"I got this voicemail from an
enthusiastic young man driving on
Northwestern in Farmington Hills,
saying, 'I drive by your office all the
time; I'm Chaldean, and we're losing
our language. I want to learn it, but
you don't have a course, so I'm hoping
you can talk with me and members
of my community about putting
something together:" said Jason of
Huntington Woods.
The call came from Salim Gasso, an
attorney for the Chaldean Chamber
of Commerce, and after Jason, who
is Jewish, passed it along to his
Chaldean COO, Hamsa Daher, and
his director of product development,
brother Mike Teshuba, 35, they real-
ized they all were excited and enthu-
siastic about the project's possibilities.
"We knew about the Building
Community Initiative between the
Chaldean News and the Jewish News,
and we've attended some of the
events Arthur Horwitz and Martin
Manna have hosted, so we set up
this meeting and hoped we could
talk with Martin and members of
his staff about offering this course to
his community:' said Mike of West
Bloomfield.
The Teshubas and Daher sat down
with Gasso and Chaldean Chamber
president Manna, and the group
found ways to marry their software
with the Chamber's passion for
preserving Chaldean language and
culture.
Business Of Language
Mango's founders worked in the lan-
guage learning business in marketing
and sales for educational products
online, but soon realized they wanted
to develop their own innovative tools.
When they approached their publish-
ers to do just that, it was clear those
publishers didn't share their vision,
Mike and Jason Teshuba
so they left in 2007. Later that year,
in August, they launched Mango
Languages to publish their own prod-
ucts. The company now has more
than 50 employees and offers 16 lan-
guages for individual use on its web-
site, in addition to a dozen English as
a Second Language courses in various
languages.
"There is a large and growing
Chaldean population in Michigan
and, as we talked about it, we thought
nothing could be better than work-
ing together with their community
to put the course together and cross-
promote it," Mike said.
"It's a joint effort, and it's a great
opportunity because Jason and I
grew up in Oak Park with Chaldean
friends. It's a culture we're familiar
with, and we also recognize that from
generation to generation, people are
losing the language. We're thrilled
about the chance to reignite it."
As the project develops, both teams
bring something to the table. Mango
Languages is offering its software
systems, linguists and management
teams, and the Chamber has found
volunteer teachers to develop the con-
tent, voice talent for the audio for the
course, and even provided a studio
where they could record it. Course
development is beginning this month.
No sale date has been set yet.
"This is a self-study online course,
so you head to our website or pull
it up on your Smartphone and start
with Chapter One, Lesson One, and
work your way through the program,"
Jason said. "We teach you vocabulary
and grammar, all at your own pace,
without a teacher or a classroom
environment."