Reviews

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Useful, But Not My Favorite Ever

3-5 German, Flashcards, Vocabulary

Now that my favorite SparkNotes flashcards are no longer being made, I am in search of a new flashcard love. In my quest, I recently tried out these German vocabulary cards from BarCharts. They are for sure useful, and they…

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,…

Lederhosen's Bar

4 German, Food and Drink

This Greenwich Village establishment is described on its website as a “German Wurst and Bierhaus.”  When I was there (this was in 2010), multiple people working there spoke German, so I think your chances of combining food-ordering and food-eating activities…

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…

View from the Street

5 German, Museums/Cultural

This museum for German and Austrian art resides in a majestic former mansion on the Upper East Side. In the last exhibit I saw there, I noticed that captions for paintings were in both German and English, so you…

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…

Complete German Grammar, with Caffeination

3-5 German, Books

I won’t deny there was some good practice in this book by Ed Swick. Like the McGraw-Hill Practice Makes Perfect series generally, there are many, many exercises—more than you find in your typical foreign-language…