Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

DLIFLC: Language Resources for Free

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: 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…

Google Translate: I Use This, a Lot

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

Need to translate Welsh to Bengali? Well, this is your site. Google Translate provides instant translations among 70-something different languages. l use it all the time. As with any electronic translator, the translations are in many cases far from…

A High Information Density Here

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

This encyclopedia of writing systems and languages is a longtime labor of love of Simon Ager, an Englishman who now lives in Wales. He started the site way back in the Internet dark ages of 1998. Omniglot contains information on…

Greek VocabuLearn for Sale on Amazon.com

3-5 Greek, Audio Lessons, Vocabulary

VocabuLearn Greek consists of a series of vocabulary audio lessons—very basic, pretty boring, but totally useful if you pay attention. It is no longer being published, as Penton Overseas ceased production of all VocabuLearn products during the global economic…

Me, Asea in Rosetta Stone Greek and Other Technology!

3 Greek, Multimedia

Rosetta Stone Greek offers a colorful computer-based multimedia experience—images, text, listening, reading, speaking, etc. It is very pretty, and yet by the end of my Rosetta Stone experiences, I found myself disenchanted. The company has an immersion philosophy…

Forvo: For Pronunciations of the World's Words

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

Forvo’s tagline says it all: “All the words in the world. Pronounced.” Okay, maybe not all, but it is good to have a goal. There are 300 languages on Forvo’s language list, from German and Spanish to…