Reviews
Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself
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,…
Cable/Satellite Television
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…
Rocket French
French, Multimedia
Headquartered in New Zealand, Rocket Languages offers products for multiple languages. I didn’t use Rocket French enough, or recently enough, to rate it, but I liked my brief encounter with it in April 2011 well enough to consider trying…
ConversationExchange.com
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…
MIT List of Newspapers
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, News, Websites
On the MIT website is an easily navigable and appealing list of free foreign-language newspaper sites. They are categorized by language and draw from countries around the globe. Languages include Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. …
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Audio Lessons, Multimedia, Websites
A reader whose opinion I respect directed me to this website for the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). Here you can find a lot of free multimedia language-learning material (audio, video, print) for numerous languages, including multiple Arabic…
Livemocha
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
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…
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…