soZiety: A Great Skype Language-Learning Community

We've looked at a couple language-learning Skype communities, but Soziety is a new one making an impact. At the end of the day, these sites succeed based on the community they attract - and that's what Soziety is doing well. Search for other users based on language, age, gender, country, and "karma" (favorable feedback). You can also limit search results to users online. As a nice little perk you can also make a few bucks by building up your karma or doing so document translation.

Great Spanish Econ Resource

If you are looking for free spanish economic textbooks and educational multimedia, EUMED, from the University of Malaga is the resource you want. Although only a small number of readers may find this useful, it's a powerful index of resources and dictionaries of economic terms (you might also want to visit this Spanish-English translator of economic terms). La Caixa also posts all of their economic studies.

Brasilian French Lessons

Learning french? Where do you turn? L'Académie française? The BBC? The Ministério da Educação? Although perhaps an unlikely source, this Brasilian page is an brilliant tool for learning french without paying a Real (R$). The site contains tons of links and resources including 24 complete streaming episodes of the tv program Reflets, complete with supplemental exercises and grammar studies.

Best Chinese Language Site Ever

I don't know how many readers are studying Chinese or plan to start, but here's inspiration to do it. Linese.com, a government initiative, presents culture and language through well-made, interactive lessons with audio and video. The powers-that-be might not like letting the internet in, but they're sure giving a lesson on how to use it. For another excellent resource, see Chinesepod.com.

Chomsky Audio & Video

To accompany Noam Chomsky's recent audiobook "Failed States", Learn Out Loud has created an archive of key Chomsky audio and video. This is a great resource for learning more about the famed linguist's contributions to language, psychology, and politics. For more free resources, visit two massive sites: Chomsky.info and ChomskyTorrents.org. (By the way, Learn Out Loud missed a key interview - see below).

Knuckles In China Land

Knuckles in China Land is the coolest language learning tool that I have ever seen. This is a full, free downloadable RPG games starring Knuckles (borrowed from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise). The "battle" sequences consist of flashcard memorization tests.
















KiCL is set-up with Japanese, Indonesian, and German language packs. However, you can create flashcards for any language using the vocabulary editor. When starting a new game, choose the island picture in the bottom-left (pictured) to load a custom-made vocabulary set. You can also edit the vocabulary lists using a text-editting program like Notepad.















This is a perfect example of how gaming can turn something as banal as flashcard memorization into a fun and addictive learning experience. Here are some more screenshots.

AulaFacil Language Courses

At first glance, AulaFacil's online courses look like many others. But don't go before checking out the language courses. Audio narrations guide you through each lesson in German, French, Italian, and English. I found it very helpful to hear all of the words pronounced while reviewing conjugations and grammatical rules. Many free language learning sites contain audio, but the AulaFacil narrations load quickly within the browser and continue until the end of the lesson. Spanish speakers might also enjoy some of the other courses on topics ranging from business to cooking (los cursos básicos de MS Office son buenos).

Podcasts, Camels & ASCII Babes

Courtesy of the 80s Finnish music scene, one of the worst music videos ever: "I Wanna Love You Tender" by Armi & Danny (gracias a Mercedes por el enlace).

Two more language exchange sites
In addition to linking up speakers, Babelpod's added twist is a focus on language learning podcasts. Here's their current list:

Chinese Survival Guide
ChinesePod.com
clip2go English/German
English as a Second Language Podcast
English Through Stories
EnglishPod.com
Esperanto Radio Arkivo
FrenchPodClass
Japanesepod101
Learn Japanese
Learn Mandarin Chinese with Serge Melnyk
LearnItalianPod
Lets speak German!
Lille Podcast
Really Learn Spanish
Spanish Arriba!
TOEFL Podcast
Trying to Learn Spanish






Friends Abroad, another free site, partners with major companies such as Berlitz. It also has a nice interface. Personally, I've still had the most luck getting in touch with people through Shared Talk (see previous post).


All Camels
If you ever wanted to own a camel, here are all the resources you need.






ASCII Babes
A salute to the pioneers of internet pornography. Visit the ASCII babes archive for ASCII text-images of celebrities such as Halle Barry and Heidi Klum. The images are all work safe...I think...kind of have to look at them from a distance.





Almost forgot to mention - Learn Out Loud just released the third selection in their audiobook of the month club - Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Other Languages

Learn Icelandic for free online? Czech? Catalan? I know what you're thinking - an "under construction" geocities site with frames and pop-up ads. You'll be surprised. While French & Spanish students can find high quality language learning sites like BBC Languages, many less commonly studied languages also have phenomenal learning websites. I selected a few very good ones - all have nice design and lots of lessons with audio: Catalan, Polish, Esperanto, Little Czech Primer, Latvian, Tibetan, Icelandic, Dutch, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Greek, Breton, Welsh, Chinook, Korean.

For more language courses for specific languages see Word2Word, I Love Languages and Single Serving. Northeastern Illinois University also has their foreign language labs audio online as mp3s.

Courses & Tutorials at Free-ed.net

Free-ed.net is a nice portal to the mixed bag of free educational courses on the web. Although the courses vary widely in quality, Free-ed.net covers a broad array of practical and technical subjects such as health care and plumbing - very often with ebooks and video. Many courses are hosted by Free-ed.net, but some listings link to sites such as learner.org.

The AllLearn Library Portal

The AllLearn library is the best collection of academic links that I've encountered. Although there are many excellent portals - Merlot, Dept. of Education, Awesome Library - AllLearn posts links carefully selected by "university experts". Because of this, there is less need to filter through numerous links to find substantive resources. AllLearn was a distance learning consortium set-up between Oxford, Stanford, and Yale. There is a notice on the site that AllLearn will be revamping their course offerings this spring.

Shared Talk

Shared Talk is a language exchange site with over 10,000 members speaking 78 languages. Enter Shared Talk to search for a speaking partner or talk in a chatroom. When I logged on there weren't many people in the chatrooms, but I imagine the site is busier in the evenings. Shared Talk is nicely designed and, as far as I can tell, there's no catch.

For extensive indices of free language courses, see I Love Languages and Word2Word.

Update -
Here's a list of Skype language partners that I previously posted. Two other major language exchange sites are My Language Exchange and Lingup. Although you can create a free My Language Exchange profile, a paid Gold Account ($6US/month) is needed to contact other members. Lingup has received good press and praise, but I believe there are subscription costs - it's not very clear on the site.

Dead Languages

Textkit is your resource for learning Greek and Latin. The site contains tons of grammars, readers, and tutorials for learning Ancient Greek and Latin. Textkit also hosts 89 classical eBooks, forums, and study groups. Sign-up for the Textkit vocabularily learning tool to receive e-mail lessons tailored to your skill level.

Skype Language Exchange

Looking for a language exchange partner? Try Skype. Hazar.com has set-up a language exchange program.
Click the "Skype Me" button to contact a speaking partner in Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Danish, Chinese or Portuguese. And add yourself to the list. Danke to Ben for the photo.

Texas Spanish Proficiency Exercises

No, not lessons to speak Spanish like a Texan, but another great free page coming out of the University of Texas at Austin. This site contains 85 modules, each containing 6 videos of native speakers discussing various topics. While the Quicktime video is playing, you can choose to view a transcipt in Spanish or English. Each module includes a breakdown of key vocabulary, phrases, and grammar.

One of the hard parts of learning a language is making that jump from the rudiments definitions and conjugations. This site can help you make the jump to actually understanding speakers. I've tried the Rosetta Stone and, while I highly recommend it, the program is incredibly expensive - $49.00 per month for a basic online subscriptions (they also make it difficult to unsubscribe). Rosetta Stone works primarily by pairing-up, then selectively focusing on, written text and audio. These modules from UT at Austin work in the same way. I also like that each video identifies the nationality of the native speaker.

If you are looking for more Spanish help, there are plenty of pages out there. Merlot is a good place to start (249 search results for "spanish"). I like these grammar exercises to polish up specific grammar topics that give me trouble and Ultralingua for translations and conjugations. The BBC also has a great program for Spanish, as well as French, German and Italian. Two great spanish blogs for casual reading are Pixel y Dixel and La Petite Claudine. Both blogs have tons of great links to other high quality sites in Spanish.

Long List of Free Language Learning Sites

This is by far the most thorough index of free language learning sites that I have come across. Not only does Word 2 Word list dozens of sites for popular languages like Spanish and French, but it also includes sites with information on less widely studied languages like Cherokee.

Update: Here is a large index of on-line dictionaries and translators.