Reviews
Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself
Rosetta Stone Greek
Greek, Multimedia
Rosetta Stone Greek offers a colorful computer-based multimedia experience—images, text, listening, reading, speaking, etc. It is very pretty, and yet by the end of my Rosetta Stone experiences, I found myself disenchanted. The company has an immersion philosophy…
NYC & Company Official Information Center
General, Websites, Organizations
NYC & Company’s mission is to “maximize travel and tourism opportunities throughout the five boroughs, build economic prosperity and spread the dynamic image of New York City around the world.” They have various Official Information Centers around town,…
French Language Meetup Groups
French, Classes/Conversation, Social
Enter your zip code on the far right of this page to see whether there are French Meetups in your area. If you want to practice language skills above all else, check that any Meetup events you select are…
Let’s Speak French: Lesson 1
French, Audio Lessons, Radio/TV/Video/Film, Websites
If you want to sound literate in a foreign language, it is important to be able to spell. But because the spoken alphabet is not normally taught in standard teach-yourself materials, you kind of need to work on it on…
German Language Meetup Groups
German, Classes/Conversation, Social
There are Meetup groups on five continents dedicated to German language and culture. (If you are on Antarctica, you are out of luck!) People get together and speak German, or speak about German, or do whatever that particular group…
Forvo
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Dictionaries, Websites
Forvo’s tagline says it all: “All the words in the world. Pronounced.” Okay, maybe not all, but it is good to have a goal. There are 300 languages on Forvo’s language list, from German and Spanish to…
Assimil
French, Books, Multimedia
Some people whose opinion I respect really like Assimil, a French company offering multimedia programs with different language bases. For example, there are English-based programs designed for English speakers learning other languages, and French-based programs designed for French speakers learning…
Flatbush, Brooklyn
French, Neighborhoods
I went here one day looking for Haitian French. I found a lot of Creole. And maybe a few cuss words. It was fun to walk around, though, and one could certainly see the influence of French on business names…
