Reviews

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501 Essential French Verbs, from Dover

4 French, Books

This nicely designed book from Dover Publications consists primarily of verb tables. It is hard to get overly excited about verb tables, which simply involve listing all possible conjugations for a given verb, and then all the conjugations for another…

Oops! I Forgot to Hide It!

4 French, Books

I’ll be blunt: this French book is a little dirty. Which is fine. Smutty stuff has a place in a French student’s library. Especially a college-age student, but the contents of Hide This French Book<…

One of Many Options on French-Flashcards.com: Study Words by Topic!

5 French, Audio Lessons, Flashcards, Multimedia, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

You know a language website is good when you and your husband spend date night (though I confess I have a visceral aversion to that odd expression) playing around on it. French-Flashcards.com is French flashcards on steroids! This is…

A Petite French Grammar with a Very High Grammar-to-Dollar Ratio

5 French, Books

This small old-fashioned French book has a high grammar density. It is not a workbook; it is a concise summary of the basic principles of French grammar, populated with numerous helpful examples. The cover promises that it is “All the…

Digital Dialects: Some Cute and Actually Useful Games, in Many Languages

4 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Multimedia, Tests, Vocabulary, Websites, Kids

The Digital Dialects website is an unexpected online pleasure full of free language games for 60 languages, from popular ones such as French and German to less widely studied ones such as Zazaki (spoken primarily in eastern Turkey) and Oromo (which…

Free Quizzes on the Transparent Language Website

Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, Tests, Websites

I like free online quizzes and tests, but they aren’t really worth anything unless they’re good.  At least some of these from language-learning company Transparent Language seem pretty good! And plentiful: they are available for more languages…

Transparent Language Online: Try It for Free!

3-5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Multimedia, Websites

Nashua, N.H.-based Transparent Language offers a free seven-day trial of its Transparent Language Online products.  When I say “products,” I really mean plural: during the trial you can try out any and all languages they have, and…

Multilingual Motivation

4 French, General, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Vocabulary

Can’t commit to a single language? Go for five at a time, then, with this daily tweet translating an English word into five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Today’s word was “train.”  Portuguese:

Schoenhof's Website Is a Window to the World

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites, Bookstores/Libraries, Kids

Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s claims to have the “largest collection of foreign books in North America.” As a student at Harvard, I used to shop at their main store in Harvard Square for my language and literature course materials. I…

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