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.
GNU/GPL (Free) Mac Language Software
OpenThesaurus German Dictionary Plugin
This plugin extends Apple's Dictionary application (Dictionary.app) with a German thesaurus.
- You can search for every synonym not just the primary word.
- You can search for parts of a hyphen delimited term or a word which is not located at the beginning of a term (as Dictionary normally does).
- This is a offline dictionary, so you don’t need an internet connection.
The dictionary content is based on the online dictionary www.openthesaurus.de by Daniel Naber.
Licensed under GNU General Public License v3
BeoLingus German-English Dictionary Plugin
This plugins extends Apple‘s Dictionary application (Dictionary.app) with a German-English dictionary.
- The search works in both directions, you can search for German or English terms.
- This is a offline dictionary, so you don’t need an internet connection.
The dictionary content is based on the online dictionary www.beolingus.de by TU Chemnitz.
Licensed under GNU General Public License v3
Mac OSX Language Freeware
BYKI
Byki is a powerful and personalized language-learning system. It locks foreign language words and phrases into your memory so that you can recall them perfectly and remember them forever. Put simply: Byki works, it's smart, and people tell us they can't stop using it.
ArtenSPEAK
A simple application that speaks text. You may drag or paste text into the ArtenSPEAK text area and when you depress the loudspeaker button the text will be read to you. Ideal for use with webpages, email, or any text document.
Transliteration
The transliteration tool. It uses simple rules to replace characters of one alphabet with characters of another. Russian-Latin and Julius Caesar rules are included. PLIST-files with simple syntax allow defining your own rules. Just e-mail us your PLISTs, and we’ll include them in future versions of Transliteration.
Vocab
Helps you learn words in any European language - and Latin and Greek - quickly and successfully. It gives you instant access to all your vocab lists, and any other words you want to learn, making it easy to revise, easy to test yourself, and easy to become word-perfect in next to no time.
The application also includes a useful widget that flashes up a different random word every time you open Dashboard, enabling you to give yourself a quick test at anytime.
With Vocab, you can also customise your tests, choosing part of speech and whether you see the word or its translation. It highlights any words you get wrong, and your results are added automatically to a log, so you can track your progress and see how well you’re doing on a graph.
It’s the ideal way to get the best results and improve your language skills!
Bulgarian Language Pack for Dictionary
This will install two more Dictionary to your Dictionary.App
- Bulgarian - English
- English - Bulgarian
LatinEdit
The program’s main window allows you to transcribe from a graphics file, and provides twin text editing fields for side by side translations. There is an incorporated Latin-English / English-Latin dictionary and facility for footnotes, vocabulary, revision and declining and conjugating words.
aTypeTrainer4Mac
A multilingual typing tutor for Mac OS X. It is an advanced version of TypeTrainer4Mac. All of the system keyboard layouts (but not input methods!) as well as a wide variety of non-system keyboard layouts (i.e. Dvorak, Colemak or custom layouts being built using Ukelele) are completely or partially supported.
You have to type a mixed-string of random characters. You can customize a character set at each of the 30 levels, and thus, you can control the learning process. You can also import texts from TextEdit, from Mail or from your web browser. Each session provides two run logs, one in RTFD format and one in HTML format. The RTFD log is generated at the end of each session and suitable for printing as well as close inspection. The HTML log is generated at the start of each session and actualized every second. Therefore, it is suitable for following the typing process. Thus, teachers get an actual oversight of the typing protocol of all pupils/students of their class at any given moment of time. In the Preferences, you can adjust a host of settings in order to make your typing exercises to your liking.
WORDS Latin Dictionary
This Mac OS X Dictionary.app plugin is based on William Whitaker’s Latin translation dictionary WORDS.
CEDICT for Apple Dictionary
The CEDICT project was started by Paul Denisowski in 1997 with the aim to provide a complete Chinese to English dictionary with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters.
MDBG CC-CEDICT ( http://www.mdbg.net/ ) is a continuation of the CEDICT project.
CEDICT for Apple Dictionary based on CC-CEDICT project. Adapted to Apple Dictionary by Yuri Yuriev.
To install just unzip the file to /Library/Dictionaries.
ProVoc
A free and easy-to-use vocabulary trainer. Behind its simple and user-friendly interface, ProVoc offers a rich variety of unique features that will greatly help you improve your knowledge of any foreign language or technical terminology.
- Repeat and browse your vocabulary on your iPod
- Print two-sided flash cards
- Unicode support (e.g. for Asiatic, Hebraic, Arabic or any other alphabet)
- Several intelligent test modes of variable difficulty
- Multiple choice questions
- Share vocabulary documents
- Freely organize your vocabulary in lessons and chapters
- Animated backgrounds
- Dashboard widget
- And much more
Shareware and Demo Mac Language Software
Kanji Go
A Mac OS X application designed to make it easy to lookup and review Japanese and Chinese. Look up words from and to Japanese and Chinese, English, Russian, German, and French.
- Find Kanji by Radical, Reading, Meaning, Stroke Count, or SKIP index
- Create, print, import/export, and publish custom vocabulary lists
- Study via customizable digital flash cards
- Quiz Mode with adjustable difficulty and styles
- View conjugations for all Japanese verbs and adjectives
- Use Romaji, Kanji, and/or Kana when searching and viewing flash cards
Practiquemos
Using this software: You learn faster, you learn better, you have fun. If you want to communicate in Spanish easily and effectively you have to practice. That’s exactly what you can do by using “Practiquemos” (let’s practice). You learn faster, you learn better and you have fun because it works like a video game. It’s challenging and amusing. Suitable for Spanish learners, from teenagers to adults and from beginners to advanced. Download lots of free exercises to practice verbs conjugation, prepositions, vocabulary, articles and more.
Language Alchemist eXtended
For anyone speaking, reading, or studying languages, the Language Alchemist eXtended with its large up-to-date vocabulary is absolutely essential and perfect for everyday use.
The revised edition of our multilingual dictionary - which includes more than 400 individual dictionaries - provides you with an extensive vocabulary, which can be extended smoothly at any time. Therefore we offer a lot of free downloadable ready to use dictionaries. Or design your own vocabulary extension by using our new and free Lexis Builder, which helps you to create your own dictionary in just a few steps.
Integrated in nearly any Mac application such as Safari, Preview, Keynote or Pages you get the power to investigate unknown words with just One-Click. As the result you can still better and still faster understand various sources of information, e.g. manuals, online help and Web pages. It will be essential for your daily work.
Easy Translator
Employs the power of Internet machine language translation engines, and is capable of translating between 35 languages.
With this handy program, you’ll be able to read almost any web page or email in your language.
Lexis Builder
Use Lexis Buider to create your personal glossary and design your own “One-Click” information source.
You need just a few steps to convert your common data source (CSV) to a comfortable Language Alchemist X vocabulary extension. The Builder assists you descriptive during the whole build process, from selecting the data source to installing your extension. Please follow simply the onscreen instructions
After you created your private glossary, you can comfortably access your information with Language Alchemist X. It is your ultimate assistant to translate easily words of foreign language texts. Integrated in nearly any Mac application such as Safari, Preview, Keynote or Pages you get the power to investigate unknown words with just One-Click.
TranslateIt! Deluxe
Very fast words translation tool with extensible dictionaries.
TranslateIt! for Mac is distributed as Deluxe (shareware) and freeware. You can use shareware version free of a period of 20 days. After that, you have to buy the program or remove it from your computer.
- PopUp Window with short translation with autoscroll
- English, German, French, Spanish and Russian morphology support
- Integrated Full Text Translation tool
- Additional Sounds and Flags support
- True ‘word under mouse’ translation engine (no selection needed), works with most of standard controls for Cocoa applications (menu, lists, Finder items, prefserences options, Dashboard widget items - all can be translated)
- RTFD user notes
- Integrated game - Words Quiz
- Detachable cards with translation results
- Many more features.
iKanji
A tool for learning Japanese kanji characters on your Mac. It features customisable flash cards and three different test modules. The tests cover kanji meanings, readings and stroke writing. iKanji keeps a detailed history of your test scores over time so you can track your learning progress.
iKanji contains 2230 kanji, that includes Japanese school grade kanji up to level 6 and JLPT levels 1 to 4. In addition there are 214 kanji radicals. Nearly 20,000 example words are also provided in kanji and kana with their meaning in English. Many kanji also have stroke animations.
Global Word
An English-Chinese Dictionary containing 60,000+ entries with the following major features:
- Look-up By Radical, Simplified Character, Traditional Character, Pinyin, Zhuyin, or English
- Look-up using similar words or even character-by-character translation
- Filter results using wildcards
- Embedded Chat Room allows you to study with others worldwide
- Using the Dictionary does not require Internet access
- The dictionary is updated approximately every month, and upgrades will always be freely and easily available!
French Verb Games
Practice French verb conjugation using tests and puzzles. Fun and easy to use. Select tenses, verb groups and verb types depending on your level of learning. Choose between a variety of test formats, including fill in tests, crosswords, word search puzzles and word games. French Verb Games creates an unlimited number of tests and puzzles from your selections. The program also includes full conjugation tables for 700 verbs, color coded to show verb irregularities.
Amigos Spanish
Learn Spanish with the Amigos Spanish verb program. Practice verb conjugation using tests and puzzles, including anagrams, word search and crosswords puzzles. Fun and easy to use. Amigos Spanish provides the repetition needed to quickly gain confidence using Spanish verbs in different tenses. The program is designed for all levels of expertise — everything is fully selectable. The program includes full conjugation tables for 700 verbs.
Jisho
An easy to use Japanese English dictionary. With it’s super fast search results it is perfect for students of Japanese and English.
Features:
- Search in Japanese, English, German Russian, and French
- Japanese searching can be in Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, or Romaji (Roman letters)
- View translations in Japanese, English German, Russian and French
- View the part of speech of a word
- Automatically converts from Japanese characters to Roman letters
- Select the depth of a search
- Wildcard search
- Search History
- Mac OS X Integration
- Zooming
- Completely localized into German and Japanese
Word Spelunker
Word Spelunker (Formerly “OS X Word Lookup”) is a GUI front end to the command line “grep” tool in OS X. It gives you access to thousands of fascinating and unique words. These can be great if you’re looking for a unique word to be used as a login. It can help you avoid being jsmith1234@somedomain.com.
Don’t use it to find passwords. That’s a really bad idea because dictionary attacks are one of the most common forms of brute force password cracking.
Lexicon
Introducing a new way to learn languages. Lexicon makes it easy to keep track of your foreign language vocabulary and learn new words. Entering words is easy with LanguageSync- just start typing a word and Lexicon will do the rest. Then organize your words into groups (including smart groups), and Practice them to start learning! When you’re ready, take a Quiz to test your knowledge. Try it out and see what you learn.
Amigos Spanish Puzzles
Learn Spanish vocabulary using various word games and puzzles. Fun and easy to use. Words are grouped into categories for easy learning. Amigos Spanish Puzzles also provides a great variety of games and puzzles for a less formal learning environment.
Choose from crossword puzzles, word search puzzles and various word games including anagrams, matching words, or match your wits against friends in a fun dice and board game.
French Word Puzzles
Learn French vocabulary using games and puzzles. French Word Puzzles includes over 2500 French words and expressions, divided into 75 categories and sub-categories for easy learning. Create unlimited fill in tests, crossword puzzles, word search puzzles and word games from these words, or play a fun dice and board game. French Word Puzzles provides a unique and fun filled learning experience.
Proloquo
A multilingual speech solution for Mac OS X that provides: (1) a full-fledged communication system (AAC) for people who cannot speak; (2) provides speech feedback in any application while typing for children and people with learning disabilities; (3) can serve as a talking word processor; (4) provides an advanced, multilingual speech engine for our KeyStrokes on-screen keyboard and our SwitchXS switch access solution.
Proloquo includes natural-sounding Infovox iVox voices for a language of choice. The languages currently available are American English, British English, American Spanish, Czech, Canadian French, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, Icelandic, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish and Turkish. Infovox iVox provides voices that work not only in Proloquo but system-wide. Finally, Proloquo of course works with all the built-in voices of Mac OS X.
Proloquo can be used to create a complete personalized Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) system using simple drag and drop (or copy and paste) of phrases into lists organized by topic. Proloquo also includes LayoutKitchen. With LayoutKitchen users can design their own speech panels for Proloquo with colorable and resizable buttons containing text and/or images in a variety of formats.
Ultralingua Dictionaries
Ultralingua redefines dictionary software for Mac OS X. Redesigned from the ground up for Mac OS X Leopard, Ultralingua 7 combines award-winning dictionaries with verb conjugation, gorgeous Core Animation flashcards, integrated discussion forums, number-to-text translation, and much more.
Features:
- Extensive dictionaries, rich with definitions, translations, usages notes, and more: French-English, Spanish-English, German-English, Italian-English, Portuguese-English, Norwegian-English, Latin-English, Esperanto-English, Spanish-French, German-French, Italian-French, German-Spanish, Portuguese-Spanish, and English and French definitions and synonyms.
- Lightning-fast live search. Use any form of a word (in most languages) when searching.
- Flashcards. Create color-coded flashcards, and then test yourself with the beautiful Core Animation full-screen flashcard view. With Flashcard Autocomplete, creating language flashcards has never been easier.
- Many more features.
iFlash
An advanced memorization application based around the flash-card learning metaphor. If you want to learn almost anything, from a foreign language to the ten-codes police officers use, iFlash is for you.
iFlash includes many great features to help you study. You can record audio directly into any flash-card (great for foreign languages), as well as attaching images. Other features include an unlimited amount of card sides per deck, advanced importing and exporting, iPod support, quick-searching and a beautiful interface that is strikingly similar to other iApplications (like iTunes and iPhoto).
Also included is the integrated iFlash Deck Library, which is an easy way to download and share card decks. With a familiar interface and over 2000 card decks available, you’ll be learning something new in no time.
Japanese-English Dictionary
A program for Mac OS X that contains all the necessary for students learning Japanese, it’s a comprehensive and up-to-date Japanese-English dictionary with grammatical notes containing thousand of Japanese words and phrases with English translation helping you to write letters, send emails and make phone calls in good Japanese.
You can copy words from the application and paste them into another document. You can use the program in several ways to help you to study grammar. The English translations include information about whether the word is a noun, an adjective, a verb. You can search for grammatical abbreviations, like “adj-na” for “adjectival nouns or quasi-adjectives” and the dictionary will display dozens of Japanese adjectival nouns or quasi-adjectives entries with their English translations.
Apimac Japanese-English Dictionary is based on “EDICT Dictionary File” of the JMdict/EDICT Project; founded, coordinated and run by Jim Breen. EDICT is a Japanese-English Dictionary file which currently has about 110,000 entries.
iKana
A Japanese learning aide which helps to teach you the two Japanese phonetic alphabets Hiragana and Katakana. iKana can also be extended to teach other alphabets and Kanji.
iKana has four main learning components - kana flash cards, vocabulary flash cards, speed recognition and a Romanization test.
Flash cards are the starting point for beginners new to kana. Use the flash card viewer to help you memorize the different kana. The flash card viewer can be controlled with an Apple Remote. You can also use the flash cards to learn Japanese vocabulary.
The speed recognition test helps to reinforce your memory and improve your reading speed with an ‘against the clock’ multiple-choice test. The speed recognition test can also be controlled with an Apple Remote.
The word Romanization test helps you practice reading whole words by translating them from kana into Romaji. This test helps you learn some Japanese vocabulary as well as improving your translation and reading skills.
SpeakAlong
A talking storyteller for Macintosh. It’s a book reader right inside your computer. Now available in several editions including Children’s Classics, the King James Bible, and a lower-priced Standalone Edition without the bundled books. This software is proven easy-to-use by anyone 5 and up. Choose from a huge bookshelf of titles, pick a pleasing storytelling voice, then sit back and listen. It’s that simple and before long you and your kids will be playing your favorites again and again.
English-Spanish Dictionary
An English/Spanish translation dictionary for Mac that combines a comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary with grammatical notes and an ample phrase book containing thousand of English phrases with translations into Spanish.
You can find all the entries that contain any particular English or Spanish word by typing or pasting the word into the Find box and pressing the Return key. The dictionary collects all the entries that match what you’ve entered, and displays the English and the Spanish side-by-side. You can copy words from the dictionary and paste them into another document.
English-Spanish Dictionary is made in a way that guide you to find just useful information and not tons of unuseful things. This is the reasons because you find on it only useful grammatical notes, useful English phrases with Spanish translation and a Phrase Book with translated love phrases and romantic words of love.
English-Italian Dictionary
English-Italian Dictionary is an English/Italian translation dictionary for Mac that combines all the necessary stuff for students learning Italian: a comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary with grammatical notes; a huge phrase book containing thousands of English phrases with Italian translation, English idioms and proverbs; an exhaustive business dictionary for helping users to compose commercial letters, send emails and make phone calls in good Italian.
You can find all the entries that contain any particular English or Italian word by typing or pasting the word into the Find box and pressing the Return key. The dictionary collects all the entries that match what you’ve entered, and displays the English and the Italian side-by-side. You can copy words from the dictionary and paste them into another document.
English-Italian Dictionary is made in a way that guide you to find just useful information and not tons of unuseful things. This is the reasons because you find on it only useful grammatical notes, useful English phrases with Italian translation, business words and phrases and lot of English Idioms and Proverbs and a Phrase Book with translated love phrases and romantic words of love.
English-German Dictionary
An English/German translation dictionary for Mac that combines a comprehensive and up-to-date dictionary with grammatical notes and an ample phrase book containing thousand of English phrases with translations into German.
You can find all the entries that contain any particular English or German word by typing or pasting the word into the Find box and pressing the Return key. The dictionary collects all the entries that match what you’ve entered, and displays the English and the German side-by-side. You can copy words from the dictionary and paste them into another document. English-German Dictionary is made in a way that guide you to find just useful information and not tons of unuseful things. This is the reasons because you find on it only useful grammatical notes, useful English phrases with Gernman translation and a Phrase Book with translated love phrases and romantic words of love.
TypeTrainer4Mac
A multilingual typing tutor. It can be used with a large variety of system and custom keyboard layouts. External RTF files can be connected to the application as additional exercises. Each session provides its own run log.
Arabic Dictionary Plugin
This is a plugin for Mac OS X 10.5 Dictionary , provide you a translate from English to Arabic , from the Dictionary application or using right click from any where in the system.
LookUpDictionary
Helps you to look up words with “Dictionary” of MacOSX. It automatically looks up the word you selected in front most window or you copied, so it can be helpful when you reading long document or browse website.
GuidaTV
An EPG application that provides exhaustive listing and review of the programs aired on Italian terrestrial and satellite TV, allowing the user to integrate them with other personal productivity applications (PVR’s, calendars, etc.)
Thanks to the Spotlight plugin, you can also find TV programs in your search results.
The app includes a Dashboard Widget.
Personal Lexicon
With Personal Lexicon you’ll be able to create a lexicon specifically geared towards the language you’re learning. From there you’ll add lexical items (words, phrases, or expressions) with corresponding definitions and language specific lexical types (nouns, verbs, etc). You’ll also have the option of adding other important information like synonyms, antonyms, conjugation forms, and much more.
By creating themes you’ll be able to organize your lexical items in ways that make sense to you. Studying related vocabulary together helps improve memory retention, which is why language textbooks present vocabulary in this way. The difference here is that Personal Lexicon lets you define the groups yourself, giving them extra significance, thereby improving your chances of remembering the vocabulary when it counts.
After you’ve entered a few lexical items you’ll be ready to create tests and pop quizzes. Four different test types along a plethora of configuration options gives you literately hundreds of possible test variations. Tests are stored so they can be taken over and over while quizzes are created on the fly for quick assessment. Both tests and quizzes can be created from themes or from a random set of lexical items. You have full control. Many more features.
gooDict
A simple dictionary application. It contains Japanese, English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries. It must be useful for people who are studying Japanese. It allows you to look up dictionary through “Service” function from other Cocoa application. And gooDict can automatically look up the selection of other Cocoa application at background. (Not available in Safari) It also can automatically look up the content of pasteboard. So if you find an unknown word, you just select or copy that word and gooDict shows you the meaning of that word. gooDict uses (http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/) goo as a dictionary.
Master Spell
Administers spelling drills using over 3,600 included words and sentences spoken with a real voice and supplemental guidance using the Mac’s Text-to-Speech.
It includes a test editor with voice recorder to record your own words and sentences, provisions for alternate spellings, an interactive chatty owl, a Hangman game, and lots of options for multiple-users and networks for installation at schools.
JEDict
A multilingual dictionary viewer capable to search EDICT, WadokuJT, XDXF, BEDIC, EIJIRO, and EPWING dictionaries. Originally JEDict was developed as a Japanese-English dictionary, therefore it supports all conceivable methods of Kanji lookup.
JEDict has text editor, multilingual user dictionary, JLPT list viewer, web browser, and dictionary manager. It provides translation service through the services menu and contextual menu plug-in.
Chinese Language FlashCard Software
With our Chinese Study Flash Cards, you will learn, by choosing the subject you want, then going into it, like no other software out there.
When you want a subject in focus, Bai An Flash Card Software is your portal to it. Communication is one of the greatest gifts you could give someone. If you know of someone who is getting started, or is moving into more intermediate Chinese, then Bai An Education software is a Perfect gift for them. It’s easy to use, and is fully customizable.