woodriff.org what goes around surely must come around

Things are blowing up over a Free Language! -->

Welcome to the Ninth Edition of The Free Language Letter.

30 new free resources for 14 languages (4 new!) have been added to the site. There are now 343 resources available for 34 languages.

Quick View of What's Inside

• New! English Overview Page
• New Languages! Hebrew, Irish, Luxembourgish and Norwegian
• New resources for Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Irish, Luxembourgish, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and Spanish
• List of new web feeds including news and podcasts
• Online Translation Resources and Mozilla Firefox Addons
• Featured Resource: The New BBC Languages
• Language Factoid

It's been a very long time since polyglot from Free Language has actually published a list of the latest updates to the site. At last, this happened last night. So here goes with a healthy chunk of language-learning goodness...

Foreign Language Translation Extensions/Tools/Plugins/Add-Ons for the Firefox Web Browser
OneMinuteLanguages.com One Minute Language Lessons for Polish, Irish, German and Russian
SurvivalPhrases.com Survival Phrases in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Swedish, Arabic, Spanish and Vietnamese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Mandarin Chinese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Cantonese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
ExpertVillage.com Instructional Videos on Learning Foreign Languages
The Alternative Dictionary: Slang, Profanities, Insults and Vulgarisms from all the World
Learn Chinese on YouTube with Mandarin Videos from ActiveChinese
Learn Mandarin Chinese Videos on YouTube AskBenny Channel
A Pinyin.info Article on Most Difficult and Challenging Aspects of Learning Mandarin Chinese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Arabic Free Audio Lessons Downloads
Dickinson College's Language-Exchanges.org Mixxer Free Skype Language Exchange Community
Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
United Nations Declares 2008 the International Year of Languages
nciku.com nciku Free Online Mandarin Chinese Handwriting Recognition, Conversations, Radical Dictionary
LearningIndonesian.com Podcast is a Fun and Easy Way to Learn Indonesian Online
open.ac.uk OpenLearn LearningSpace Open University with Free Courses in Modern Languages
italki.com Free Skype VoIP and IM Language Partner Community
Download Free Open University Courses from MIT OpenCourseWare Foreign Languages and Literatures Department
About.com Distance Learning Free Online Language Courses
MyHappyPlanet.com My Happy Planet Private Social Language-Learning Community
List of Free Foreign Language Courses Online at Education-Portal.com
DigitalDialects.com Arabic Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Afrikaans Language-Learning Games and Activities
English Language Learning and Teaching Article on Wikipedia
A Torrent File for 500 Free Mandarin Chinese Audio Podcast Lessons from ChinesePod.com
JaplishPodcast.com Japlish Podcast of Funny Phrases in English and Japanese Languages
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Bilingual Blog
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Conversational Spanish Podcast
BYKI.com Download Free Language Software for Learning 42 Languages!
MangoLanguages.com Mango Languages Free Online Language Courses, Audio, Web Software
ISpeakHindi.com I Speak Hindi Website, Podcasts, Dictionary and Resources
Langmaker.com Language Maker Website on Auxiliary and Constructed Languages
Word2Word.com Website
Arabic Language Course for Arabic Learners Familiar with Arabic Script
BitesizedLanguages.com Bitesized Languages Improve Your French, Spanish or Portuguese Skills with Daily Emails
LiveMocha.com Live Mocha Social Language Learning Course and Networking Website
Lingopass.com Free Global Language Exchange Community
DigitalDialects.com French Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Russian Language-Learning Games and Activities

I took a break from updating Free Language for a while to rest my eyes and pursue other, well, pursuits.

So here are the latest posts from the site, which I have attacked with new vigor of late. Enjoy!

Rosetta Stone Learn Italian Language Software Level 1 (Commercial)
Learn about the Italian Language at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Rosetta Stone Learn Brazilian Portuguese Language Software Level 1 (Commercial)
Learn about the Portuguese Language on Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Rosetta Stone Learn US English Language Software Level 2 (Commercial)
eslgo.com English as a Second Language Learning and Teaching Resources
Langmaker.com Language Maker Website on Auxiliary and Constructed Languages
ISpeakHindi.com I Speak Hindi Website, Podcasts, Dictionary and Resources
MangoLanguages.com Mango Languages Free Online Language Courses, Audio, Web Software
BYKI.com Download Free Language Software for Learning 42 Languages!
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Conversational Spanish Podcast
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Bilingual Blog
JaplishPodcast.com Japlish Podcast of Funny Phrases in English and Japanese Languages
DigitalDialects.com Russian Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com French Language-Learning Games and Activities
Lingopass.com Free Global Language Exchange Community
LiveMocha.com Live Mocha Social Language Learning Course and Networking Website
BitesizedLanguage.com Bitesized Languages Improve Your French, Spanish or Portuguese Skills with Daily Emails
Arabic Language Course for Arabic Learners Familiar with Arabic Script
Word2Word.com Website

It's been a while since I have announced the latest resources to the blog subscribers. Here they are:

Beeld South African News in Afrikaans
Beginning Indonesian Learn Bahasa Indonesia Course
Learn Basic Bahasa Indonesia Phrases at Expat.or.id
SEASite Indonesia Resources for Learning Bahasa
World Nomads iPod Lingo Indonesian Language Podcast
World Nomads iPod Spanish Language Podcasts
World Nomads iPod Japanese Language Podcasts
World Nomads iPod Italian Language Podcasts
World Nomads iPod Mandarin Chinese Language Podcasts
World Nomads iPod Hindi Language Podcasts
World Nomads iPod French Language Podcasts
Learn Arabic Free at Speak7
italki.com Free Skype VoIP and IM Language Partner Community
Study and Learn Afrikaans Easy at EasyAfrikaans.com
Improve Your French with the Lille Podcast from France
Improve Spanish with Español Podcast or Spanish Podcast
Taste of Russian Podcast with Free MP3 Audio and PDF Transcripts

We also published a newsletter for May 2007:

Read the May 2007 Free Language Letter.

The May edition of the Free Language Letter is out!

I am reposting it here for quick access:

"

Fourth Edition

Welcome to the fourth edition of The Free Language Letter.

New Languages

Two new languages have been added to the site! We are happy to announce new sections for the Afrikaans and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) languages.

Here are three recent additions to Free Language:

Listen 2 Russian
HindiLanguage.org Website
BBC Languages Portuguese

Latest from Free Language:

"These are the latest four added to the site:

Learn Arabic Language Wikibook
A Door into Hindi
BBC Languages Spanish
Business Spanish Website

I have been working a lot on some of the back end of the site, so updates have not been as frequent. My goal is to add at least two resources per day.

I want to balance out the resources so that all languages have the same amount. Once there are significant resources for each of the 12 languages already on the site, I'll start adding more languages!

Thanks to Drupal taxonomy and the pathauto module, this site is able to have quite an extensive category list with corresponding URLs.

For those interested out there, here is an image of the mindmap that shows how this roughly breaks down for the site as it is now. This example show what each language has as far as categories, so there is one of these for ech language on the site. Thus far, that includes Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Click to view the mindmap.

I hope this helps everyone understand better the thinking behind the category structure on the site. It is definitely not perfect, and the community is always open to suggestions.