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Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself
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Talk Irish Online Course
Irish, Multimedia, Websites
This online-learning package from Talk Irish consists of 60 lessons and is an unbelievably good deal. If you are studying Irish, get it. Seriously. First of all, it costs only about $9 per month (you pay in euros through PayPal), and that…
RTÉ.ie, Easy Irish
Irish, Audio Lessons, Websites
RTÉ stands for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, which I believe literally means “Radio Television of Ireland.” (Is there an implied “and” between “Radio” and “Television”? I don’t know yet; I am writing this on just the fourth day of…
BBC Gaeilge (Irish)
Irish, Audio Lessons, News, Radio/TV/Video/Film, Websites, Kids
The BBC website offers free Irish lessons. I am only just beginning to familiarize myself with the site, but I believe there are three levels available—Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. I tried the first lesson from Level 1 and liked it!…
TG4
Irish, Radio/TV/Video/Film, Websites
Learn Irish by watching Irish TV on the Internet! TG4 was established in 1996; the acronym stands for Teilifís na Gaeilge. According to Gabriel Rosenstock in Beginner’s Irish with Audio CD (2005), “Its success has confounded the sceptics, especially the…
Schoenhof’s Foreign Books
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…
Modern Language Association Language Map
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites
The Modern Language Association has a spectacular online language map showing the languages of the U.S., as well as a data center with searchable language information. For free! These tools will be updated soon…
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,…
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…