world languages

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

Over the last few days I've added eight articles on podcast resources from the LingQ podcast network. This is a group that currently consists of eight podcast websites that provide a steady (weekly) flow of listening material for each individual language. Accompanying transcriptions are made available through the LingQ [liŋk] store. Some are free, some are not.

Pursue the LingQ above or click on the huge image above to learn more about the LingQ Method.

LingQ Podcast Network

EnglishLingQ
FrenchLingQ
GermanLingQ
JapaneseLingQ
PortugueseLingQ
RussianLingQ
SpanishLingQ
SwedishLingQ

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

This resource has quite a few links to sites that have instructional materials for learning numerous foreign languages. Eventually, these sections should be put individually on the site for each language section. But for now, here they are all at once on the blog. The following languages are available.

Here's the link to WannaLearn.com/Academic_Subjects/World_Languages.

* Albanian
* Arabic
* Chinese
* Danish
* Dutch
* English as a Second Language
* Finnish
* French
* Gaelic
* German
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Hungarian
* Indo-Chinese
* Indonesian
* Italian
* Japanese
* Korean
* Latin
* Norwegian
* Polish
* Portuguese
* Russian
* Sanskrit
* Sign Language
* Spanish
* Swahili
* Swedish
* Tagalog Filipino
* Thai
* Turkish
* Vietnamese

I was just surfing around trying to find a free bilingual Italian-English dictionary when I came across the Alternative Dictionaires, a site that has literally loads and loads of slang, vulgarisms, insults and profanities from many world languages, from Acadian to Zulu. Below you will find a list of all the languages that currently have entries at the Alternative Dictionary.

This is actually quite useful information, as people very often express themselves using these types of terms and expressions. And it's always better to understand when someone is insulting you, right?!

From Website

The Alternative dictionaries are a collection of various forms of "bad language" from many languages. At the moment, there are 2743 entries in 162 dictionaries. This is a collaborative project with contributions from a lot of people. The pages are developed and edited by Hans-Christian Holm.

Acadian Afrikaans Albanian Alemannic Algerian Arabic Alsatian American English Amharic Apache Arabic Armenian Assamese Asturian Australian English Austrian Azerbaijani Baluchi Basque Bavarian Belarusian Bengali Brazilian Portuguese Breton British English Bulgarian Burmese Cajun Cantonese Catalan Cherokee Chinese Classical Greek Corsican Cree Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Egyptian Arabic English Esperanto Estonian Faroese Finnish Flemmish French Frisian Fulfulde Galician Georgian German Greek Guarani Gujarati Gulf Arabic Haitian Creole French Hakka Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Iraqi Arabic Irish Gaelic Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kashmiri Kazakh Khmer Kirghiz Korean Kurdish Lao Latin Latvian Levantine Arabic Lithuanian Lower Sorbian Luxemburgian Macedonian Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Mexican Spanish Min Mongolian Moroccan Arabic Navajo Nepali Norwegian Occitan Ojibwa Oriya Panjabi Pashto Persian Plattdeutsch Polish Portuguese Quebecois Quechua Rheto-Romance Romanian Russian Sami Sardinian Scots Scots Gaelic Serbian Serbo-croat Sindhi Sinhala Sioux Slovak Slovenian Somali Sotho Spanish Sunda Sutu Swabian Swahili Swedish Swiss German Tagalog Tajiki Tamil Tatar Telugu TEST Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Tsonga Tswana Tunisian Arabic Turkish Turkmen Uighur Ukrainian Upper Sorbian Urdu Uzbek Venda Venetian Vietnamese Welsh Wolof Wu Xhosa Yapese Yi Yiddish Yoruba Zulu