Reviews
Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself
De Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal (Word List of the Dutch Language)
Dutch, Dictionaries, Websites
De Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal (The Word List of the Dutch Language) is published by the Nederlandse Taalunie. Revised every 10 years, it is available in hardcopy form as het Groene Boekje (Green Booklet), as well…
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,…
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…
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…
VocabuLearn Italian
Italian, Audio Lessons, Vocabulary
VocabuLearn’s publisher, Penton Overseas, was a victim of the global economic crash. The company no longer exists under that name, but the CDs it used to make are gradually finding new life on the web in the form of…
The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Fourth Edition)
Arabic, Books, Dictionaries
The front cover of this Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic reads, “A Compact Version of the Internationally Recognized Fourth Edition,” but I can’t find a non-compact fourth edition. Confusing! I have read effusive things…