Languages Masterpost
Sharing my bookmarks with the Tumblr community. Have fun!
Linguistics
WALS
Linguasphere - Kind of like WALS, if I remember correctly, but not quite. (Note: The website is in French.)
GOLD - a unique listing of linguistic terms and definitions. Right now it appears to be having technical issues, but when it works it’s really great. Just click “View GOLD” at the top.
Many Languages (or General Resources)
This is a directory of apparently scanned PDFs of many, many, many books regarding various languages. There are grammars, dictionaries, and more for more than 25 languages.
Conjuguemos: An awesome website, Conjuguemos has verb and vocabulary activities in several (mostly Romance) languages.
A directory of online dictionaries for around 200 languages. Truly an amazing resource.
Duolingo - don’t tell me you don’t know what this is.
Memrise - let me guess, you don’t know what this is either?
Quizlet - flash cards and accompanying games. There are also many apps that connect to Quizlet and provide Spaced Repetition or other activities with the cards.
Lang-8 - write in the language you’re learning, let others correct you. In turn, you correct posts in your native language.
Lingocracy - for reading in your target language.
LingQ links you (get it? LingQ, link you? HAHA) to native speakers around the world. You can join live conversations, get writing corrected, and so on and do the same for them.)
FluentU - a compilation of real world videos in your target language with interactive captions.
Babbel - another language learning resource with many languages available.
Ba Ba Dum - 1500 words, 11 languages, 5 games. Unique site.
Radiolingua - quick and easy sets of beginner’s lessons in many languages.
Busuu is yet another website for learning the basics of many languages. It also features video-chats with native speakers and many many units of grammar/vocab.
The US government’s Foreign Service Institute has grammars in many many languages.
Omniglot - writing, writing, and more writing. Goes over the writing system and accompanying pronunciation of every language imaginable, including many conlangs and extinct languages. Truly amazing resource.
LanguageRealm has some good stuff for the languages that it features.
AncientScripts is another website for writing systems, but it is restricted to ancient scripts, many of which are for languages now out of use.
Transparent Language Blog is wonderful. The right side has a list of the languages for which they have any content posted - and for each language there is quite a bit.
SaySomethingIn… is most useful for Welsh but has a few other languages. It involves sessions of listening and repeating along with eventual reading and grammar.
Digital Dialects - games for learning basic vocabulary in lots and lots of languages.
LanguageReef - Indian languages. So many Indian languages.
200 Word Project - learn the basic vocabulary of six African languages by clicking and listening to native pronunciations.
Let’s not forget Wikipedia. Not only does the English version have something on just about any language imaginable, but the website has articles available in lots of languages. I like clicking the “Random article” button and reading whatever comes up.
Spanish
Spanish grammar, vocab, and culture at About.com.
Study Spanish has lots of good stuff for all levels and is one of the websites I used when first taking up Spanish.
Top 25 Telenovelas from 5 Spanish-Speaking Countries
READING: Some plays, the UN website in Spanish, lots of poetry, lots of literature including international stuff translated into Spanish, and news and news (BBC Mundo and Univision).
SpanishSkulduggery is the greatest Spanish Tumblr blog in the universe.
French
Grammar, vocab, and culture can be found at French at about.com.
Grammar. Lots of it.
French equivalent of Simple English Wikipedia.
AwesomeFrench is the greatest French Tumblr blog in the universe. She answers questions about culture and grammar, but don’t be one of those annoying people that asks homework questions or advice about how to turn on your French boyfriend or girlfriend.
Japanese
Online Japanese textbook that comes highly recommended but that I have not personally tried.
Culture, culture, and more culture.
Namasensei’s Japanese lessons on YouTube. Goes kind of slowly, and it’s unique because the guy doing the tutorials is usually fairly drunk when he records. But he is living in Japan and has some interesting advice as well as a good understanding of the language.
Japanese from Zero on YouTube - amazing collection of videos ranging from pure grammar lessons to questions and useful explanations
Tae Kim’s grammar guide is seriously one of the best resources out there. And it’s totally free. You can navigate the website, download a PDF for free, or buy a print version.
Japanese at About.com.
A wonderful blog, Tofugu has grammar, vocab, and lots and lots of culture.
The best Japanese dictionary.
A bit of script, a bit of grammar, and a bit of reading. I link it mostly for the page on the numeral system, which is excellent.
Just lots of good stuff here, including a nice list of important upper-level words.
One of many websites for learning kanji, Kanjidamage is interesting because the author has a good sense of humor and also explains a lot about the history of the Japanese writing system, so that you can understand it better.
Kana Invaders - a fun 8-bit game for learning kana.
Arabic
Tutorial on the Arabic alphabet.
Arabic script lessons.
Lessons on the Arabic script.
Arabic script tutorial.
Project Root List aims to list all of the roots and vowel combinations in the Quran. Since Arabic hasn’t changed much in that regard, it’s useful for modern Arabic, too.
A PDF of the book Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar.
A nice PDF regarding the Arabic pronouns.
You can search the Quran in Classical Arabic here.
Classical Arabic: LearnArabicOnline.com. This is a fantastic resource in that it not only talks about reading and grammar, but also writing styles and eloquence in writing. It is strictly for Classical Arabic, however, not modern spoken or Modern Standard Arabic.
Hindi
Hindi script - really good animations of stroke order and how to write as well as providing instructions on writing.
Quillpad looks like a really great tool for typing in Hindi as well as other Indian languages. Simply type the English letters and the computer converts it. (Note: for beginners still trying to learn the script, learn the script and manually put the characters in. Force yourself to write the script to get yourself to think in that language!)
Beginner’s grammar lessons. Really a good page.
Five Hindi lessons that cover quite a bit.
More grammar because it’s important.
Russian
Russian Alphabet with Sound and Handwriting. Some lessons on writing and spelling from the same website are here.
Just a good graphic on the Cyrillic alphabet in cursive form.
Excellent PDF of Russian grammar. Requires knowledge of Cyrillic to understand examples.
Learn Russian Language - another good website for grammar rules along with the alphabet, pronunciation, and a bit of culture.
100 Top Resources for Learning Russian according to some person. Actually a really good list, includes rough level at which you’ll find each resource useful and the list is broken down by category (textbooks, online, stuff, etc.).
Old English
Grammar rules in detail. AMAZING website.
Here is Beowulf in Old English. There’s also a link to a modern English translation just under the title of the page.
Korean
Set of graphics that are wonderful for explaining the Korean script.
Really great website for grammar, script, and vocab. Also offers many of the beginner’s lessons and some of the more advanced ones in Spanish and/or Russian, for you overachievers out there.
Estonian
Here is a nice PDF on some of the characteristics of the Estonian language.
Grammar. This page links to the intermediate stuff; you can go to the menu at the top, and the really basic stuff will be under Discover Estonia.
An interesting-looking not-Tumblr blog about Estonian.
Simple phrases and some listening can be found here.
Finnish
Some basic grammar here.
Here is a great resource with video, explanations, and thematic lesson organization.
Lots and lots of good stuff here.
Esperanto
Collection of Esperanto journals. A.k.a. digital Esperanto library.
Grammar.
More grammar, this time in book form from Project Gutenberg.
Even more grammar.
German
Kids’ games for German vocab and stuff.
DW - German news website. Available in 30 languages, however.
Welsh
Lots of vocabulary. (Note: In my experience, this website has only been marginally useful because it doesn’t give gender, some of its nouns are plural when they should be singular, and so on.)
A long, detailed, well-explained resource from the BBC on Welsh grammar.
Xhosa
A study sheet for grammar.
A short introduction to grammar. Dense with linguistic jargon, but can generally be followed.
This is a really good video for listening to the clicks involved in Xhosa pronunciation, including the one that begins the language’s name. He has other lessons, as well.
Mandarin
Some themed vocabulary lists. Actually lots of them.
Here is a more or less miscellaneous collection of concepts and vocab about the Chinese language and culture.
MandarinMadeEZ - Some fun and simple YouTube lessons from Fiona Tian. She’s kind of awkward so if you’re looking for something really serious, don’t go here. Also, cats.
Native American Langauges
Here is an excellent resource for many Native American languages in general.
More links - only some of these are really good, but most of them are useful.
Cherokee language lessons. The link goes to the Cherokee syllabary and pronunciation. Also some readings available.
Navajo - lots of fun stuff!
Nahuatl grammar, pronunciation, etc... generally a good PDF.
A dictionary of Nahuatl.
Other
Italian: Good website for grammar rules.
Greek: Some lessons on New Testament Greek grammar.
Romanian: RoLang - audio and video lessons.
Hebrew: The Bible in Hebrew can be searched here.
And finally, I recently started a resources tag (here) that I think I’ll just link to rather than trying to transfer all that stuff over to this post.
I apologize that some of these headings have only one or two resources for them… but remember that the “Many Languages” category can not only provide a lot of further resources and information for the languages listed here, but can also provide stuff for languages not mentioned here!
If you guys have more stuff you’d like me to add for any language, send it to me and I’ll check it out and maybe update this post :)
Have fun and good luck :D
