Have no fear, you can get to grips with Mandarin for free on the pioneering ChinesePod website, just in time for the Olympics, writes Clifford Coonan.

YOU'RE NOT likely to catch any exotic diseases if you head to Beijing for the Olympics in August, although doctors say you need to watch out for bronchitis and try not to get bitten by any rabies-diseased dogs.

But something else the health experts might warn the half a million or so foreigners expected to descend on Beijing for the games is the prospect of high blood pressure through trying to be understood in an environment where few people speak English.

This is one health hazard Dubliner Ken Carroll hopes to address with his guide (chinesepod.com/olympics/) to the Beijing Olympics for visitors, athletes, and, of course, journalists. "We include the vocabulary - with audio - of all the sports terms, as well as short Mandarin lessons on the major themes and some cultural tips and suggestions.

"Also included is an interactive map of the event locations with translations and helpful information," says Carroll.

Basically, the audio lessons can be saved on an iPod and you then listen to them at the time and place where they are needed. The ChinesePod site itself has hundreds of simple lessons that are designed for people visiting China, from beginners up, which is helpful when you get into a cab and mutual miscomprehension ensues.

ChinesePod has been a hugely successful project for Carroll's company since he founded it back in 2006 and it grew 300 per cent in 2007.

"We have 350,000 regular listeners and several thousand of those pay the subscription fee for the premium services.

"The idea has been to keep innovating by interacting with the community and identifying what they value. With the web as a platform, we can ask people what they want, give it to them and test the results," he says.

The audio lessons are downloaded for free, and after that there's a series of tools and extras on the websites to help consolidate the learning - the premium features, which you pay for. The teachers have also become big celebrities in China - fans of Jenny Zhu, whose dulcet, yet stern, tones light up the ChinesePod lessons, have set up a Facebook page dedicated to her.

Carroll co-founded a chain of language schools in Shanghai in 1996 - the Kai En English Language Training Centre, which he reckons was the first Sino-Irish joint venture. He is a man-about-town in Shanghai, a radio celebrity and an active member of the Irish business community in China's biggest city.

He says the next stage for the group is to get onto the mobile web, and is working on programmes with Nokia.

The group has also launched SpanishPod.com, FrenchPod.com, and ItalianPod.com, all offering free audio lessons. One notable characteristic of the new brands has been a focus on short, dramatic situations that bring the language to life.

"People tell me the dramas are interesting even if you're not learning the language. It's simply the way that languages will be learned in the future.Busy people need to have choice and control over the learning.

"The web gives them that by allowing them to choose when, what, and where they learn, while connected to the community," said Carroll.

"There's very little grammar and lessons are topic-based. We don't view learners as passive receptacles, but as active decisionmakers about what and when they learn."

There has been a big drive to improve English language capabilities in Beijing ahead of the games.

One of the first things you hear when taking a Beijing taxi is a cheerful woman's voice exclaiming in English: "Welcome to take Beijing taxi!" but beyond that, the driver's English rarely stretches beyond "bye bye", and occasionally a knowledge of numbers.

Now, the city's 90,000 cabbies are being officially encouraged to learn vocabulary to welcome foreigners to the Olympic capital. Some decidedly weird phrases are making it onto the cabbie syllabus.

Alongside the more usual English expressions, such as "Is this seat taken?", was more topical chit-chat, including: "Did you know China raised petrol prices for the first time in 18 months the other day?

"Analysts say it is because of the rising cost of oil around the world." Quite a mouthful in any language.