Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

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…

I Love These Oxford Dictionaries

Portuguese, Books, Dictionaries

The Oxford New Portuguese Dictionary is a member of a dictionary series from Oxford that I really like and have used for other languages. The series as a whole is well-designed and lightweight (meaning easily portable through New…

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. …

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…

Rocket Portuguese Premium: Free Trial Available

3-5 Portuguese, Multimedia

Rocket Languages—based in Christchurch, New Zealand, and with offices in Southern California—offers pleasant online, interactive programs for language study. I spent some time with Rocket Portuguese Premium and enjoyed it, though it did not become a love relationship. …

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…