Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Not a Beautiful Website, But a Lot of Passion There

3 English, Organizations

I happen to love this organization, which consists of highly passionate teachers of grammar, but my feeling is that it tends to be most effective, in its commitment to grammar pedagogy, at preaching to the choir. I have been to…

Central Park: An Autumn Day

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

Central Park draws international visitors year round, but if you really want to hear other languages, walk around here during the three non-freezing seasons: spring, summer, and fall. Summer especially is crazy with tourists. You can hear dozens of languages.…

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,…

Picking a French Movie to Watch

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, Radio/TV/Video/Film

I no longer have Time Warner Cable, but in the early days of this project, I found it very useful for language-learning purposes, and I would imagine other cable or satellite or fiber-optic service providers would offer similar or perhaps…

Älskling Has Onesies in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese...

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

Älskling, which means “darling” in Swedish, sells baby clothes online in dozens of languages. When I first encountered this product in an Upper West Side shop some years ago, I was fortunate enough to be given a tour by…

ConversationExchange.com: Barter Your Language Skills

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

Even if you live in a remote area, you can use sites such as ConversationExchange.com to find a Skype partner overseas and start speaking, say, Finnish or Xhosa. The web is a fabulous thing. Through this language-exchange community, you…

Livemocha: Seeking to Provide Casual Café Culture

Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Websites, Classes/Conversation

“As the world’s largest online language learning community,” reads the Livemocha site, “Livemocha fuses traditional learning methods with online practice and interaction with native language speakers from around the world. Livemocha delivers an unparalleled learning experience that promises…

Listenlive.eu: You Can Go for French Radio, or Estonian, or Greek, or Portuguese, or Something Else Altogether!

5 Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, News, Radio/TV/Video/Film, Websites

A valuable resource for language learners, the listenlive.eu website has a formidable collection of links to more than 4,000 European radio stations streaming live on the web in many languages. I have used listenlive.eu to access German and French…

Mingle on Myngle

Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Websites, Classes/Conversation

Founded in 2007 and based in Amsterdam, Myngle bills itself as “the No. 1 multi-language online school.” I haven’t tried Myngle out, but some of my readers have. One described it as “a great way of getting some cheap lessons to…