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Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

56th Street, Borough Park

Hebrew, Yiddish, Neighborhoods

The majority of Borough Park’s residents are Orthodox Jews. In fact, this neighborhood is one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel. In a 2010 New York Times article, Gregory Beyer wrote, “Religious tradition and…

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…

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…

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…

MLA Headquarters, 26 Broadway

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

This eminent 130-year-old organization “provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy.” The Modern Language Association publishes prolifically, academics congregate annually at their annual convention,…

Wow, 2014 Marks the 129th Convention!

Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, Conferences/Lectures

The Modern Language Association holds an annual convention each year in a different city—2013 in Boston, 2014 in Chicago, and 2018 in New York City. You do not need to be a member to attend. I have never gone myself, but when…

FlashcardExchange.com: Find Flashcards for Your Target Language

4 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Apps, Flashcards, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

FlashcardExchange.com claims to be the “world’s largest flashcard library.” It was founded in 2001 by a guy named Culley Harrelson, who was studying for an exam using a giant stack of paper flashcards. Apparently he didn’t find…

Mid-Manhattan Library, at 40th and Fifth

4-5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

The Mid-Manhattan Library, at 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, is the main language-learning repository of the New York Public Library. I used it a lot in 2009 and 2010, mostly for Pimsleur audio lessons, but also borrowed books and other resources as…