Summary

The Firefox web browser from Mozilla is not only a great open source web browser. It's also a fabulous tool for language learners! It would take a long time to list and go through all of the cool things you can do with the addons (extensions of Firefox's core functionality) in the language section of Firefox Addons. Several articles have already been published a few of articles on the topic (see related articles below), one of which contains a link to Firefox addons for translation.

However, another, cooler, resource has just popped up on the radar and anyone dealing with learning languages online, translation, researching and/or reading content in foreign languages on the Web is encouraged to check out this amazing repository for Firefox addons for Language support. The link has been pre-defined for showing the addons that have been updated most recently, both experimental and stable. Here are a few more pre-defined links that will sort the addons by number of downloads, rating and name.

There is a lot of them, but it's definitely worth the time to sift through and find the ones that work for you.

Cheers to CodePublic.org for the link! Below is an example of an addon listing for a Chinese pop-up translator.

From Website

Add-ons extend Firefox, letting you personalize your browsing experience. Take a look around and make Firefox your own.

Related Articles

Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
Foreign Language Translation Extensions, Tools, Plugins, Add-Ons for the Firefox Web Browser
FoxLingo Free Firefox Browser Extension Software for Translating Web Pages

Summary

Palabea is a social network site for practicing, learning, teaching and otherwise communicating in foreign languages. It has a beautiful site design and its features are quite strong.

After testing thoroughly the entire user interface, I am convinced that this is one of the most solid social language learning network platforms in cyberspace. It has a clean and friendly interface, the site loads quickly and the wide variety of features were well thought-out and executed.

The features include:

• uploading and sharing audio, video, photos and documents
• managing friends and meeting new people
• creating and partcipating in virtual classrooms
• watching videolectures, reading documents and listening to podcasts from other users
• calling friends and translating on the fly
• tool for recording audio and video right through their site!

There are plenty of others, too. And the team seems to be active in developing more features and improving upon those already available.

Palabea is currently ad-free! I'm not sure what their business model is, but they've partnered with Deutsche Welle, Babylon and Café Babel. They partnered with Babylon on the widget to translate on the fly while talking with someone (or just surfing), but I am not sure exactly how they are affiliated with the other two - both of which are very cool, by the way!

The site is localized in 6 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish.

So congrats to the folks at Palabea! I know I'll be stopping in over there.

From Website

Learning a new language just became fun, easy and free.

palabea.net is an e-learning website and social community that offers opportunities to learn and practice foreign languages. It offers a wide range of tools and technologies which support its users with their learning endeavours, and allows people to communicate and learn about different cultures.

Changes in society triggered by the effects of globalization developed the need to learn and respect cultural diversity. To maintain a dialogue between people in different countries, and to forge multicultural relationships, learning foreign languages is essential. Some obstacles in learning a foreign language, including: lack of motivation and time, and high costs, but using palabea.net everyone has the opportunity to learn a foreign language and communicate with people around the world without leaving their home.

palabea.net users are able to:

- Access a portal of contents (video lessons, podcast and multimedia educational material), information on language schools, au pair opportunities and traveling abroad. More information will be added as the portal develops.

- Have online conversations in a foreign language: palabea users can easily find friends who share similar interests, and who will help them learn and practice languages. Users will be able to speak about any topics, or if they prefer, use lessons or situation games designed for to improve language skills -Practice comprehension with audio and video applications. The users can listen to podcasts in other languages or watch video lessons, which help explain grammatical aspects of the language. -Play teacher and assist others in learning their native language which allows for innovative ways in collaborative learning.

- Generate their own content, as individuals or a group. People can present themselves with information, pictures/videos. - Unlike other social networks, palabea.net offers an integrated video-chat system that appears on the page and doesn't require users to download an extra application. -palabea has created virtual classes to help users practice their written language skills. In these classes the users collaborate with documents and assist each in learning languages. These virtual classes can be created by a group of users, or if the user prefers, they can request the services of a professional language teacher.

Palabea.net complements traditional language schools rather than competing against them. It is another distinctive aspect of palabea.net, who from the outset, worked with many schools to help produce e-learning applications that are both be easy to use and effective.

Palabea.net was founded by Sebastian Schkudlara, Guido Veth and Patricia Sierra Fernandez in Berlin. The Palabea.net team is a small and international group of multilingual speakers, with three official languages: English, German and Spanish.

Visit Palabea.net

Summary

Worldia is a social networking tool for making friends and practicing languages. It focuses on using Skype to bridge the virtual gap and connect with real people worldwide as friends. The foreign-language-learning networking tools are accompanied by community building possiblities and paid private language lessons. The ensemble creates the potential for someone to quickly and interactively learn to speak foreign languages.

At Worldia, members can become tutors and earn money teaching online. This adds a nice twist to the social language learning gambit, and makes it a feature-rich web community for learning and teaching foreign languages - and getting paid! Nice.

One aspect of Worldia that I dig is the world map feature that allows you to view locations of all the friends you encounter on the site. Sweet.

Worldia is also available in Japanese. I imagine they'll add more languages in the future.

From Website

My Page

My Page is your home in Worldia, where.you give your self-introduction to others, write your diary and manage your activities in Worldia. You can also see what's going on with your friennds and communities and send/receive messages and let other members to start Skype conversations with you.

Find Friends

You may find someone who can related to while reading diaries and joining communities. You may also be able to search members to find your friends. You can find out more about the person by visiting his/her "My Page."

If you find someone interesting, send Friend Request politely. It would be wonderful if you fill up your World map with friends.

Communicating with Other Members

There is a dedicated messaging system in Worldia. Worldia also use Skype features so that you can actually talk with your friends. Some members are actually teaching native languages to each other using this feature.

You should actively provide and exchange information by wrting comments in community topics and friends' diary, and writing reviews of books and movies.

* Since Worldia is inter-cultural site, please make sure to respect others and act courteously while communicating with others.

Join Communities

Communities are where people with the same interests join to form a place for discussions and events. You can search existing communities to find the one you want to join or you can start a new community yourself.

Take or Teach Language Lessons

In Worldia, members who have registered as tutors are teaching language lessons to regular members. For student members, they can find the language and lessons they want since tutors are coming from all over the world. For tutor members, they can start lesson business with students from all over the world. Try the free trial lessons today!

Since starting as WannaTalk in March 2007, Worldia has grown to the site with close to 10,000 members from 170 countries and regions of the world. We will continue to work on improving our service so that more users will use our site.

Visit Worldia.net

Summary

One of the largest and fastest-growing online social language learning networks, italki.com offers a sophisticated user interface, a large and growing user base, a shared file database of lessons and helpful info as well as a great list of language-learning resources (you have to join to access them fully).

This is a great place to meet people for a language exchange over VoIP (Skype, Gizmo, etc.) and with instant messaging. You can meet and maintain language study exchanges with people from all over the world!

An excellent advantage of italki.com over some other social language learning networks is that their site has been localized in Arabic, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, making it easier to use the site if your native language is not English.

This site is an excellent way to meet, learn, teach and exchange cultural information with new folks from around the world.

If you are unfamiliar with Skype, click on the image below to find out more about making calls to anywhere in the world for free using any computer! It's the perfect way to connect and speak with language partners anywhere for free.

From Website

"What's italki?

italki is a language learning community. It's main goal is to help people learn languages.

At italki you can:

* Find language partners (language exchange, study buddies, teachers)
* Communicated with them (using Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Talkbox, etc.)
* Find language resources (podcasts, websites, videos, dictionaries, books, etc.)
* Participate in language forums

By creating a profile, you can find and be found by other people who are interested in helping you learn languages. Along the way, we're sure you'll make some friends and learn about foreign cultures. By voting on language resources, you can give recommendations and find out the best tools to help you learn a language. By participating in the learning community, you can also join discussions, ask questions, and help people trying to learn your language.

italki was developed by a company called Talk da Talk. Talk da Talk is based in Shanghai, China, and is dedicated to teaching English experientially.? They believe using a foreign language is the only way to really learn it.

We hope italki helps you learn a foreign language and make new friends!

What is language exchange?

Language exchange is when two people take turns speaking the other person's native language. By doing this, both sides get a chance to practice speaking the language they want to learn. We recommend dividing the time between the languages evenly.

For example:

* John speaks English and wants to learn Chinese
* John does a search to find Lily, a Chinese woman who wants to study English
* John and Lily decide to do a language exchange for 30 minutes
* For 15 minutes John and Lily only speak Chinese
* For 15 minutes John and Lily only speak English

There are many ways to arrange a language exchange, and there is no one right way to do it. Here are our final recommendations:

* be respectful
* don't be afraid of making mistakes
* have fun!

What is a language learning community?

A language learning community is a group of people that are dedicated to learning languages. When you study in a language school, you can rely on your classmates and your teacher to help you learn the language.

* You can ask questions of your teacher about "how do you say...".
* You can ask your classmates "which dictionary or textbook or CD is the best?"
* You also can ask them if they know anyone who can help with language practice

Unfortunately, not everybody has time, money, or chance to enroll in a language school.

Luckily, with the internet now the whole world can be your language learning community.Now it doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter if there is no language school and there are no foreigners living in your city. Now if you have an internet connection, you can find a native speaker of almost any language and talk with them for free. With internet phone programs like Skype, and chat programs like MSN, Yahoo messenger, you can communicate with people living on the other side of the world. Join our forum and discuss with other community members your experiences learning languages.

If you're interested in learning languages, try joining italki's language learning community. We hope you'll learn as well as contribute to it.
What are language resources?

Language resources are the tools you need to learn a language. That includes:

* Podcasts
* Videos
* Websites
* Books
* CD / MP3
* Dictionaries ... and more

Every language student needs these tools to learn a language. But did you ever wonder if there were better materials? Did you ever wonder if there was a better textbook? Or if there was a better electronic dictionary??
In addition, with the internet, there are many new and useful sites. There are amazing new podcasts, and websites with flashcards, or software programs, that have made learning much easier than even a few years ago. We hope this part of the website allows you to find the best tools, and gives you a chance to share your knowledge of resources that you found useful."

Link

Visit italki.com