Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Central Park West, Post-Marathon

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Sports/Fitness

Yeah, I know, the marathon is supposedly about running 26.2 miles. I am a runner, so I can appreciate that. Still, for me, New York City’s annual marathon spectacular is more about culture and language. Because of the global obsession…

Search for Gujarathi, Yiddish, and More!

5 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…

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.…

McGraw-Hill's Italian Verb Tenses: Needs Editing, But I Really Like This One

4-5 Italian, Books

You need to bring a little pre-existing knowledge of Italian grammar and vocabulary to Practice Makes Perfect: Italian Verb Tenses by Paola Nanni-Tate, but if you do, you should be fine. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ms.…

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,…

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…

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…

A Useful Collection of News Links

5 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. …