According to Julian Parish, Microsoft's Group Manager, the software giant targeted the ESL beginners' market after extensive analysis of existing products. "We've been researching the area for three years and actively developing the project for over 18 months," said Parish.

Microsoft is confident the self-access software program, Encarta Interactive English Learning, will be successful. "One of the problems is that there have been a lot of companies with limited resources, Parish said. "We've been able to create something with all the resources available to Microsoft."

The software utilizes speech recognition into its vocabulary and 3D "virtual challenge" activities. Already available in Japan and France, the CD-ROM will also be available in Latin America, Italy and Spain by the end of the year.

The new Microsoft Encarta World Dictionary, produced in association with St. Martin's Press, Bloomsbury Publishing and PanMcMillan Australia, claims to be the first of its kind to document the use of World English. It contains a lexicography of language used by 375 million English speakers in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and in other countries around the world.

More than 250 lexicographers and expert advisers in 10 countries working in top secret conditions compiled the new dictionary using state-of-the-art computer and database technology. It contains words and phrases unrecorded elsewhere including Seinfeld's beloved "yadda, yadda, yadda," "digerati" (the cultural elite of the Internet), "Potus" (President of the United States), and "whasup" (what's up?). Anna Soukhanov, the dictionary's general editor, said "Language changes sometimes hourly in a world no longer nationally defined but international in character. For the first time in history, dictionary editors around the world linked by computers and special software have developed a record of world English, the communications medium of the 21st century." Soukhanov explained the dictionary will contain definitions for words with several regional meanings. "If someone in the Caribbean told you that you're ignorant, it doesn't mean you're dumb, it means you're aggressively quarrelsome."