Blogs

Learning Czech Online for Free

A new project involving the Czech gemstone Moldavite has me heading to the Czech Republic in two weeks, and I have been searching around for resources for learning the Czech language online for free. I thought I would share them here for easy reference. Enjoy and good luck!

Insane Amount of Czech Resources

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~bolo/travel/czech_lang.html

Lots of Czech Resources

http://kam.mff.cuni.cz/~uli/czechlinks.html

Free Czech-English Dictionaries Online

http://www.slovnik.cz
http://www.wordreference.com/encz

Czech Language Portal and Beginner Lessons

http://www.locallingo.com

Free Basic Czech Course

http://www.101languages.net/czech/declension.html

Free Czech Phrasebooks

http://freelanguage.org/learn-czech/travel/czech-phrasebooks

Bilingual Czech-English Blog

http://czechmatediary.com

Free Czech Wikibook

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Czech

Article on Learning Czech in Three Months

http://www.fluentin3months.com/why-czech-isnt-as-hard-to-learn-as-you-think

Czech Language on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_language

Czech Language on Omniglot

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/czech.htm

(Great for getting a general idea about the language and exploring further by following links to many aspects of Czech grammar, language history and more.)

Free Language's Czech Resources

http://freelanguage.org/learn-czech

What is the image?

The image in this article is of a handmade pendant featuring a raw specimen of the gemstone Moldavite, which exists only in the region of Southern Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

2012 Language Survey Uncovers Interesting Trends in Language Learning

Busuu, one of the world's most popular online language learning platforms, has just announced the results of its 2012 Language Barometer Survey.

With over 45,000 participants from 230 countries, this survey sheds light on successful and popular learning processes and well as what the future of language education may look like.

From busuu blog

More than 45,000 busuu.com users from 230 different countries responded to our survey, held at the beginning of March 2012. Let’s have a look at our users’ preferred methods for improving their language skills, what encourages or hampers their learning process and many more exciting outcomes!

The future of language learning relies on online methods!

Read more.

Guidance for Learners of Minority Languages

Free Language announces Project Nurture, a language learning help center for those seeking to learn lesser-spoken languages around the world.

If you are working to learn any language that currently doesn't have resources on our website, we'll track down existing Web-based resources for you and provide written guidance for approaching the language successfully.

Three Years and Nine Languages Later

busuu has been alive and kicking for three years!

Free Language initally reviewed it back in the summer of 2008, and it's come quite a long way since then.

Now offering a total of nine languages (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Polish, Turkish and Russian), they have grown from their beta stages to be one of the web's top online language learning platforms.

Busuu - we congratulate you on much progress in just a few years :)

Don't Offend the Locals

Knowing how to travel is a lifelong experience, much like learning a language. When you can't just chat it up with the locals, one of the main cues you can go by is body language.

A Lonely Planet article entitled "Travel Etiquette 101: Body Language" gives a humorous and useful insight into examples of body language from Russia, India, Japan, China, Nepal, Morocco and more.

What's perhaps even more curious and entertaining is the sheer volume of comments - people chiming in with specific examples from all around the globe.