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Language Learning Resource and Discussion Thread


ARagY

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Here we can talk about languages, learning them, and the wealth of information that's soon to come in this post.

 

All your excuses for not learning:  http://www.amazon.com/RUSSIAN-English-speakers-separately-Russian/dp/2700504445PAID - (Assimil: Russian with Ease) Teaches you basic-intermediate Russian via Reading and Audio, you can easily acquire an ear for the language (distinguish words even if you haven't heard them) and end up with a vocabulary far big enough to get speaking. 

http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/ PAID - (Russian Learner's Dictionary with words by frequency) Really good for when you want a word at your fingertips in an accurate way, instead of resorting to Google Translate (which does not understand colloquialisms and slight translation differences. 

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/russian/ - (Memrise Russian) Lots of courses in Russian to help you build vocabulary, practice reading and speaking, pronounciation, and so on. Plus you are rewarded for it and it makes it much more fun to learn. If you keep up with it every day while practicing with natives, you will most likely not forget too much of what you learn, whereas if you think that knowing "10000 Russian words" will make you suddenly fluent, you've got another thing coming at you ;)

http://www.michelthomas.com/learn-russian.php PAID - (Michael Thomas Learn Russian) Uses the Michel Thomas method to teach you Russian.

http://masterrussian.com/ - (Master Russian) Explains the ins and outs of the Russian language on a basic-intermediate level so that you can better understand why things are the way they are. But remember, it never beats a native speaker. 

http://www.babbel.com/learn-russian - (Babbel) A community where you can learn Russian in various ways.

 

Other: (links soon)
Colloquial Russian
Teach yourself Russian
Survival Russian a course in conversational Russian
How to pronounce Russian correctly
Linguaphone Russian course
Russian a self-teaching guide
Russian in exercises (English and Spanish editions)
The new Penguin Russian course
Ultimate Russian beginner-intermediate
Russian grammar workbook
Teach yourself Russian grammar
uchebnik russkogo yazyka dlya studentov inostrancev


 

French resources:

 

 

http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/new-french-with-ease PAID - (Assimil: New French with Ease) Good for acquiring reading skills and vocabulary of the French language. Since the creators are French, you can expect an even more advanced level after finishing this than with other books such as Chinese or Arabic.

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/french - (Memrise French) Good for practicing words, listening, and acquiring new vocabulary. 

https://www.duolingo.com/course/fr/en/Learn-French-Online - (Duolingo French) Good for beginners. You can learn the basics of French grammar and vocabulary, or for advanced students, touch up on things you aren't quite sure about.

http://www.michelthomas.com/learn-french.php PAID - (Michael Thomas French) Teaches French using the Michael Thomas method.

 

 

 

German resources:

 

 

http://mediathek.daserste.de/ - Television 

http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/german-with-ease (also at:http://www.amazon.com/Assimil-German-Ease-English-Speakers/dp/2700517504) - Good for acquiring reading skills and vocabulary of the German language. PAID

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/german-2/ - Good for practicing words, listening, and acquiring new vocabulary. 

https://www.duolingo.com/course/de/en/Learn-German-Online - Good for beginners, especially. Learn the basics to German or touch up on things you aren't quite sure about. 

http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ - A dictionary with quite a bit of words for you. 

http://www.michelthomas.com/learn-german.php PAID - Uses the Michael Thomas method to teach you German.

 

 

Spanish resources:

 

 

 

Portuguese Resources:

 

 

Coming soon!

 

 

 

Italian resources:

 

 

 

Swedish resources:

 

 

 

Norwegian resources:

 

 

 

Danish resources:

 

 

 

Icelandic resources:

 

 

 

Finnish resources:

 

 

 

Estonian resources:

 

 

 

Latvian resources:

 

 

 

Lithuanian resources:

 

 

 

Chinese resources:

 

 

 

Japanese resources:

 

(Japanese With Ease and Writing Japanese With Ease) http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/japanese-with-ease-volume-1 PAID - Good for starting out and learning the ins and outs of the Japanese language. 

http://kanji.koohii.com/ - Practice your kanji.

http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/japanese/

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn

http://www.freejapaneselessons.com

http://learnjapanesepod.com/

 

 

 

Hebrew resources: 

 

 

 

Arabic resources:

 

 

 

 

 

Q&A:

 

 

Are the resources all for English-speakers?

 

No, but most of them are. I'm sure on some of them you can find versions of the site in other language, but they are primarily for English speakers. However, in my translation request, I also want resources available to people who speak that particular language natively included in the translation rather than English. This means that resources will vary.

 

But there are so many words I have to learn!
- You can learn a lot of words fast. In fact, you can learn French in about 1 second. You ready? Farine. Flour. Congrats! You've learned French! Oh? Not what you expected? Well what did you expect, then? You will never know all the words in any, even your native tongue. But you can be considered fluent if you know how to make proper use of what you DO know. Whether that's 2000 or 20.000 words.

 

don't have the time..

- Even a few minutes at lunch is more than enough to get you started on your journey. You don't need to spend hours and hours out of your day on it, yes, you'll learn faster, but it's not mandatory. Just know that however fast you go is how fast you should expect noticeable results. </p>

 

 

Speak other languages? Help translate this post!

 

Help me to translate this post into its relevant form in other languages which I will put into spoilers as a subcategory of this post :)

 

Future Updates Will Include: Portuguese, grammar sorting and links in subsections, Hindi, more Esperanto links, more inspirational videos and blog posts, custom-made Esperanto and International English keyboards.

Edited by ARagY
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So many language threads popping up! :)

 

I wish I had enough time to devote to learning another language, but I usually feel busy enough with all my school work. -_-

 

I'll keep checking back to see other resources though; I think it's interesting to see what ways of learning languages help people the most :P

Edited by SparklingSwirls
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So many language threads popping up! :)

I wish I had enough time to devote to learning another language, but I usually feel busy enough with all my school work. -_-

Here: http://www.fluentin3months.com/how-to-make-time-if-you-are-too-busy/

 

This will remove any doubts you might have on your limited schedule ;)

 

@ARagY

I think I have just met my other half xD Seriously though, you are by far the only brony I've seen that expresses so much interest in learning foreign languages. I amazed that you happen to know Benny Lewis, he has been a great inspiration to me since I started to learn Spanish. He also offers great advice on how to travel from country to country frugally :)

 

For those who would like encouragement on learning a new language, I would definitely recommend the following article:

 

http://www.fluentin3months.com/reasons/

 

And if you are interested, you can read many other helpful articles on http://www.fluentin3months.com/blog-home/ :)

 

 

For those wanting to learning Spanish like me, I would gladly recommend the following

 

 

 

For getting a head-start into the grammar:

 

http://issuu.com/graaahh/docs/spanish#

 

http://www.linguasorb.com/spanish/regular-verbs/

 

http://www.linguasorb.com/spanish/irregular-verbs/

 

http://spanish.about.com

 

http://spanish.about.com/od/spanishvocabulary/a/vocaboverview.htm (all the basic vocabulary that you need)

 

A good jump-starter:

 

http://www.tobefluent.com/2014/07/30/how-i-learned-spanish-from-scratch-a-self-study-guide/

 

Resources in which you can practicing your listening and reading:

 

http://www.veintemundos.com/en/ (where you can read articles and follow along with the audio reading as well)

 

https://espanol.yahoo.com (if you are interested in reading the news)

 

http://elpachinko.com (if you would like to read about great traveling stories and learn Spanish at the same time, this blog is for you!)

 

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/189087/spanshdct-radio#.VAv5Adm9LCT (radio stations all throughout Latin America and Spain)

 

http://www.spanishdict.com (one of the best dictionaries and translators I have come across thus far)

 

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor%C3%ADa:Wikipedia:Art%C3%ADculos_grabados (Wikipedia articles that you can read and following along with the audio reading :) [though some articles may have been updated since the reading was recorded so some words may be off - to fix this, just look at the date the reading was recorded and then go through the article's history and find the rendition that matches with the date of the recording])

 

Once you get to the intermediate level, you'll need these:

 

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/courses/s210/PSANDQS.HTM

 

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/courses/SUBJADV.HTM

 

http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/COURSES/relpron1.htm

 

 

 

And finally, for just about any language, this dictionary site would serve you of much help:

 

http://www.wordreference.com

 

The dictionary itself covers the following languages:

 

English (duh lol)

Spanish

Portuguese

Italian

Polish

Czech

Turkish

Mandarin Chinese

French

German

Russian

Romanian

Greek

Japanese

Korean

Arabic

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Here: http://www.fluentin3months.com/how-to-make-time-if-you-are-too-busy/

 

This will remove any doubts you might have on your limited schedule ;)

 

@ARagY

I think I have just met my other half xD Seriously though, you are by far the only brony I've seen that expresses so much interest in learning foreign languages. I amazed that you happen to know Benny Lewis, he has been a great inspiration to me since I started to learn Spanish. He also offers great advice on how to travel from country to country frugally :)

Well my second field of study is cultural preservation so  I am very interested in language, yes. Aside from Benny Lewis I also know of Luca, who has been of inspiration to me as well for a further study of language acquisition and such. It's like we're long lost twins :o

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Man, now I'm definitely gonna learn another language. It's annoying because my school only offered French and Spanish and I wasn't able to learn Russian or Japanese. Thanks for making this thread bud!

Edited by Scotti3
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