2009 Language Show in Olympia, London

The Language Show is going to be an amazing event for language learners, language teachers/instructors/educators, language lovers and linguists alike. There will be loads of exhibitors from all kinds of language-related industries, for a full list view this page.

Also available are intensive language classes in Chinese, German, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, French, Japanese, Polish and Russian as well as "taster classes" in all the above languages plus Persian, Sign Language, Hindi, Catalan, Hungarian, Czech, Turkish and Norwegian.

If you are in the London area and are into languages, this is not to be missed!

From Website

The Language Show is the UK’s biggest event for language learners, teachers, linguists and anyone with a love for languages. The show offers language enthusiasts all the help, advice and resources needed to learn or teach languages all under one roof. Plus, there's a dedicated Language Careers Fair for job seekers.

Over 100 FREE seminars and 185 exhibitors cover every aspect of language teaching and learning in a fun and entertaining way.

Visit thelanguageshow.co.uk for more information.

Quickly Shop, Find and Buy Language Products on your Mobile Device

Thanks to feedback from the online community, we have decided to launch a mobile language shop for users who are using mobile devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, etc) to surf the web to shop and buy language products.

We have worked to make this new website as fast, simple to use and easy to read from a mobile device as possible. We have spared the bling and whatnot to give you a site that just plain works for shopping online via your mobile phone, with features and searches already in place specifically for language products.

We feel this is a valuable service for anyone interested in finding and purchasing language products online via any mobile device!

Free Language has been working for a while on a new tool for site users interesting in narrowing down the absolute best deals available online for language learning products.

We have scoured the web and created a quick and simple way for Free Language users to save BIG on products from Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, plus language education materials including DVDs, software, books, dictionaries and much more!

Free Language now brings together the absolute best deals - for you to save. By saving on language products in our shop, you help support future development of this free public resource! Everyone wins.

Visit the new shop and locate the deal you're looking for:

http://shop.freelanguage.org

Some of the most popular products Free Language users ask about are:

Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, language software and language DVDs.

Here are just some of the languages for which you will find cheap/discount products:

Afrikaans, Arabic, Bahasa, Bengali, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, Farsi, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Luxembourgish, Mandarin, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Body Language and Sign Language

Summary

This (lengthy) article brings together a pile of Free Software (GNU GPL'd as Public Domain), freeware and shareware for language learning and reference for Mac OS X.

Software descriptions are taken from Apple Downloads. We will be adding more GPL applications soon.

Summary

The now-ubiquitious Wikipedia.org has some multilingual gems tucked away in its folds. This article serves to point out one of the most powerful polyglot culture feaures that Wikipedia offers: the myriad articles in a multitude of languages at a single click away.

For instance, while browsing the topic "Language" on Wikipedia in English, down the left navigation bar you will find entries for the same topic in literally dozens of languages:

Afrikaans, Alemannisch, العربية, Aragonés, Arpetan, Asturianu, Avañe'ẽ, Aymar aru, Azərbaycan, Bamanankan, Bân-lâm-gú, Basa Banyumasan, Башҡорт, Беларуская, Беларуская (тарашкевіца), Boarisch, Brezhoneg, Български, Català, Чăвашла, Cebuano, Česky, Cymraeg, Dansk, Deitsch, Deutsch, Diné bizaad, Eesti, Ελληνικά, Español, Esperanto, Euskara, فارسی, Français, Frysk, Furlan, Gaeilge, Gàidhlig, Galego, ગુજરાતી, 한국어, हिन्दी, Hrvatski, Ido, Ilokano, Bahasa Indonesia, Interlingua, isiXhosa, Íslenska, Italiano, עברית, Basa Jawa, ქართული, Kernewek, Кыргызча, Kiswahili, Коми, Kongo, Kreyòl ayisyen, Kurdî / كوردی, Latina, Latviešu, Lëtzebuergesch, Lietuvių, Limburgs, Lingála, Lojban, Magyar, Македонски, Malagasy, मराठी, مَزِروني, Bahasa Melayu, Nederlands, 日本語, Нохчийн, Norfuk / Pitkern, Norsk (bokmål), Norsk (nynorsk), Nouormand, Occitan, پښتو, Polski, Português, Ripoarisch, Română, Romani, Runa Simi, Русский, Саха тыла, Sámegiella, Sardu, Scots, Seeltersk, Sicilianu, Simple English, Slovenčina, Slovenščina, Српски / Srpski, Suomi, Svenska, Tagalog, தமிழ், Tatarça/Татарча, ไทย, Tiếng Việt, Тоҷикӣ, Türkçe, Türkmen, Українська, Volapük, Võro, Walon, Winaray, ייִדיש, 粵語,Zazaki, Žemaitėška, 中文

This list discludes several languages for which this particular computer does not have fonts installed. Many of you will see font-related issues for some of the languages above. Find out more here if you do.

How to find the links.

This image shows how to find what other languages are available for a given topic on Wikipedia:

These are not translations.

Each entry is an organically-written encyclopedia article on the topic of "Language" in a language. The time and space for language and culture persists!

It's quite intriguing surfing Wikipedia for multilingual goodness. If you'd like to hear more on this topic or have something of value to share, please comment on this article!

Use these to learn!

This feature of Wikipedia can be used to learn and teach languages. Find a topic of interest and study up on the vocabulary in your target language, build a linguistic knowledge of specific interests, get materials for educating, compare entries in different languages to bring out cultural nuances and more. There are many ways to twist and tweak this vast maze of plurilingual content!

From Website

A language is a dynamic set of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the elements used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Strictly speaking, language is considered to be an exclusively human mode of communication. Although other animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, sometimes casually referred to as animal language, none of these are known to make use of all of the properties that linguists use to define language.

In Western Philosophy, language has long been closely associated with reason, which is also a uniquely human way of using symbols. In Ancient Greek philosophical terminology, the same word, logos, was used as a term for both language or speech and reason, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes used the English word "speech" so that it similarly could refer to reason, as will be discussed below. More commonly though, the English word "language", derived ultimately from lingua, Latin for tongue, typically refers only to expressions of reason which can be understood by other people, most obviously by speaking.

Visit "Language" on Wikipedia in English and look at all the languages on the left navigation bar. Those are the languages for which the article you are viewing has equivalents.

Summary

Steve Kaufmann of LinqQ fame recently released a vlog entry regarding multilingualism and polyglot culture.

It's interesting for those who enjoy learning and speaking languages as a way of life.

Be sure to check out our recent story on LingQ's new features.

Steve Kaufmann on Multilingualism

Visit LinqQ.
View and comment on the original vlog entry.