Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Conferences for Serious Language Lovers

General, Websites, Conferences/Lectures

This site offers a global list of language-related conferences. Looking over the list now, I see conference titles such as “Ways to Protolanguage 3,” “International Language for Communication Conference,” “The Third Asian Conference on Language Learning,” and “CFP 2nd Annual Igbo…

Languages at Risk!

5 General, Websites

This online resource from UNESCO (which stands for United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization) allows you to search for information on endangered languages around the world.  For example, you can get a list of all the languages spoken…

This Is the Work of a Linguaphile

5 English, General, Dictionaries, Websites

The Online Etymology Dictionary is the work of a Pennsylvania-based historian and linguaphile, Douglas Harper, who writes on the home page, “This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what…

Search for Gujarathi, Yiddish, and More!

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites

The Modern Language Association has a spectacular online language map showing the languages of the U.S., as well as a data center with searchable language information. For free!  These tools will be updated soon…

Nowy Dziennik Is Available at Newsstands All Over My New York Neighborhood

Polish, News, Websites

Launched in 1971, Nowy Dziennik Polish Daily News is a Polish-language daily newspaper (daily except for Sunday, that is). Its print edition—which is distributed mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut—is broadly available at newsstands in…

Useful, But Not My Favorite Ever

3-5 German, Flashcards, Vocabulary

Now that my favorite SparkNotes flashcards are no longer being made, I am in search of a new flashcard love. In my quest, I recently tried out these German vocabulary cards from BarCharts. They are for sure useful, and they…

Rosetta Stone Polish: Fancy Packaging

3 Polish, Multimedia

Rosetta Stone is a multimedia application packaged for many different world languages. There are three levels available for their Polish TOTALe product, and I made it through most of the second level.  At times I enjoyed Rosetta Stone Polish…

Refine Your Spanish Subjunctive Skills

3-5 Spanish, Books

Within the sprawling Practice Makes Perfect empire at McGraw-Hill are a number of small, highly portable, and thematically focused books on various grammar topics. Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close by…

The Box Rosetta Stone Japanese Came In

3 Japanese, Multimedia

Rosetta Stone Japanese offers an interactive, computer-based learning experience that includes games, voice-recognition features, and even human tutors if you want them. I am not a fan of Rosetta Stone for more familiar languages—such as French, Spanish, Italian, or…