Many years ago, a members of ours, Robert Redling, met on a bus at London, where he was living, a neigbor he knew only by sight and he never has been spoken with before.

He knew only that the man was working has a clerk for oil wells in some Middle Eastern Country and that he was abroad for long periods during the year. He was speaking easily in arabic with another person.

When the man was finally alone Robert went near to him and asked him a lot of questions.  Questions that have led us to be here, thirty years later.

Us, all together, us and you that are reading.

The man was a worker, a simple person without any university degree, though he spoke fluently six different languages.

Robert asked him how he has been able to learn so many languages. Expecially the arabic that is a language so difficult to learn, and he has been working in an Arab country only for four years.

He explained that he was using a method as old as the world: he cut pieces of paper on which he whote an english word (his mother language) on a side and the arabic translation on the other side.

Meanwhile his arab colleague gave him advice and information about pronunciation and grammar rules.

Every week he added new ten words to be stored in his memory. He picked at random the pieces of paper from a shoebox in which they have been put. When the word picked was in arabic he tried to remember the english version and viceversa!

Then the piece of the paper was back in the box.
 
"My goal is ten new words a week. I do not want to overdo, though it would bore me and I would quit it: ten words are enough! Do you know how many words you can learn in a year?" he asked Robert whith a crafty smile on his face.

"Well, it is easy to count - said Robert - Gosh! Five hundred and forty! So many!"

"Exactly, so many. They are so many. In four years I learnt more that two thousand words. What matters is the costancy. You do not overdo: that is the good deal. Each day you should dedicate ten minute to revise the amount of words, that becomes even greater".

For many years Robert has applied that rule, learning italian, franch and spanish (obviously after he has been attended a course to learn grammar). In 2010 finally he has involved us in this incredible adventure.

With the support of a computer and of the web it has been simple to substitute the pieces of paper in the shoebox. The program we created offers you the possibility to have your own lifetime space inside witch put your "shoebox with the pieces of paper" of the words to learn. The programm will give out and random the words to be memorized.

You can connect to CANTO 26 site from everywhere in the world to study, revise or add new words to your personal vocabulary. You can create how many boxes you want, in several different languages. You can do manual boxes (with the words you need to learn) or let the computer create a box for you, by picking words from the internal vocabolary of the site (if it exists).

Many other possibilties are available....

That's all! Here our story! Join us!