Summary

Collins is one of the longest standing publishers of English and bilingual dictionaries. They are currently working to pioneer ways to publish dictionaries for today's world by rapidly increasing the availability of their products in digital format.

The company has created several high-quality, professional digital products that are offered through their online store. Free samples of these products are available for download through the site.

Two of the digital products they currently offer are very useful for travelers and language learners alike: iPhraseFinders and Collins 40-Minute Lessons.

iPhraseFinders are phrasebooks tailored specifically for the iPod. These are currently available in Windows and Mac format for English to the following languages: French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. You can download free samples from the link above.

Collins 40-Minute Lessons are beginner lessons designed to empower learners with the essential phrases necessary to navigate daily life in a given foreign language. These lessons are available for English speakers interested in learning Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. Wow! You can download free samples from the link above.

I know from my experience of testing the free downloads that these digital products are indeed professional, high-quality, practical and useful.

The website also offers a free dictionary search feature, with more comprehensive commercial versions available.

From Website

Free English, Cobuild and Foreign Language Dictionary look-ups available. Subscribe to or download a dictionary to your desktop or mobile device. Learn a language fast with iPhrasefinders and audio courses for iPods and mobiles. Free trials available.

Find out about these products and more at CollinsLanguage.com

Summary

Pretty much just what it sounds like, LanguageTube.org is a place to learn languages with YouTube videos.

Currently, videos are available for the Chinese, French, German, Korean, Russian and Thai languages.

The site has not been updated for a while, but let's hope a little web traffic will re-fuel the motivation to bring together language videos from all over YouTube. It is a great idea, and currently the site it totally ad-free.

Visit LanguageTube.org

It's been a very long time since I've actually published a list of the latest updates to the site. So here goes with a healthy chunk of language-learning goodness...

Foreign Language Translation Extensions/Tools/Plugins/Add-Ons for the Firefox Web Browser
OneMinuteLanguages.com One Minute Language Lessons for Polish, Irish, German and Russian
SurvivalPhrases.com Survival Phrases in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Swedish, Arabic, Spanish and Vietnamese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Mandarin Chinese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Cantonese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
ExpertVillage.com Instructional Videos on Learning Foreign Languages
The Alternative Dictionary: Slang, Profanities, Insults and Vulgarisms from all the World
Learn Chinese on YouTube with Mandarin Videos from ActiveChinese
Learn Mandarin Chinese Videos on YouTube AskBenny Channel
A Pinyin.info Article on Most Difficult and Challenging Aspects of Learning Mandarin Chinese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Arabic Free Audio Lessons Downloads
Dickinson College's Language-Exchanges.org Mixxer Free Skype Language Exchange Community
Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
United Nations Declares 2008 the International Year of Languages
nciku.com nciku Free Online Mandarin Chinese Handwriting Recognition, Conversations, Radical Dictionary
LearningIndonesian.com Podcast is a Fun and Easy Way to Learn Indonesian Online
open.ac.uk OpenLearn LearningSpace Open University with Free Courses in Modern Languages
italki.com Free Skype VoIP and IM Language Partner Community
Download Free Open University Courses from MIT OpenCourseWare Foreign Languages and Literatures Department
About.com Distance Learning Free Online Language Courses
MyHappyPlanet.com My Happy Planet Private Social Language-Learning Community
List of Free Foreign Language Courses Online at Education-Portal.com
DigitalDialects.com Arabic Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Afrikaans Language-Learning Games and Activities
English Language Learning and Teaching Article on Wikipedia
A Torrent File for 500 Free Mandarin Chinese Audio Podcast Lessons from ChinesePod.com
JaplishPodcast.com Japlish Podcast of Funny Phrases in English and Japanese Languages
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Bilingual Blog
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Conversational Spanish Podcast
BYKI.com Download Free Language Software for Learning 42 Languages!
MangoLanguages.com Mango Languages Free Online Language Courses, Audio, Web Software
ISpeakHindi.com I Speak Hindi Website, Podcasts, Dictionary and Resources
Langmaker.com Language Maker Website on Auxiliary and Constructed Languages
Word2Word.com Website
Arabic Language Course for Arabic Learners Familiar with Arabic Script
BitesizedLanguages.com Bitesized Languages Improve Your French, Spanish or Portuguese Skills with Daily Emails
LiveMocha.com Live Mocha Social Language Learning Course and Networking Website
Lingopass.com Free Global Language Exchange Community
DigitalDialects.com French Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Russian Language-Learning Games and Activities

A post on Omniglot.com led me to a cool resource with quick and simple one-minute language lessons you can subscribe to and plop right on your iPod or favorite mp3 player. This resource is produced by Radio Lingua and can be found at One Minute Languages.

As you can see in the image above, the four languages currently available on the One Minute Languages website are German, Irish, Polish and Russian.

Visit One Minute Languages.

I have just begun a website called Freestyle Language. Though it sounds like Free Language, the site is a personal blog and podcast about my experiences learning several new languages, maintaining proficiency in the languages that I do speak and offering some content for folks learning American English.

From Blog

I am a linguist and a lover of languages. My native language is English. I speak fluent French, Portuguese and Spanish. I am fairly proficient with Italian and can eek by in German and Mandarin Chinese.

On this blog, I share my experiences learning languages both on the web and off. On the web, I generally use Free Language to find solid resources. Off the web, I spend any free time working on improving some language or another.

Currently, I am interested in starting studies in Arabic and Russian, as well as continuing to improve my Mandarin Chinese, German and Italian skills. I will blog about all of these languages here - and more.

I will also start a podcast (yes, another one) for people interested in learning the English language. I will offer transcriptions of what I say - nothing fancy.

All original content on this website is protected, empowered and freely-distributable thanks to the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). You may recognize this license from Wikipedia.

I am going to supplement that site with some posts here regarding the most interesting things I come across.

For now, you are welcome to have a look at Freestyle Language and see if it interests you.

More to come in the near future.