Travellingual

Blog about languages and the world. Currently learning Japanese.

[travellingual]

TRAVELLINGUAL'S LANGUAGE RESOURCES

Hey guys, if you’ve seen this post before you’d remember it looking a lot different than it does now. The original post which had around 1000 links in total for over 150 languages got stuffed up by Tumblr, removing all the links. I’m really annoyed because I put A LOT of time into it, but fear not for all is not lost. The full list can be found here and you can always message me for resources! 

[travellingual]

TRAVELLINGUAL'S LANGUAGE RESOURCES

Learning a language is a challenge and it can be hard to find the right resources. So, with the help of the online language community, I’m compiling a list of resources for a whole bunch of languages.

I’ll be adding new resources every few days, so you can follow me here for weekly updates on additions to the page. If there’s a resource you think should be shared, message me the link. Keep in mind I’ll only include resources that are online and free.

If you find any errors or problems (incorrect or dead link, spelling error, etc.) don’t hesitate to let me know!

I hope you find this helpful!

MINI-COLLECTIONS

In addition to this masterpost, I’m starting to make some mini-collections for groups of related/regional languages. Any updates of these will be posted with the masterpost updates.

Celtic: Irish · Welsh · Breton · Scottish Gaelic · Cornish · Manx

Dutch & Afrikaans + West Frisian · Limburgish

Finnish & Estonian + Sami · Võro

North Germanic: Swedish · Norwegian · Danish · Icelandic · Faroese

LANGUAGES & NOTES

If the language you’re interested in isn’t in this list or even if is, check the General section; there are some good resources for a whole range of languages. Additionally, you can message me and I’ll do some focused searching on it!

Links go to desktop version of section:

General | Abkhaz | Afrikaans | Ainu | Akan: Twi | Albanian | Aleut | Amharic | Arabic: Egyptian, Levantine (Lebanese), Maghrebi (Algerian & Moroccan) | Aramaic | Armenian | Assamese | Asturian | Aymara | Azerbaijani | Balinese | Bambara | Basque | BCS: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian | Belarusian | Bengali | Berber: Tamazight | Bislama | Breton | Bulgarian | Burmese | Catalan | Cebuano | Chamorro | Cherokee | Chichewa | Chinese: Cantonese, Mandarin | Choctaw | Circassian | Cornish | Cree | Czech | Danish | Dutch | Dzongkha | Esperanto | Estonian | Ewe | Faroese | Fijian | Finnish | French: Cajun, Quebec | French Creole: Haitian, Saint Lucian | Frisian: Saterland, West | Friulian | Fula: Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular |Galician | Georgian | German: Pennsylvania, Swiss | Greek: Ancient, Modern | Greenlandic | Gujarati | Hausa | Hawaiian | Hebrew | Herero | Hindi: Fiji | Hungarian | Icelandic | Inuktitut | Irish | Italian | Japanese | Kannada | Kashmiri | Kazakh | Khmer | Korean | Kurdish: Kurmanji, Sorani | Kyrgyz | Ladin | Lao | Latin | Latvian | Limburgish | Lingala | Lithuanian | Luxembourgish | Macedonian | Malagasy | Malay: Indonesian, Malaysian | Malayalam | Maltese | Manx | Maori: Cook Islands, Te Reo | Marathi | Marshallese | Mayan: K'iche’, Yucatec | Mongolian | Nahuatl | Navajo | Nepali | Norwegian | Occitan | Ojibwe | Oromo | Ossetian | Palauan | Papiamento | Pashto | Persian: Farsi, Tajik | Plautdietsch | Polish | Portuguese: Brazilian, European | Punjabi | Quechua | Romani | Romanian | Romansh | Russian | Sami: Northern | Samoan | Sanskrit | Scots | Scottish Gaelic | Sicilian | Sinhala | Slovak | Slovene | Somali | Sorbian | Sotho: Southern | Spanish: Latin American | Swahili | Swedish | Tagalog | Tamil | Telugu | Tetum | Thai | Tibetan | Tongan | Tswana | Turkish | Turkmen | Ukrainian | Urdu | Uyghur | Uzbek | Venetian | Vietnamese | Welsh | Wolof | Xhosa | Yiddish | Yoruba | Zulu

/r/… - Subreddit on Reddit. Discussions and resource sharing between learners and native speakers.

Tumblogs (Tumblr blogs) - I’m being pretty picky with these but being active is my main requirement

✔ - Resource I highly recommend

↑ - Goes back to the list of languages (desktop)

All links below open in a new tab

Keep reading

[travellingual]

fkn nice after two years tumblr decided that this post is too long and that the 1000-odd links should stop working

[travellingual]

Your gigantic resource list looks really great, but I have a problem: for some reason, I can't click on the links! I'm not sure if this is an issue for anyone else, but I just thought I'd let you know in case there is some technical defect ^^

oh damn, haven't checked on my tumblr for a while, I'll check it out. cheers for the heads up

[travellingual]

Do you have any resources you can recommend to studying Japanese?

I’ve done the vast majority of my learning in Japanese through school so the resources I can recommend don’t provide a solid foundation. However, they’re still pretty useful.

Tae Kim’s Guide - Great guide to grammar and other aspects of the Japanese language. What I like about his guide compared to others is he establishes and works with the fact that Japanese works very differently in comparison with English. 

Denshi Jisho - The online dictionary I use. Numerous ways of searching for words, good info on conjugations and kanji, can be confusing what translation to use sometimes but good nonetheless.

Ichi.moe - Invaluable resource for understanding text. Type a sentence in Japanese and ichi.moe separates all the words and particles, providing definitions for each. It even works with conjugated words, which is super-cool.

Kanji Alive - Neat web application for kanji, providing info on stroke order, applications, etc. You can search for kanji based on difficulty too, by searching grade:1, grade:2…grade:6.

In addition to these, check out the LearnJapanese subreddit for discussions, resource sharing and assistance.

Hope this has been useful.

[travellingual]

Hi, there, may I suggest good learning resources to your list? And how?

Of course, I'd love to update the list. You can either send them through message or post them and tag me.

[pirateshipsandpoffertjes-blog]

do I get a prize for being your 100th follower? ;)

Yes! My entire list of resources for learning Dutch ;)

[languageoclock]

EXCELLENT

[brazilwonders]

Languages of South America! (via Lingholic)

[nihongogogo]

Japanese Dialects Masterpost

Dialects can be fun and offer cultural insight. They may be useful to learn, though usually only if you have geographical links to a specific area of Japan- perhaps you have family there, personal heritage there, you live there, or are going to do a language exchange in a specific area. Linguists may also be interested just because they are really interesting.

In almost all instances for non-Japanese people learning to understand a dialect when it’s spoken/written (rather than produce it in your own speech) would suffice for communication. As far as I can see the best reason to learn to actually speak a dialect is because you want to communicate with elderly people from that region specifically; most young people have had far more media exposure so they can easily use ‘standard Japanese’/ Tokyo dialect.

If a non-native Japanese speaker learns a dialect and can’t speak standard Japanese, they may find they are seriously limited in conversations and people will inevitably find it weird. They might just find they are incomprehensible:

’I spent three years living in Nemuro, the easternmost town in Hokkaido. […]  Hokkaido-ben is often misunderstood outside Hokkaido, Nemuro-ben can’t be understood even in the next town over. So it’s basically useless unless you’re planning a trip to Nemuro (which I would recommend.) However, it does show how many variations there are in dialect, even within one island.’ [Tofugu, my emphasis]

Someone with a low communicative ability in English who could only speak using Cockney rhyming slang, but didn’t know standard English unfortunately would sound ridiculous to natives of that area. It would seem crazy to know ‘You’re ‘aving a bubble mate!’, but not ’You must be joking!’. They’d sound odd and in many instances their language would sound antiquated. Be aware that you may well get a similar reaction if you pepper your speech with regional dialect as a non-Japanese person without being conversationally fluent in standard Japanese. I’m not saying don’t learn dialects, please do if they interest you, learning to understand them when you hear them, rather than necessarily use them in your own speech, is a great idea. If you want to speak in them, please try to do it all in good time and in a respectful way that is not accessorizing the language and culture.

For beginners:

Many of the resources here will be only in Japanese, as this post is aimed at higher intermediate and advanced learners. The section below is in mostly English and will give you a general overview if you’re interested:

lingualift article (scroll down past their email sign up stuff to read)

FluentU will teach you a few basic phrases in a variety of dialects

Wikibooks has links to a few examples of phrases in different dialects

The wikipedia article will give you an informative introduction

Tofugu has a few articles on dialects:  Hokkaido |  Tohoku |  Kansai

Japan Times article on dialects

For intermediate and Advanced learners:

I’ve organised this by prefecture, but it’s worth noting that some prefectures contain several dialects and I’m by no means an expert, I hope the Tumblr Japanese learning community can contribute to and help improve this post. General:

Dictionary for dialects in EVERY prefecture

Short animations about various dialects　

Women from every prefecture saying I love you in their regional dialect

Japanese dialect Wiki

There tend to be Line stickers on sale for dialects, as people think they’re cute and want to show local pride, try searching the Line sticker store for the dialect you want and you can use them in conversations, which will give you a little practise.

Big Weblio guide to all prefectures’ dialects

方言で話そう on Twitter will show you phrases in a variety of regional dialects from around the country

Project Guttenburg article which gets more into the linguistics of Kansai ben

I made a post on Kansai ben a while back and @similarjapanesewords made a post about it before too

video comparing local variations of the same phrase spoken by native speakers 1 2

This Youtube channel has a lot of different dialect tutorials (all Japanese)

There’s another Youtube channel here too (all Japanese)

hougen-japan

ALC dialect quizzes

The Japanese Wikipedia page has a lot more detailed information than the English page, naturally.

Kansaibenkyou

Maps of where some dialects are spoken

Wikipedia has a lot of basic introductory information on dialects, there are almost certainly dialects I’ve missed from this list, if you search for the prefecture or geographical location and the word 弁 or 方言 then you’re likely to find a dialect, even if it isn’t simply called [place name]弁.

Hokkaidō |  Hokkaidō ben dictionary |  Hougen.u-biq |  Tofugu introducation to Hokkaido ben

Aomori |  Goo Aomori ben dictionary |  Japanesepod101 1 2 3 4 5 |  animation about Aomori ben  |  Kindle book written in Aomori ben

Iwate |  Phrase guide  |  dialect dictionary

Miyagi |  Hougen.u-biq | Vocabulary | Introduction to Miyagi ben | Sendai ben

Akita |  Akita ben course  |  How to use け in Akita ben  |  How to use こ in Akita ben

Yamagata |  A few introductory phrases  | Yamagata ben phrases  |  Yamagata ben dajare  |  Yamagata ben grammar

Fukushima |  Fukushima ben Dictionary  |  Usage guide

Ibaraki |  Ibaraki ben dictionary |  Learn Ibaraki ben phrases

Tochigi | Tochigi ben guide to pronunciation and expressions | Tochigi ben dictionary |

Gunma | Five page vocabulary guide | 7 lesson course in speaking Gunma ben

Saitama | North Saitama dialect vocabulary | Phrases | More vocabulary | Saitama ben dictionary on Goo

Chiba | East Chiba dialect | Learn Bōsō dialect | Another Bōsō website | Bōsō dialect quiz | Sotobō dialect guide

Tokyo | dictionary |  Tokyo dialect on Jlect | Tokyo ben on Chaku wiki | About Tokyo ben | vocabulary

Kanagawa | 10 phrases | Yokohama and Kanagawa dialect dictionary | Kanagawa ben on chaku wiki

Niigata |  Niigata ben dictionary  |  Japanesepod101 1 2 3

Toyama | Vocabulary | Toyama ben on Wikibooks | Simple phrases | About Toyama ben | Basic introduction to Toyama ben | Toyama dialect competition

Ishikawa |  Ishikawa ben Dictionary on Goo | Wikibooks Ishikawa dialect guide | Kanazawa ben guide | English book on Kanazawa ben

Fukui | Fukuiben.com | Hokuriku dialect (spoken in several prefectures)

Yamanashi |  Koshu Dialect Laboratory | Koshu ben dictionary | Yamanashi ben on Goo | There are a couple of posts here in English

Nagano |  Goo Nagano ben dictionary  |  Nagano prefecture guide to Nagano dialect  |  Matsumoto dialect page

Gifu |  Large vocabulary list  |  Mino ben guide |  PDF guide with accent information etc  |  another vocabulary list  |  Short video in Mino Ben

Shizuoka |  Page with links to several local dialects found in Shizuoka  | Shizuoka ben version of a commerical  | 10 funny phrases

Aichi |  Hougen.u-biq |  Nagoya ben website

Mie |  phrase guide |  features of Mie ben

Shiga |  large word and phrase list  |  vocabulary list

Kyoto |  Hougen.u-biq |  vocabulary list  |  More vocabulary

Osaka |  Hougen.u-biq |  video tutorial |  Kansai ben/Osaka ben word list

Hyōgo |  vocabulary list |  Hyogo ben on chaku Wiki |  

Nara |  Nara dialect on Chaku Wiki  |  Video discussing the subtelties of Nara dialect within Kansai ben  | vocabulary list

Wakayama |  Word list |  Some honorific expressions in Wakayama dialect PDF | Wakayama ben article |   Wakayama Kansai ben vocabulary |  Apparently there’ll be a radio show about Wakayama dialect soon so maybe they’ll have a podcast

Tottori |  dictionary |  large word and phrase list |  another vocabulary and phrase list

Shimane |  Izumo-ben 出雲弁 | Izumo ben in detail

Okayama |  large word and phrase list | Okayama ben corner | Interesting Okayama ben

Hiroshima |  Hougen.u-biq |  Hiroshima dialect

Yamaguchi |  Yamaguchi ben |  Vocabulary | quiz

Tokushima |  Awa ben video tutorial  |  vocabulary list  |  large phrase and vocabulary list

Kagawa |  vocabulary and phrase list  |  phrase list

Ehime |  Some Iyo vocabulary  |  Iyo dialect guide

Kochi |  Origins of Tosa ben and Hata ben PDF (bilingual)  |  Tosa ben introduction  |  Hata dialect introduction  |  The Lexicon of Kochi Japanese PDF (academic paper)  |  Kochi funpage on Youtube

Fukuoka |  series of videos on how to use Hakata ben |  video tutoiral |  verb conjugations

Saga |  Saga ben dictionary | Goo Saga ben dictionary

Nagasaki |  Nagasaki ben resource with recordings of sample dialogues |  Goo Nagasaki ben dictionary |  A story book written in Nagasaki ben (available on Kindle)

Kumamoto |  How to use Kumamoto ben  | Kumamoto ken vocabulary, a lot of these seem rough/rude

Ōita |  video |  Goo Ōita ben dictionary

Miyazaki |  Miyazaki ben explanation |  vocabulary and explanation

Kagoshima |  Vocabulary |  big word list  |  More vocabulary and phrases 

Okinawa |  Traveller’s guide to Okinawan dialects  | Huge list of Ryukyuan vocabulary  |  Uchinaguchi dictionary

There are books on dialects, typically designed for native speakers, such as this dialect dictionary, or this Tosa ben guide available in Japan, but you’d need some very advanced Japanese to be able to access them, in which case I doubt you’d be following my blog.

Beyond regional dialects there are also many languages that are native to Japan that are not Japanese. If you’re interested in learning Ainu, one of the Ryukyuan languages, Japanese sign language, or another language from Japan that is not standard spoken Japanese then this Tofugu article may interest you. Many of these languages are endangered. Thanks to these bloggers who helped contribute to this post:

@suzustarlight @tomatograffiti  @grapefruitcake Disclaimer: There are a massive number of regional dialects in Japan, I am neither Japanese, nor an expert, so inevitably I will miss some off this list. If you want to share information about a dialect from a part of Japan you’ve visited or lived in please reblog and add some information or resources, so that we can get this post to a point where it’s as comprehensive as possible. Many thanks!

[z-co]

Hello! A lot of you have been asking me where and how I’ve learn multiple languages and well, after a few hours of digging through my browser history and bookmarks, I was able to collect all of these resources. I have personally used all of these, so I can assure you they are useful! If there is something wrong with a website or a link, please let me know. Also, if you have any questions or if you want a learning buddy, my ask box is open. (I speak English and Spanish. I’m learning Korean, German, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, and Esperanto)

Note: Learning a new language requires a lot of dedication, more than you actually think! Especially if you’re learning multiple languages at the same time. It isn’t impossible, but it will take time. And by time I mean months and/or years! So please, be patient. Take your time. Don’t rush. Keep in mind that you will mess up and that’s okay. Practice as much as you can. Practice out loud. Talk to yourself if you can. It doesn’t matter if people think you’re crazy. They won’t be thinking the same when you become a polyglot, so don’t mind them. This is for you and your future.

Get started:

Everything listed below is FREE! Some sites do require you to sign up, but that’s for you to keep track of your own process.

Tips to get you started

Language Hacking tips (blog)

More language hacking tips (blog)

The Polyglot Project (Library with foreign books that lets you translate while reading)

How to Learn Any Language

Effective Language Learning

Ankidroid (flashcard maker)

Multiple languages, one website

Duolingo (Latin American Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Ukrainian, and Esperanto)

BBC Languages (40 languages)

Learn A Language (18 languages)

Conjuguemos (French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish)

L-lingo (21 languages)

101languages (167 languages)

Languagepod101 (31 languages)

Foreign Services Institute (44 languages)

My Languages (95 languages)

Surface Languages (43 languages)

Lingualia (Spanish)

Linguanaut (16 languages)

OmniGlot (All languages [basic info for some of them])

Memrise (Various languages) (flashcard system)

Livemocha (Various languages)

Polyglotclub

Sharedtalk

Interpals (specify in your profile you only look for language exchange because there can be some creeps in this one)

Couchsurfing

Babbel

Specific Languages

Korean:

Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes! - Really helpful as well

Learnkoreanlp - Focuses on grammar

k-is4korean

Talktomeinkorean

Learn-korean

korean-flashcards - Focuses on vocabulary

Easytolearnkorean

Korean.go.kr/ - Focuses on pronunciation

Lang-8 - Community to correct your entries

Dongsa - Conjugations for verbs

Howtostudykorean- EXTREMELY helpful when it comes to learning hangul and writing structure!

hangulpractice - This blog has some useful posts.

letstteok-korean

Talktomeinkorea (YouTube channel)

fluentkorean

sweetandtasty

seoulistic - For culture lessons

GenkiKorean

Korean Word Game

English-Korean Vocabulary Quizzes

Hangul Keyboard - This is also EXTREMELY helpful with Hangul/romanization. It also converts any romanized syllables into hangul

Korean - Reddit threat

Chinese/Mandarin:

Hackingchinese

Chinese-tools - Pretty helpful with pronunciation.

Chinese Open courseware

Chinese Language - Reddit threat

Chinese Textbook

Chineasy

Learn Mandarin

Chinese Hacks

yoyochinese

How can I learn Chinese

Why is Chinese so damn hard?

Japanese:

Learn Japanese I / II - YouTube

Guidetojapanese

Free Japanese lesson

Japaneseclass.jp

thejapanesepage

Japanesepod101

Tofugu

Erin’s Challenge!

Jplang

Yesjapan

Marugoto - Includes culture lessons

Kana Invaders - Fun game for learning Kana

Another great masterpost for Japanese - So many resources!!!

Esperanto:

Note: I did a research and supposedly Esperanto is an easy-to-learn language that helps you with other languages.

Esperantofre

Esperanto “library”

Esperanto Grammar

Esperanto (Duolingo)

German:

Learn German Online

German Language Guide

Mission Berlin - Mystery adventure game

Basic German

Deutsch Lernen

Slow German

Kids’ Games - For vocabulary

Italian:

MIT Open Courseware

Italian Language Guide

Italian Grammar

Italian For Beginners - YouTube

Latin:

Some Latin grammar

Latin Course - YouTube

Portuguese:

Oneness

Ta Falado

Portuguese (Duolingo)

French:

Learn French Guide

Coffee Break French

University of Texas: Francais interactif

Podcastfrancaisfacile

French Language Guide

Lingopolo/french

Le Journal en français facile

News in Slow French

Francolab

Cliffs Notes

Native French Speech

French Podcast

Spanish:

Spanish - About.com

@spanishskulduggery

Study Spanish

Cliffs Notes

Destinos

One Minute Spanish

One Minute Spanish (Latin America focused)

Thai:

Learn Thai Podcast

Woman Learn Thai

Let’s Talk Thai

Thai 101

Lingopolo/thai

Arabic:

Books to Learn Arabic

Mandinah Arabic

Arabic Verbs (PDF)

al3arabiya

Arabic Pronouns (PDF)

Arabic Alphabet / Also Here / And Here!

Arabic For Language Exchange

Peace Corps

Hindi:

A Door Into Hindi

Learning Hindi

NYU Hindi Course

Quillpad - Great for typing

Namaste Dosti

SU Hindi Course

ispeakhindi

Hindi Script

Vietnamese:

VietnamesePod101

Survival Phrases

seasite.niu.edu

Learn Vietnamese Online

Greek:

Some Greek Grammar (New Testament)

Romanian:

Rolang

One Minute Romanian

Welsh:

Say Something in Welsh

Welsh Vocab

Dutch:

Lingopolo/dutch

Learn Dutch

Russian:

Speak Russian

Russian Alphabet

Taste of Russian

Master Russian

Russian Open Courseware

Russian Handwriting

Swedish:

Klartext

SwedishLingQ

Survival Phrases

That’s it. That’s all I have right now. I’ll try to search for more and will keep updating this list! If you have a request for a specific language, just send me an ask. Have fun and good luck! 

[travellingual]

What author, publisher, etc. are your language books from?

I mostly collect phrasebooks from Lonely Planet (most accessible). I have a bunch of other books from various publishers but I don't really use them.

[languageoclock]

[travellingual]

whoops it’s me

[af-hverju]

really glad i got to go to the biggest foreign language bookstore on my continent today ☄

[norwegian-wool-deactivated20170]

This is…. Beautiful…..

[travellingual]

a summary of the horrible histories cast

mathew baynton: the only one who can sing, apparently

martha howe-douglas: queen of everything, literally

jim howick: turns out he can also sing; SHOUTY MAN

ben willbond: straight man who can't keep a straight face

simon farnaby: the one you get when you need a hunk; Death

laurence rickard: THAT'S THE END OF OLD BOBSY

[norwegian-wool-deactivated20170]

Idk whether this is just me but like do you guys have a certain word in a language that you just randomly repeat to yourself throughout the day for no reason? Like I’ll have a shower and I’ll just say to myself “kjærlighet”. I’ll have breakfast and as I’m eating I’ll say “kjærlighet”. Like? I don’t know why I do that?

[sprachtraeume]

That’s… actually a really sweet word to repeat

[sprachtraeume]

and also… yeah i do this all the time

[languageoclock]

“außergewöhnlich” was my favourite word for a long time idk why

[dave-pen]

for me it’s förlåt and helvete which probably suits my life tbh

[travellingual]

for me it’s ‘kackerlacka’

[dxmedstudent]

Dear Baby Studyblrs...

I’ve noticed some studyblrs confess that they feel a pressure to have it together and live up to the perfectly organised studyblr aesthetic. This is a new pressure; before instagramming our daily lives became ubiquitous nobody would see your notes but yourself. And whilst it’s nice to feel like your notes are beautiful, they don’t have to be to get the job done. And I speak as someone who has made some pretty gorgeous notes, and also some that are completely incomprehensible to all except myself. So here goes… It doesn’t matter if your study space isn’t picture perfect as long as it works for you. It doesn’t matter if your notes are neat, perfectly written in 5968 colours of sparkly pen, or messy biro on loose sheets of paper. As long as it works for you. It doesn’t matter if you buy branded stationery or use whatever you could get your hands on. As long as it serves the purpose of helping you learn. Pretty spaces and neat notes are lovely, but you do not necessarily need these things to study effectively. There are as many different ways to study as there are people doing said studying. There’s no need to feel pressured to buy stationery you can’t afford. There’s no need to feel bad about  having a less-than-picture-perfect setup. Don’t feel like you have to spend an age crafting perfect- looking notes, if that time would be better spent moving onto the next study topic. You may prefer one approach at one point in the process, and a completely different approach closer to exam time. The aim of studying is to learn effectively. Preferably whilst enjoying it, of course. Sometimes it is enjoyable and effective to make pretty notes. At other times, making perfect notes is literally the most useless and stressful thing compared to just reading through material at a more reasonable pace.  Like making perfect notes? Awesome. Need your messy chaos? Also awesome.

[heartuii]

This needs more notes.

[travellingual]

local book sale haul

[languageoclock]

(x)