Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Websites

Live Lingua: Keeping the Free FSI Language Courses Alive

Arabic, Dutch, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Audio Lessons, Websites

These Foreign Service Institute language courses were recommended by a reader. I haven’t tried them, but the holdings are extensive and consist of older courses that are now in the public domain. They are also free, so the main…

There Are 15 of These!

General, Websites, Organizations, Conferences/Lectures

As of this writing, there are 15 Language Resource Centers (LRCs) across the U.S. at various universities. The first was established by the Department of Education in 1990, according to the website for the centers, “in response to the growing national…

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…

Facebook Page for Kung Fu Fest 2013

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

If you are a social-media holdout, I am not going to try to convince you that you should dive in now. There are, after all, pros and cons to being on Facebook. If you are already on Facebook,…

The Hindi Section of LanguageReef

Hindi, Websites, Kids

The LanguageReef website offers resources to help Indian emigrants teach their children the alphabets and scripts of Hindi and other Indian languages. Its home page begins quite movingly: You are out of your country. You want to teach your children…