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Multilingual Languages SitesSites with resources aimed at multiple languages bab.la Language Portal. This site has a sophisticated online dictionary with a good number of language pairs, including Arabic, Chinese and Hindi as well as the 'usual suspects'. Results are detailed, including usage examples, sound clips, synonyms and hyperlinks to related terms. The site also has:
The site interface is available in all the featured languages. Quite a gold mine, and kept up to date. Recommended. BBC Education - Languages. Lots of online resources and exercises to back up BBC foreign language courses. BBC World Service. News, articles, and RealAudio broadcasts in a wide range of languages from the World Service. Bücher. Links to online books in German, French, English, Latin, Greek, and Russian. COERLL: Centre for Open Educational Resources for Language Learning. A directory of Open Educational Resources (OER) in a range of European and non-European languages, including American Sign Language, Hindi, Arabic, and Japanese. Hosted by the University of Texas at Austin, in the USA. Country names in various languages. A list of names of countries in a wide variety of languages, including many minority languages, sorted by the English name of the country. A nice little reference for when you forget, say, what "Sweden" is in Gaelic. DIALANG. A multinational EU project to develop diagnostic language assessment tools in all the EU's official languages plus Irish, Icelandic and Norwegian (14 languages in all). Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature. Page that lists Internet sources for literary texts in the western European languages other than English. European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages. The EBLUL primarily promotes minority languages and cultures within Europe, lobbying the EU to defend and safeguard minority languages and communities. The site has a useful database of links to sites related to lesser-used languages. Firefox international versions. A list of all the language versions of the Open Source Firefox browser. Foreign Languages for Travellers. Basic words and expressions in a wide range of languages, both text and sound. You can also search for a particular word/phrase to be translated into all the languages. Foreign Language School - Resources for College & High School Students. A small annotated list of links to resources for language learners, categorised by language (French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German). Goethe Tests. Language and vocabulary tests in 16 languages, including lesser-taught languages (eg Finnish, Czech, Estonian), for printing out and using in class. There's also a directory of language schools in the target languages. Site text in all the target languages. Guide de la Radio et des Medias. Links to thousands of webcasting radio and TV websites worldwide, sorted by country and by type. Website text in French. High School Foreign Languages Resource Center. A useful collection of links to language learning resources in Chinese, Russian, French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish. Many of the linked resources are themselves link collections, so to some degree this is a site with 'pointers to pointers'. ICT4LT. A multinational EU project to develop online training courses in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for language teachers in the UK, Finland, and Italy. International
Station. RealAudio radio broadcasts in Polish,
Russian, Austrian and German, Arabic, Bulgarian, and
Serbian. Intute: Modern Languages and Area Studies. Given the staggering amount of usable languages-related resources online, often the hardest task for teachers and learners is finding diamonds amongst the dross. Intute is a 'portal' which provides selected, inspected and catalogued resources in a very wide range of languages for educational users. You can browse and search for resources, and there's also a Virtual Training Suite offering "free tutorials on Internet research skills to help with your university course." Funding for Intute has ceased but the records will remain online for the foreseeable future, though won't be updated so expect a little linkrot. Jim Becker's resources for foreign languages. Includes resources for French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Latin, Italian, and a list of best sites for language teachers. The text-only version is a little easier on the eyes than the default version. Language Guide. A useful audio vocabulary resource in a range of European, Semitic and Asian languages. It contains images with hotspots which, when you mouse over them, play vocabulary by native speakers. Site interface in multiple languages. This is a collaborative project which you can join in to volunteer your expertise. Languages Made Clear. Free online beginners courses in a number of (mainly European) languages, including Russian and Esperanto, together with detailed grammar references. The lessons are text only, but there are some audio clips in the pronunciation section. Languages Made Clear is an ongoing non-profit project which anyone who's willing to contribute can join as a member and help out with the website. Language software reviews. Reviews of popular language learning software, sorted by language. The packages reviewed are mainly from well-known software series - Rosetta Stone, Natively, Transparent. You can compare packages in a language in an at-a-glance table. As the lowest rating is 80%, and every review ends with a 20% money off offer for the package, the reader may well think that each page is more promotion than review, but if taken with a pinch or three of salt this might be a useful overview site. Learn a Language. Lessons, Flash games and activities in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. The Learning Group: Personalised Learning Games. Create your own language learning game online (as a Java applet), or play games created by other authors. The Less Commonly Taught Languages Project. Resources for LCTLs (defined as all languages bar English, French, Spanish, and German). Hosted by the Centre for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). Lingua Estrangiera. A large collection of teaching resources for Portuguese teachers of foreign languages. Site text in Portuguese. Linguanet Europa. A multilingual, virtual resources centre to support the teaching of foreign languages, offering access to a collection of over 1000 resources. Lingu@net Europa is accessible in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Le Monde Diplomatique. The French left-wing weekly paper online, including translations in German, Italian, and English, with back issues online. My Language Exchange. Online community where language learners can find a native speaker partner to help each other improve foreign language skills. The site facilitates online language exchange learning via email, text chat and voice chat by providing guidelines and lesson plans. It claims to be one of the largest language communities on the web today. It also has a fun section where members can exchange expressions and slang by creating, playing and discussing phrasal Hangman word games. NETGLOS: The Multilingual Internet Glossary Project. An online glossary of Internet terms in 10 different languages. The On-Line Books Page. A searchable database of links to over 12,000 books online, the vast majority English-language. There's also a page of links to online libraries of non-English-language texts. Producing Open Online Learning Systems (POOLS). An EU project which has developed authentic video materials and transcripts (PDF) in 9 languages: Basque, Danish, Dutch, English, Gaelic (Scottish), German, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Spanish. The videos are professionally-shot and available for free download. Recommended. Project Romanova. A new, neutral "interlanguage" for speakers of Romance languages, consisting of words taken from French, Italian, Spanish, and Portugese. The site has a pronunciation guide, and brief grammars and dictionaries. Site text in English and the Romance languages. Verbix. Online conjugation of verbs in over 50 languages, and large vocabularies of verbs between language pairs (eg Catalan-Italian). When you get a verb conjugation (eg finire), you also get cross-references to similarly-conjugated verbs, and to equivalent verbs in many other languages. You can also download a trial version of Verbix for Windows. A very useful resource for language learners. Recommended. Voice of America. News reports and audio webcasts in a wide variety of languages, particularly non-Western, as well as English transcripts. A useful language resource, albeit a little politically unsound. World Radio Network (WRN). Recorded and live RealAudio feeds from over 20 countries worldwide. |
