Language Resources - Blog Posts

ok, this is amazing. I found a great site with short stories in 34 languages!

"WorldStories is a growing collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in the languages most spoken by UK children.

We are adding new stories, translations, pictures and sound recordings every week. So keep coming back to enjoy new content!"

my friend and i were going to study a language together and wound up having to cancel our plans due to scheduling pressures, but! through research we came across a really cool resource for reading in a TON of languages: bloom library!

as you can see, it has a lot of books for languages that are usually a bit harder to find materials for—we were going to use it for kyrgyz, for example, which has over 1000 books, which was really hard to find textbook materials for otherwise. as you can see it also has books with audio options, which would be really useful for pronunciation checking. as far as i can tell, everything on the site is free as well.

Helpful Books To Learn Languages

French

50 Ways To Improve Your French

Barron’s French Idioms

Learn French: The Fast And Fun Way (This book has tons of great worksheets and everything. It’s great for learning French!)

2,001 Most Useful French Words

Say It Right in French: The Easy Way to Pronounce Correctly 

Streetwise French

Berlitz Hide This French Phrase Book

Italian

50 Ways To Improve Your Italian

Berlitz Self-Teacher Italian (Personally, I don’t really care for these types of books, mainly because I don’t the things you learn in the first few chapters. Unless you have a base in the language, I don’t think this book will work for you.)

Learn Italian: The Fast And Fun Way (This book has tons of great worksheets and everything. It’s great for learning Italian!)

Barron’s Italian Idioms 

Easy Italian Phrase Book: 770 Basic Phrases for Everyday Use 

Correct Your Italian Blunders

Spanish

50 Ways To Improve Your Spanish

Correct Your Spanish Blunders 

Just Enough Spanish

Dirty Spanish - Warning: This is really vulgar.

Barron’s Complete Spanish Grammar Review 

Making Out in Spanish (I think this title is great. I’ve never read this book, but if you’re looking for slang/everyday Spanish, this seems like a pretty good book.)

Ven Conmigo! Grammar and Vocabulary Workbook: Level 1 (This is the actual workbook I use in my Spanish 1 class. It is great and I love it. If you want to teach yourself Spanish, I highly recommend getting a workbook like this.)

Hide This Spanish Book (This has a lot for a small book. Mainly just some basic phrases, along with some that are more vulgar.)

Hide This Spanish Book for Lovers (The title speaks for itself…)  

Mierda! The Real Spanish You Were Never Taught In School

Say It Right In Spanish

German

50 Ways To Improve Your German

Dirty German - Warning: This is really vulgar.

Say It Right In German: The Easy Way to Pronounce Correctly

Easy Way to Enlarge Your German Vocabulary

Barron’s German Idioms

The Tell-Tale Heart - If you want to read in German, this seems like a pretty good book to get. 

German-English Visual Dictionary

Scheisse!: The Real German You Were Never Taught In School - I love all these books. They have them in every language (The title means “Shit”). Although it doesn’t have the pronunciations, its still pretty great for the vocabulary it has. It’s a bit vulgar though, but not too bad.

Portuguese 

Just Enough Portuguese: How to Get by and Be Easily Understood

Portuguese Verb and Essentials of Grammar

Berlitz Portuguese Phrase Books & Dictionary

51 Portuguese Idioms - Speak Like a Brazilian 

Arabic

Arabic-English Visual Dictionary

The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read and Write It

First 100 Words In Arabic

Learn Arabic: The Fast and Fun Way

Making Out In Arabic  

Instant Arabic!

Japanese

Berlitz Concise Dictionary

Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters

Colloquial Kansai Japanese: The Dialects and Culture of the Kansai Region

Speak Japanese Today 

Making Out In Japanese - I just bought this book, and it seems pretty great. 

More Making Out In Japanese 

Korean

Say It Right In Korean 

Korean Made Easy

Instant Korean

First 100 Words In Korean

Making Out In Korean

More Making Out In Korean

Korean For Travelers - I think this might only be a Nook book, which kind of sucks.

Dirty Korean -  Warning: This is really vulgar.  

Basic Korean: Workbook

Intermediate Korean: Workbook - I’m not sure if this is worth getting because of the price, but it seems like a helpful book

Korean At A Glance

Teach Me Everyday Korean

Chinese

Making Out In Chinese (I think this title is great. I’ve never read this book, but if you’re looking for slang/everyday Chinese, this seems like a pretty good book.)

Mandarin Chinese - English Visual Dictionary

Survival Chinese 

Get Talking Chinese - This book is so great. It’s kind of like a children’s book, but for learning basic Chinese, it’s great.

Hide This Mandarin Chinese Phrase Book 

Instant Chinese!

Polish

Say It In Polish 

Berlitz Polish Concise Dictionary

Berlitz Polish Phrasebook and Dictionary

Polish: An Essential Grammar

Russian

Learn Russian: The Fast and Fun Way

Say It Right In Russian

Russian Vocabulary

Dermo!: The Real Russian Tolstoy Never Used

Russian At A Glance

Just Enough Russian

General Language Books

Barron’s 501 Verbs (comes in French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, English and German)

Note: I love Berlitz and Barron books for learning languages. Most are just reference books for verbs, grammar, or basic phrases instead of textbooks. But once you have a base in the language, they help you improve so much. I highly recommend buying any Berlitz or Barron language books. I love the 50 Ways To Improve Your books. They are the best grammar/vocab/correction language books ever. I use the Spanish one to help teach myself Spanish, and I absolutely love it. And it isn’t very expensive either!

GLOSS - Global Language Online Support System

This online resource has tons of resources for lots of different languages, and it is totally free!

There are lots of lessons catered to different levels which tailor vocab practice as well as listening and reading comprehension. I would say that the vocabulary and scenarios are generally more geared up towards security/defence and diplomacy, so if you are studying international relations or something geared towards the international sphere, this may be particularly interesting!

Then you can select different types of activities, which you can download onto your computer as MP3s and PDFs. The activities are categorised based on what skill they train. There are reading and vocab activities that help build up knowledge. Although the topics are pretty specific, they are really useful for getting vocab practice in areas that you are not so familiar with!

The activities are diverse and varied, with explanations for answers that were not correct!

There is also a glossary for all the new words, which has an audio file to listen to the pronunciation by a native speaker. This is particularly useful for self study, especially when contact with native speakers is less frequent.

All in all I really rate the website, the resources are a really great compliment to language studies, and although they are kind of ‘old school’ in their approach, they seem really effective!

***The link***

https://gloss.dliflc.edu/

Cats and kittens,

Here's a link to a Google doc file I created. You'll find:

Entire classic books written or translated to French (divided by country/continent + by genre in the French section)

The first chapter FR/EN of very famous novels

Quizzes (made by yours truly)

Have fun!

do u have any advice for ppl who want to study linguistics and languages but couldnt afford to study it at school?? thanks if you answer this, have a great day

yeah! you can easily download textbooks online and study from them AND I do have a dropbox full of linguistics textbooks!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm7x5dz8fu4bdlp/AADshTfRGZG5JZALkDV6wFlwa?dl=0 

it includes phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, morphology, and etymology. 

I also have another dropbox folder full of language textbooks:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tdm26h60ccl9pe1/AABg0B3mOGaWLG9Kfyuvut6wa?dl=0

As of November 6: Includes 83 textbooks including Arabic, ASL, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh :)

do u have any advice for ppl who want to study linguistics and languages but couldnt afford to study it at school?? thanks if you answer this, have a great day

yeah! you can easily download textbooks online and study from them AND I do have a dropbox full of linguistics textbooks!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qm7x5dz8fu4bdlp/AADshTfRGZG5JZALkDV6wFlwa?dl=0 

it includes phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, morphology, and etymology. 

I also have another dropbox folder full of language textbooks:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tdm26h60ccl9pe1/AABg0B3mOGaWLG9Kfyuvut6wa?dl=0

As of November 6: Includes 83 textbooks including Arabic, ASL, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh :)

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)