Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

A Yiddish Vocabulary Test on Quizlet

3-5 General, Yiddish, Flashcards, Tests, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

Yiddish is not the easiest language in the world for which to find free study materials online. So far, despite some drawbacks, Quizlet has been my favorite Yiddish-vocabulary-practice source and is something I keep finding myself playing around with in…

Foreign-Language Alphabets, Compiled by Dan X. Solo

4-5 General, Books

Foreign-Language Alphabets from Dover Publications will not teach you foreign languages, but it contains a cool collection of foreign-language fonts for a cool $19.95 price. I came across this book when I was scouring the Dover website for…

Digital Dialects: Some Cute and Actually Useful Games, in Many Languages

4 General, Multimedia, Tests, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

The Digital Dialects website is an unexpected online pleasure full of free language games for 60 languages, from popular ones such as French and German to less widely studied ones such as Zazaki (spoken primarily in eastern Turkey) and Oromo (which…

Free Quizzes on the Transparent Language Website

General, Tests, Websites

I like free online quizzes and tests, but they aren’t really worth anything unless they’re good.  At least some of these from language-learning company Transparent Language seem pretty good! And plentiful: they are available for more languages…

Multilingual Motivation

4 French, General, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Vocabulary

Can’t commit to a single language? Go for five at a time, then, with this daily tweet translating an English word into five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Today’s word was “train.”  Portuguese:

You Can Watch Video Clips of Endangered Languages Here

General, Websites, Organizations

Founded in 2010, the Endangered Language Alliance, or ELA, is an “urban initiative for endangered language research and conservation.”  Out of a small office on West 18th Street, in what is known as the Urban Fieldstation, dedicated ELA linguists…

The Official Syntaxis Grammar Quiz

5 English, General, Tests, Websites

Okay, so right up front, I will confess, yes, I wrote this Syntaxis grammar quiz, and yes, I am shamelessly putting it in my own language directory of reviews with a five-star rating. I happen to be very fond…

Schoenhof's Website Is a Window to the World

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

Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s claims to have the “largest collection of foreign books in North America.” As a student at Harvard, I used to shop at their main store in Harvard Square for my language and literature course materials. I…

On Bionic Language Learners

5 General, Books

This book chronicles the superhuman feats of hyperpolyglots, the Steve Austins and Jaime Sommerses of language learners. It is a great read, though you have to be careful not to let yourself be intimidated by these mindblowing language super-learners. Despite…