teach gaelic

Language Learning Tips on Using Free Wikimedia Resources

This article points out six useful ways to use Wikimedia content from Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wiktionary and Wikiquotes for learning languages free.

What's highlighted here is also great for teachers because it is licensed via Creative Commons and available to use for free.

Spanish is used as an example here, but the same ideas are applicable to all languages for which content is available.

1) Know General Info about Your Target Language

Find out general information about a language by viewing that language's Wikipedia entry. For example, here's the Spanish language entry on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language

It contains loads of general information, as well as specifics about grammar, alphabet, pronunciation, etc.

2) Use Wikibooks and Wikiversity Courses to Get Started

Listen to Words in Dozens of Languages

Forvo is an interesting project which accumulates recordings of existing words in all languages. A lofty and, indeed, ongoing goal!

Language learners interested in finding out just how a word is actually pronounced by a native speaker of a given language will love this website!

Have a look at the languages page and you can quickly see which languages have the most words. There is a handy tag cloud on the side of the page which will show you in a visual way which languages have more words already pronounced.

And if you're interested, feel free to contribute to this collective pronunciation effort!

Help and be Helped with Writing in Foreign Languages

Lang-8 is a free, unique and popular website for learners of many languages to come together and correct each other's writing. Native speakers review writing submitted by learners who wish to improve. You can help and be helped!

The free tools provided in the interface are straightforward and tuned in such a way that it's quite easy to correct another user's writing, as well as to see exactly how others have corrected yours.

Lang-8's interface also provides social tools for interacting amongst users, including a way to find language matches to suit your needs.

Summary

Wikibooks.org is a community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. The Wikibook's Languages of Europe category can serve, for the language learner, educator and enthusiast, as an enormous doorway into the many European languages, both living and historical.

The European subcontinent has birthed and/or attracted an enormous variety of languages from many sub-branches of what linguists call the Indo-European languages.

Below you'll find direct links to a wide variety of European language open-content textbooks. These are free and open source, for everyone to use and benefit from. And collaborate on - especially language educators who have the knowledge to share with all through this open medium.

To boot, Wikibooks.org itself is available in a wide range of world languages!

From Wikibooks.org

Wikibooks Category: Languages of Europe

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

These language books concern Languages of Europe. See also Subject:Languages of Europe.

European Languages with Books or Pages

Albanian, Aragonese, Armenian, Austrian, Basque, Belarusian, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chechen, Croatian, Danish, Galician, Gothic, Greenlandic, High Icelandic, Hungarian, Høgnorsk, Icelandic, Insubric, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Leonese, Lowland Scots, Macedonian, Manx, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Old Church Slavonic, Polish, Provençal, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovene, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh

This may be incomplete when you read this. Please check the Languages of Europe page for the latest content.

European Language Wikibooks Subcategories

Dutch language
English language
Finnish language
French language
German language
Greek language
Latin language
Lithuanian language
Portuguese language
Scottish Gaelic language
Spanish language
Yiddish language

Visit Wikibooks.org on Languages of Europe.
Wikipedia.org also has a category on Languages of Europe.

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.