There’s a curious little piece over at TUAW.com. Apparently American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are being supplied (on a limited basis) with iPods equipped with special software that will help them communicate in Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish, Dari and Pushto.

Thomas Friedman’s latest opinion piece in the New York Times starts like this:
After attending the spectacular closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and feeling the vibrations from hundreds of Chinese drummers pulsating in my own chest, I was tempted to conclude two things: “Holy mackerel, the energy coming out of this country is unrival

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming a guest contribution by Eleena de Lisser, who runs Voices en Español, a bilingual blog and conversational Spanish podcast (iTunes – RSS Feed).

Is it Bay-jing? Or Bay-zhing, as some American broadcasters are inclined to say it? Below, you’ll find the answer according to Two Chinese Characters, a video team composed of Carsey Yee from China, and John B. Weinstein who teaches Chinese at an American university. Give a watch. It’s intentionally campy and amusing.

YouTube’s Trendspotting Tuesday focused this past week on the growing number of videos that can teach you a foreign language (for free, of course). Among the 12 video collections featured here, you’ll find ones that offer lessons in French, Spanish, Modern Greek, Latin, Japanese and Swahili, among others.

MSN-Sympatico has been running a piece that covers the ins-and-outs of learning a foreign language online. The piece highlights free resources that you can access on the web, including our collection of Free Foreign Language Lesson Podcasts, but also many other worthwhile materials.

Here is a quick “lifehack” for you. You can now learn foreign languages and stay current on politics all at once. How so? By taking advantage of a smart podcast concept being used by French and German broadcasters.

The New York Times has a great article on a professor of management science who has founded an almost completely automated publishing company.

We stumbled across this video (below) over on YouTube. It offers a quick survey of web resources that will teach you foreign languages for free. Among other items, the video mentions our Foreign Language Podcast Collection and, for that, we wanted to say thanks to whoever put this together.

What’s an easy way to learn a new language at no cost, whenever and wherever you want? One is to take advantage of our extensive collection of Free Foreign Language Lessons.