Three Minute Philosophy — Immanuel Kant

in Comedy, Philosophy | July 12th, 2010

File under com­e­dy. It’s slight­ly cheeky, at times lit­tle crass, but how often do the com­e­dy and phi­los­o­phy worlds col­lide? I mean, real­ly?

S. Peter Davis also has three minute takes on Descartes, Hume, Aris­to­tle, Locke, Galileo, Pythago­ras, and Aquinas.

via Metafil­ter

Meryl Streep Gives Graduation Speech at Barnard

in Life | June 21st, 2010

Meryl Streep has been nom­i­nat­ed for 16 Acad­e­my Awards, and won two, over her bril­liant act­ing career. She’s one of Amer­i­ca’s greats. But it has­n’t gone to her head. Above, we have Streep giv­ing the grad­u­a­tion speech last month at Barnard (the wom­en’s lib­er­al arts col­lege affil­i­at­ed with Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty). And what comes across is some­one who does­n’t take her­self or act­ing too seri­ous­ly. Some­one who still gets a lit­tle charm­ing­ly ner­vous speak­ing in front of crowds. And some­one who rec­og­nizes that we glob­al­ly – and women par­tic­u­lar­ly – have major chal­lenges to con­tend with. It’s worth a watch, along with one of my favorite com­mence­ment speech­es: Steve Jobs at Stan­ford, 2005.

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Bearish on the Humanities

in Education | June 9th, 2010

Read­ing the press late­ly, you’d think the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem is the next mort­gage mar­ket. And the human­i­ties? They’re tox­ic debt. Here’s a quick recap of the grim parade of sto­ries:

• Last week, The New York Times set the stage with this: an arti­cle detail­ing how stu­dents are drown­ing in debt, which rais­es the ques­tions: Can stu­dents still afford Amer­i­ca’s expen­sive uni­ver­si­ties? And will banks keep mak­ing these loans? The Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er goes fur­ther and blunt­ly asks: Is a High­er Edu­ca­tion Bub­ble about to Burst?
• Next, in The New York­er, a wide­ly-read arti­cle offers this fac­toid: Dur­ing the com­ing decade, most of the sec­tors adding jobs in the US won’t require a col­lege degree. So some aca­d­e­mics (yes, aca­d­e­mics) are left won­der­ing, “why not save the mon­ey and put it towards a house?” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, is a col­lege edu­ca­tion real­ly worth the mon­ey?
• The meme con­tin­ues yes­ter­day with David Brooks mus­ing in an opin­ion piece: “When the going gets tough, the tough take account­ing. When the job mar­ket wors­ens, many stu­dents fig­ure they can’t indulge in an Eng­lish or a his­to­ry major. They have to study some­thing that will lead direct­ly to a job.” “There already has been a near­ly 50 per­cent drop in the por­tion of lib­er­al arts majors over the past gen­er­a­tion, and that trend is bound to accel­er­ate.” So why both­er with a human­i­ties edu­ca­tion? Brooks tries to make his best case, and it’s not a bad one. But I’m not sure that a younger gen­er­a­tion is lis­ten­ing. And if you lis­ten to this 2008 inter­view with Harold Bloom, they maybe should­n’t be.
• And just to top things off: Stan­ley Fish launch­es his own defense of a “clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion,” even if it “sounds down­right ante­dilu­vian, out­mod­ed, nar­row and elit­ist.” You get the drift. Anoth­er sign that the human­i­ties is in a bear mar­ket.

Martin Gardner: A Video Remembrance

in Math, Science | May 27th, 2010

This past week­end, Mar­tin Gard­ner, a gift­ed and pro­lif­ic pop­u­lar­iz­er of math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence, passed away at 95. Dur­ing his life, Gard­ner pub­lished more than 70 books and wrote the pop­u­lar “Math­e­mat­i­cal Games” col­umn for Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can mag­a­zine for 25 years. As The New York Times obit notes, his math­e­mat­i­cal writ­ings “intrigued a gen­er­a­tion of math­e­mati­cians,” and he earned the admi­ra­tion of many lead­ing intel­lec­tu­als, includ­ing W. H. Auden, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Jay Gould, Vladimir Nabokov, and Carl Sagan. Not bad for a man who nev­er took a col­lege-lev­el math course. Above, you will find a 46-minute video pro­file of Gard­ner from David Suzuk­i’s CBC tele­vi­sion series “The Nature of Things.” It’s a great intro­duc­tion to Gard­ner and his unique approach to math and sci­ence.

Thanks goes to Mike for send­ing the video our way.

Bill Gates Holds Office Hours; Talks about Giving Back

in Current Affairs, Technology | May 20th, 2010

The Bill Gates col­lege tour rolled through Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in late April. And Gates brought with him a mes­sage for stu­dents: Phil­an­thropy counts. No mat­ter how young you are, you can start think­ing about giv­ing back.

His vis­it fea­tured a large pub­lic talk where he drove home this point. (Get the full talk in video or audio here.) Then, like any good teacher, he held office hours and answered stu­dent ques­tions posed through Face­book. Watch his respons­es above.

Ask Philosophers Goes Mobile

in iPhone, Philosophy | May 13th, 2010

AskPhiloso­phers puts real philoso­phers at the ser­vice of the gen­er­al pub­lic. Have a big, lofty ques­tion that only a pro­fes­sion­al philoso­pher can tack­le? They’ll answer it on the web. And now on the iPhone. This new, free app (designed by Amherst Col­lege) lets you access their Q&A archive on the go. While wait­ing in line for a cof­fee, you can chew over this kind of exchange:

Ques­tion: If you fail to stop some­thing bad hap­pen­ing to you is it the same as being com­plic­it in the act?

Answer: There is a com­pli­cat­ed lit­er­a­ture in moral phi­los­o­phy about how to draw the dis­tinc­tion between doing and mere­ly allow­ing harm and whether this dis­tinc­tion has moral sig­nif­i­cance. With­out try­ing to nav­i­gate that deep intel­lec­tu­al thick­et, it is still pos­si­ble to begin to address your ques­tion. If I’m com­plic­it in doing some­thing bad, for instance, harm­ing anoth­er per­son, then it seems I share the aim of my accom­plices in harm­ing some­one else. I intend harm. By con­trast, if I mere­ly allow some­one else to harm, I need­n’t and typ­i­cal­ly don’t intend harm. While not intend­ing harm, I may be indif­fer­ent to the harm. It depends. I may not be indif­fer­ent to the harm (more…)

Nokta .

in Film | April 19th, 2010

“Nok­ta” — this short ani­mat­ed film is all about the cre­ation, move­ment, and har­mo­ny of shapes co-exist­ing in space.  Film­mak­er Onur Sen­turk describes Nok­ta, which means “dot” in Turk­ish, as an abstract film project that explores the impro­vi­sa­tion of organ­ic pieces with­in the themes of pow­er, chance, and luck.  The sound design in Nok­ta, craft­ed by ECHOLAB’s Gavin Lit­tle, is a piece of work in itself; it is in per­fect uni­ty with the move­ment and the trans­for­ma­tion of the shapes.  What is great about this ani­ma­tion is that it’s open to end­less inter­pre­ta­tions.  Sen­turk says he used Realflow, 3ds Max, Mud­box, and After Effects to make the film.  For those of you who are curi­ous to learn more about how this film was made, don’t miss the “mak­ing of” video avail­able here.

Eren Gul­fi­dan is a writer, inter­view­er, film pro­gram­mer and dis­trib­u­tor at Film Annex, an online film plat­form and Web TV Net­work that hosts and finances films.  She stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing and film at Franklin & Mar­shall Col­lege and spe­cial­ized in film pro­duc­tion at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  She dis­cov­ers new con­tent and brings it onto the web to be seen by a wide audi­ence. To con­tact her, vis­it https://www.filmannex.com/erengulfidan

Learn 45+ Languages Online for Free: Spanish, Chinese, English & More

in | April 13th, 2010

How to learn lan­guages for free? This col­lec­tion fea­tures lessons in 48 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Eng­lish, Man­darin, Ital­ian, Russ­ian and more. Down­load audio lessons to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er and you’re good to go.

Amhar­ic

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Amhar­ic — Audio — Text­book
  • Lessons with dia­logues, drills, exer­cis­es, and nar­ra­tives will teach you the basics of this lan­guage spo­ken in Ethiopia. Includes sam­ples of speech, expla­na­tions of basic lan­guage struc­tures, and a vari­ety of prac­ti­cal exer­cis­es. Fea­tures two text­books (PDF) and eleven audio lessons (MP3).

Ancient Greek

• Ancient Greek Intro­duc­tion — Web Site
  • The UT-Austin Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an overview of Ancient Greek and 10 lessons based on famous Greek texts. It is all text-based.
• Learn Ancient Greek — Web Site
  • Leonard Muell­ner (Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Clas­si­cal Stud­ies at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty) has post­ed 64 videos on YouTube, which, “present all the con­tent cov­ered in two semes­ters of a col­lege-lev­el Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek course.”

Ara­bic

• Ara­bic Lessons on Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • Over 12 hours of Ara­bic lessons for begin­ners.
• Ara­bic for Begin­ners 1 — YouTube Free
  • A series of video lessons from Dalar­na Uni­ver­si­ty in Swe­den.
• Ara­bic in Jor­dan — Web Site
  • These lessons from the Peace Corps will help you learn nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion in Jor­dan, rather than focus­ing on for­mal­i­ties.
• Ara­bic­Pod — iTunes Free
  • Includes mp3s and PDF tran­scripts.
• DuoLin­go Ara­bic — Web Site
  • Learn Ara­bic in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Writ­ten Ara­bic — Web site
  • Spo­ken exer­cis­es in Ara­bic and the print­ed tran­scrip­tions. Four text­books (PDF) and 31 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Lev­an­tine Ara­bic — Web site
  • Intro­duc­tion to pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Text­book (PDF) and 19 audio lessons (MP3). Scroll down to the sec­ond set of lessons on this page.

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Sau­di Ara­bic - Web site
  • Cov­ers the urban Hijazi dialect. Text­book (PDF) and 51 audio lessons (MP3). Scroll down to the third/bottom set of lessons on this page.

Book­mark our free Ara­bic lessons sec­tion.

Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

• Intro­duc­to­ry Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage Course — YouTube
  • By the end of this course you should have a basic bank of ASL words that you are able to use to form sim­ple sen­tences. Begin to iden­ti­fy ASL sen­tence struc­ture, which is dif­fer­ent than Eng­lish sen­tence struc­ture. Under­stand what region­al dif­fer­ences of signs are.

Bam­bara

• Bam­bara in Mali — Web Site
  • Lessons from the Peace Corps.

Bul­gar­i­an

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Bul­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 75 audio lessons (MP3).

Cam­bo­di­an

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Cam­bo­di­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 45 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Con­tem­po­rary Cam­bo­di­an — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and 60 audio lessons (MP3).

Cata­lan

• One Minute Cata­lan — YouTube
  • A good way to get going with a lan­guage still spo­ken by some 12 mil­lion peo­ple, many liv­ing in North­east Spain.

Chi­nese

• Real Chi­nese - Web Site
  • Pre­sent­ed by the BBC. A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chi­nese TV series.
• Begin­ner’s Chi­nese — iTunes Free
  • Intro­duc­to­ry audio lessons pro­vid­ed by the Open Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Chi­nese for Begin­ners — Free Online Video/MOOC
  • This is an ABC Chi­nese course for begin­ners, includ­ing intro­duc­tion of pho­net­ics and dai­ly expres­sions. From Peking Uni­ver­si­ty.
• More Chi­nese for Begin­ners — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Also from Peking Uni­ver­si­ty, this is an advanced course for Chi­nese for begin­ners. Learn­ers will expand vocab­u­lar­ies about per­son­al infor­ma­tion, dai­ly life, food and drink, health, and more.
• Chi­nese: Start Talk­ing with 1.3 Bil­lion Peo­ple — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Intro­duc­to­ry Chi­nese lan­guage course from Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty empha­sizes basic lan­guage skills for every­day life in Man­darin speak­ing coun­tries. The course uti­lizes pinyin, the stan­dard sys­tem of Roman­ized spelling for translit­er­at­ing Chi­nese, so learn­ers will find it easy to under­stand and study the lan­guage.
• Chi­nese Course — Seton Hall
  • Begin­ning Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Begin­ning Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Inter­me­di­ate Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Inter­me­di­ate Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Advanced Chi­nese — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall
  • Advanced Chi­nese Read­er — Free iTunes Audio — Seton Hall

• DuoLin­go Chi­nese — Web site
  • Bite-sized Chi­nese lessons. Fun, effec­tive, and 100% free.
• Fall in Love With Man­darin — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn every­day Chi­nese Man­darin and dis­cov­er Tai­wanese cul­ture in the process. From Nation­al Chiao Tung Uni­ver­si­ty.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Can­tonese — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 30 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Stan­dard Chi­nese: A Mod­u­lar Approach — Web site
  • Designed to give a prac­ti­cal com­mand of spo­ken stan­dard Chi­nese with nine sit­u­a­tion­al mod­ules. Each mod­ule con­sists of tapes (MP3), a stu­dent text­book (PDF), and a work­book. In addi­tion to the core mod­ules, there is a resource mod­ule and eight option­al mod­ules.
• Learn Chi­nese in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Man­darin in Chi­na — Web Site
  • Lessons cour­tesy of the US Peace Corps
• Slow Chi­nese — iTunes Free
  • A cul­tur­al pod­cast for Chi­nese learn­ers. Fea­tures nar­ra­tives by native Chi­nese peo­ple read in Man­darin at a slow speed (2~3 char­ac­ters per sec­ond). Top­ics vary from lan­guage, knowl­edge, tra­di­tion and cul­ture to opin­ions on social phe­nom­e­na.

Czech

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Czech Fast — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and twelve audio lessons (PDF).

Dan­ish

• Duolin­go Dan­ish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• One Minute Dan­ish — YouTube
  • We get a lot of requests (believe it or not) for Dan­ish. So here’s anoth­er use­ful primer cre­at­ed by the One Minute series.

Dutch

• Duolin­go Dutch (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• Intro­duc­tion to Dutch — Web Site
  • Learn to speak, write and under­stand basic Dutch, with this free, three-week, intro­duc­to­ry for­eign lan­guage course. By Uni­ver­si­ty of Gronin­gen.
• Learn Dutch — iTunes Free
  • Cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant lessons that are easy to lis­ten to.

Eng­lish

• Basic Eng­lish 1: Ele­men­tary — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn basic Eng­lish for every­day sit­u­a­tions and improve your lis­ten­ing skills with this online Eng­lish lan­guage course. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• Basic Eng­lish 2: Pre-Inter­me­di­ate — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your basic Eng­lish skills for use in every­day sit­u­a­tions and build more con­fi­dence in your read­ing and lis­ten­ing skills. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• The Eng­lish We Speak - iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Each week, the BBC looks at phras­es used in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
• Amer­i­can Eng­lish Speech - Web
  •  The OLI Amer­i­can Eng­lish Dialect course from Carnegie Mel­lon sup­plies the nec­es­sary rein­force­ment of dialec­ti­cal struc­ture, audio, pro­duc­tion tech­nique and pho­net­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion for each sound.
• 6 Minute Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Down­loads — Web Site
  • Learn and prac­tice use­ful Eng­lish with the BBC.
• Bet­ter @ Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Feed
  • Focus­es on con­ver­sa­tion­al Eng­lish, with an empha­sis on idioms and slang.
• Busi­ness Eng­lish: Finance and Eco­nom­ics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Ari­zona State, this course helps stu­dents learn Eng­lish using com­mon busi­ness sit­u­a­tions in finance and eco­nom­ics.
• Busi­ness Eng­lish — iTunes Free
  • Learn the Eng­lish you will need to func­tion effec­tive­ly in an Amer­i­can busi­ness envi­ron­ment.
• Con­nect with Eng­lish - YouTube — Relat­ed Course Infor­ma­tion
  • Fea­tur­ing the sto­ry of Rebec­ca, an aspir­ing singer on a jour­ney across Amer­i­ca, Con­nect With Eng­lish offers 50 fif­­teen-minute video pro­grams that will teach Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage to high school stu­dents, col­lege stu­dents and adult learn­ers. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston.
• Effort­less Eng­lish — iTunes Free — Feed
  • An Eng­lish pod­cast that gets sol­id reviews.
• Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage — iTunes Free — Feed
  • A very well liked col­lec­tion of ESL lessons. Over 100 episodes in the col­lec­tion.
• Eng­lish for Aca­d­e­m­ic Study — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Pre­pare to study at uni­ver­si­ty, explore the qual­i­ties of a suc­cess­ful stu­dent, and learn key vocab­u­lary in an aca­d­e­m­ic con­text. From Coven­try Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Eng­lish for Busi­ness and Entre­pre­neur­ship — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about busi­ness Eng­lish and the glob­al busi­ness econ­o­my.
• Eng­lish for Busi­ness Net­work­ing — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. Intro­duce your­self in Eng­lish, keep a con­ver­sa­tion going, and leave the con­ver­sa­tion. Write pro­fes­sion­al emails to make new con­tacts and fol­low up with peo­ple in your net­work.
• Eng­lish for Career Devel­op­ment — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in advanc­ing their careers in the glob­al mar­ket­place. In this course, you will learn about the job search, appli­ca­tion, and inter­view process in the Unit­ed States, while com­par­ing and con­trast­ing the same process in your home coun­try.
• Eng­lish for Health­care — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills for a career in health­care and learn new health­care vocab­u­lary in Eng­lish. From King’s Col­lege Lon­don.
• Eng­lish for Jour­nal­ism — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing the skills need­ed for a career in mod­ern jour­nal­ism. In this course, you will explore print and dig­i­tal media through authen­tic read­ings and video lec­tures, while expand­ing your vocab­u­lary and increas­ing your abil­i­ty to read, research, and devel­op local and glob­al news sto­ries.
• Eng­lish for Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math­e­mat­ics — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, this course is designed for non-native Eng­lish speak­ers who are inter­est­ed in improv­ing their Eng­lish skills in the sci­ences.
• Eng­lish Pro­nun­ci­a­tion in a Glob­al World — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this course, you will improve your Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion skills and learn about speak­ing Eng­lish in today’s glob­alised world. From Vri­je Uni­ver­siteit Ams­ter­dam
• Gram­mar Girl — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Gram­mar Girl pro­vides short, friend­ly tips to improve your writ­ing. Whether Eng­lish is your first lan­guage or your sec­ond lan­guage, these gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, style, and busi­ness tips will make you a bet­ter and more suc­cess­ful writer.
• Speak Eng­lish Pro­fes­sion­al­ly: In Per­son, Online & On the Phone — MOOC/Online Course
  • A five-week course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia that will improve your skills in Eng­lish.
• Tricky Amer­i­can Eng­lish Pro­nun­ci­a­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From UC Irvine: In this course, you’ll prac­tice the sounds of Amer­i­can Eng­lish that might some­times be con­fus­ing. You’ll prac­tice both con­so­nant and vow­el sounds.
• Tu Ingles! - iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • “Tu Ingles” is designed to help Span­ish-speak­ers improve their ear for Eng­lish. The week­ly pro­gram fea­tures drills of verb con­ju­ga­tion, inter­views, advice about idioms, and excerpts of speech­es and oth­er record­ed spo­ken mate­r­i­al from famous Eng­lish speak­ers.
• USA Learns — Web Site
  • A free web­site that helps adults learn Eng­lish online by pro­vid­ing engag­ing videos and edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties. Built by the Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Office of Edu­ca­tion, with fund­ing by the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.
• Write Pro­fes­sion­al Emails in Eng­lish — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • This Geor­gia Tech course will help you write effec­tive busi­ness emails in Eng­lish.

• Book­mark our free Eng­lish lessons sec­tion.

Farsi/Persian

• Learn Per­sian with Chai and Con­ver­sa­tion — iTunes — Web Site
  • Offers 50 lessons via pod­cast, each run­ning about 15–20 min­utes, which will help stu­dents learn con­ver­sa­tion­al Per­sian for free. Each les­son builds on pre­vi­ous lessons, so to get the most out of the course, start from the begin­ning. The site also offers afford­able pre­mi­um learn­ing mate­ri­als.
• Easy Per­sian — Web Site
  • Easy Per­sian offers online lessons in lis­ten­ing, speak­ing, read­ing, and writ­ing Per­sian or Far­si as spo­ken in Iran. In addi­tion to Per­sian lan­guage lessons, the site intro­duces con­tem­po­rary Iran­ian poets with Eng­lish trans­la­tions of their poems. You’ll also find free Farsi/Persian soft­ware, Per­sian names with Eng­lish trans­la­tions, Far­si writ­ing drills and much more.
• Learn Per­sian Far­si Eas­i­ly, Effec­tive­ly and Flu­ent­ly — Spo­ti­fy
  • A 3‑hour series of lessons that’s freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy.
• Per­sian of Iran Today — Web Site
  • This two vol­ume text­book inter­weaves gram­mar- and vocab­u­lary-build­ing exer­cis­es with nar­ra­tive ele­ments in order to engage and devel­op stu­dents’ abil­i­ties in Per­sian. The web site includes the text­book itself and relat­ed audio/visual files. Per­sian of Iran Today is pub­lished by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Cen­ter for Mid­dle East­ern Stud­ies Pub­li­ca­tions pro­gram. Hard copies of the text­book can be pur­chased online (vol­ume 1 and vol­ume 2).

Finnish

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Con­ver­sa­tion­al Finnish — Web site
  • Tran­scripts of the Finnish dia­logues with idiomat­ic Eng­lish trans­la­tions plus notes on struc­tur­al pat­tern and expla­na­tions of essen­tial points of gram­mar. A vari­ety of exer­cis­es with instruc­tions in Eng­lish.

• Spe­cial Finnish - Web Site
  • For lis­ten­ers with some com­mand of Finnish YLE Radio Fin­land offers dai­ly broad­casts in “Spe­cial Finnish”. The five minute broad­casts cov­er items of cur­rent inter­est. To ease under­stand­ing, we sim­pli­fy the lan­guage and slow down the deliv­ery. Some gram­mat­i­cal forms are not used at all. The lev­el of Finnish used is planned to match the expect­ed abil­i­ty to under­stand Finnish shown by per­sons in Lev­el Two Lan­guage Com­mand (ofFinnish) as defined by the Coun­cil of Europe.”

French

• French in Action — Free Web Site
  • Pro­duced by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, these video lessons uses the sto­ry­line of an Amer­i­can stu­dent and a young Frenchwoman’s adven­tures in Paris to teach the lan­guage.
    
• Ma France — Web Site
  • The BBC offers 24 video lessons that will teach you French.
• Duolin­go French — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• Easy French Poet­ry - iTunes Free
  • A French as a sec­ond lan­guage pro­gram, using poet­ry as a top­ic for dis­cus­sion using every­day con­ver­sa­tion­al French.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course - Web Site — Spo­ti­fy
  • The course is designed to enable you to reach con­ver­sa­tion­al pro­fi­cien­cy. You learn how to con­trol the French sound sys­tem by lis­ten­ing to the tapes and repeat­ing each phrase. The dia­logues present nat­ur­al spo­ken French in a vari­ety of con­texts, such as, greet­ing peo­ple, reg­is­ter­ing at a hotel, get­ting a train tick­et, and shop­ping.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course: Phonol­o­gy – Web Site
  • The Intro­duc­tion to French Phonol­o­gy course pro­vides addi­tion­al drills for those who wish to sound like a native speak­er of the lan­guage. The course may be used ben­e­fi­cial­ly at any stage of learn­ing the lan­guage.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute French Fast – Web site
  • Designed to famil­iar­ize you with sit­u­a­tions encoun­tered abroad, and to pro­vide you with the lan­guage skills you need to cope effec­tive­ly with those sit­u­a­tions.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute French: Head­start for Bel­gium – Web site
  • Text­book and cul­ture notes (PDF) and six­teen audio lessons (PDF).
• Foun­da­tions of French for Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — King’s Col­lege Lon­don
• Fran­co­lab — Web Site
  • French Cana­di­an site pro­vides resources for lan­guage learn­ers and teach­ers. Includes videos, quizzes, inter­ac­tive mod­ules, audio-visu­al pre­sen­ta­tions, and a wide selec­tion of Cana­di­an pro­grams cov­er­ing a vari­ety of social and cul­tur­al top­ics.
• French Begin­ner’s Ser­i­al and Oral Course 2016 — YouTube
  • Learn basic French with the Manesca French Course. 91 videos on YouTube.
• Le Jour­nal en français facile — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Night­ly news from RFI pre­sent­ed in slow­ly spo­ken French to assist you with your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Learn French — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • A well-reviewed series of lessons for begin­ners and those who want to brush up on their French.
• Learn French in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Learn French with Cof­fee Break French — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • The pro­duc­ers of the very pop­u­lar Cof­fee Break Span­ish now offer a pro­gram that will teach you French.
• Learn French with Dai­ly Lessons — iTunes Free
  • These lessons are brought to you by French teach­ers from Paris. They are best suit­ed for those who already have some begin­ning French under their belts.
• Learn French with Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • A col­lec­tion of audio cours­es on Spo­ti­fy, that will take you from begin­ner lessons to advanced conversations–featuring essen­tial trav­el phras­es and vocab­u­lary.
• News in Slow French — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Pro­gram dis­cuss­es the Week­ly News, French gram­mar, and French expres­sions in sim­pli­fied French at a slow pace.
• Speak and Read French — Spo­ti­fy
  • Three albums of a French lan­guage course, Speak and Read French, cre­at­ed by Armand Bégué, a pro­fes­sor at Brook­lyn Col­lege and his wife, Louise Bégué, in 1959. For basic and inter­me­di­ate lev­els.
• Talk French — Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to French pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas: Fran­cais inter­ac­t­if – Web Site
  • UT pro­vides a series of inter­ac­tive vocab­u­lary lessons. Media can be down­loaded from the site.

Frisian

• Intro­duc­tion to Frisian — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Did you know that, besides Dutch, a sec­ond offi­cial lan­guage is spo­ken in the Nether­lands? It’s a lan­guage even more close­ly relat­ed to Eng­lish than Dutch. This lan­guage is called Frisian. From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gronin­gen.

Ger­man

• Deutsch — warum nicht? - Web Site
  • An exten­sive col­lec­tion of intro­duc­to­ry Ger­man lessons put togeth­er by Deutsche Welle.
• Deutschtrain­er — Web site
  • Use the Deutschtrain­er to effec­tive­ly learn basic vocab­u­lary need­ed for every­day life and to improve your pro­nun­ci­a­tion. The 100 lessons are bilin­gual (Eng­lish-Ger­­man) and address var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions — from greet­ing peo­ple and going to the doc­tor, to shop­ping and find­ing accom­mo­da­tions. From the Ger­man broad­cast­er Deutsche Welle.
• Deutsch im Blick — Web site
  • A free online text­book for learn­ing Ger­man from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. It’s the web-based first-year Ger­man pro­gram devel­oped and in use at the uni­ver­si­ty.
• Mis­sion Berlin — iTunes Free — Web
  •  Learn Ger­man through a mys­tery adven­ture. Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Radio D - Series 1 iTunes — Series 2 iTunes — Series 1 RSS — Series 2 RSS
  • Ger­man for begin­ners: Paula and Philipp are Radio D reporters who have sev­er­al mys­te­ri­ous cas­es to inves­ti­gate. Join them as their research takes them across Ger­many — and learn Ger­man along the way! Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Slow­ly Spo­ken News — iTunes Free
  • Deutsche Welle pro­vides a night­ly news broad­cast in Ger­man that’s spo­ken slow­ly so that you can work on your com­pre­hen­sion.
• Talk Ger­man - Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ger­man by the BBC. Pre­sent­ed in ten short parts.
• Deutsch Inter­ak­tiv — Web
  • 30-part self-study course in Ger­man. Fea­tures authen­tic videos, slideshows and audio texts that con­vey a vibrant pic­ture of life in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land. Cre­at­ed by Deutsche Welle.
• Duolin­go Ger­man — Web Site 
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Pro­grammed Intro­duc­tion — Web site
  • The text (PDF) and tapes (MP3) present, in a pro­grammed learn­ing style, the struc­tur­al fea­tures and vocab­u­lary con­tained in the first six units of the FSI Ger­man Basic Course. Serves to accel­er­ate the progress of stu­dents who sub­se­quent­ly move to the Basic Course.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Basic Course — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Fast - Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and ten audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ger­man Head­start - Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and four­teen audio lessons (MP3).
• Ger­man­Pod 101 — iTunes Free — RSS
  • Offers mate­ri­als for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ate and advanced.

• Book­mark our free Ger­man lessons sec­tion.

Greek

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Greek Basic — Web site
  • Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Kath­omilu­meni vari­ety that is the “stan­dard” speech of edu­cat­ed Greeks. Three text­books (PDF) and 75 audio lessons (MP3).
• Learn­ing Greek — Web Site
  • From the Hel­lenic Amer­i­can Union, these lessons will teach stu­dents Mod­ern Greek. For those who already have some foun­da­tion in the lan­guage.

Hebrew

• Hebrew­Pod 101 — iTunes
  • A way to learn some quick Hebrew on the fly.
• Bib­li­cal Hebrew Gram­mar I  (YouTube) and Gram­mar II (YouTube)
  • These are cours­es taught at The Mas­ter’s Sem­i­nary in Sun Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Hebrew Basic — Web site — Spo­ti­fy
  • One text­book (PDF) and 40 audio lessons (MP3). The Hebrew Basic Course is designed to teach spo­ken and writ­ten mod­ern Hebrew that is the ordi­nary, infor­mal speech of edu­cat­ed native Israelis. It is not intend­ed as a text for the study of the Old Tes­ta­ment or oth­er Hebrew lit­er­a­ture.
• Learn Hebrew (Bib­li­cal) — YouTube
  • Clas­si­cal Hebrew taught using the ser­i­al and oral method. Fea­tures 56 videos. This intro­duc­to­ry video presents the out­line for the course.

Hin­di

• DuoLin­go Hin­di — Web site
  • Learn Hin­di in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• Hindi­Pod 101 — iTunes — YouTube
  • Learn Hin­di with fun, inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant lessons that are easy to lis­ten to.
• Hin­di: An Active Intro­duc­tion — Text­book
  • A short text­book by DN Shar­ma & James Stone on behalf of For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute (FSI).

Hun­gar­i­an

• DuoLin­go Hun­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Learn Hun­gar­i­an in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Hun­gar­i­an — Web site
  • Two text­books (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3). Also includes a grad­ed read­er.
• Let’s Learn Hun­gar­i­an — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Learn with Steve or Gyor­gyi, a native speak­er.

Ice­landic

• Ice­landic Online - Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by Uni­ver­si­ty of Ice­land. The lessons use var­i­ous media — text, flash­cards, videos and so on. Lets you track your progress. Avail­able up to expert lev­el. (Requires reg­is­tra­tion.)
• Vil­tu læra íslen­sku? - Web site
  •  21 TV episodes of Ice­landic lessons. Each episode deals with dai­ly life and com­mon sit­u­a­tions in Ice­land. Accom­pa­ny­ing every episode is a thor­ough sum­ma­ry, explain­ing the sub­ject of the episode. The episodes have Ice­landic sub­ti­tles, mak­ing the dia­log eas­i­er to fol­low.
• A Begin­ners’ MP3 course in Mod­ern Ice­landic — Web Site
  • This is an exper­i­men­tal eight-hour begin­ners’ Ice­landic course, based on Alar­ic’s expe­ri­ences liv­ing in Ice­land in 2010,

Indone­sian

• Learn­ing Indone­sian - iTunes Free
  • A com­plete online Indone­sian course geared towards devel­op­ing con­ver­sa­tion­al flu­en­cy in the Indone­sian Lan­guage.
• Indone­sian News — iTunes Free
  • This is the lat­est news in Indone­sian from NHK World Radio Japan. For more advanced learn­ers.
• SBS Radio Indone­sian Lan­guage Pro­gram — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • For more advanced learn­ers, SBS Radio Indone­sian Lan­guage Pro­gram offers exten­sive cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al, nation­al and local news and cur­rent affairs, includ­ing inter­views with Indone­sian com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and oth­er cul­tur­al pro­grams.

Irish

• Duolin­go Irish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• Irish 101: An Intro­duc­tion to Irish Lan­guage and Cul­ture — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Dublin City Uni­ver­si­ty, this course offers an intro­duc­tion to Ireland’s cul­ture by learn­ing the basics of the Irish lan­guage. This is the begin­ning of a larg­er course sequence.
• Irish 102: An Intro­duc­tion to Irish Lan­guage and Cul­ture — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Find out how to speak, write and under­stand basic words, phras­es and dia­logues in Irish.

Ital­ian

• Talk Ital­ian — Web Site
  • A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ital­ian pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• BBC Ital­ianis­si­mo — Web Site — YouTube
  • Ital­ianis­si­mo was a TV series to learn Ital­ian first broad­cast in 1992 and repeat­ed reg­u­lar­ly over the next 10 years. You can watch the videos online.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Begin­ner — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this lan­guage course from Welles­ley Col­lege, you will learn the four basic skills (speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, read­ing and writ­ing) in the con­text of major themes in Ital­ian cul­ture. By the end of the course you will be able to describe peo­ple, events and sit­u­a­tions, both in the present and the past, and you will have acquired the nec­es­sary vocab­u­lary to com­mu­ni­cate about every­day sit­u­a­tions.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Inter­me­di­ate — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • In this lan­guage course from Welles­ley Col­lege, you will enhance your Ital­ian lan­guage skills, enrich your vocab­u­lary and expand your con­ver­sa­tion­al skills. You will learn how to have exchanges on a vari­ety of top­ics, and con­tin­ue your immer­sion in the Ital­ian cul­ture through unique videos and inter­views. You will also become more con­fi­dent as you con­tin­ue prac­tic­ing your read­ing and writ­ing skills.
• Ital­ian Lan­guage and Cul­ture: Advanced — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn how to per­fect your skills in Ital­ian (speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, read­ing and writ­ing), and by the end of this course you will be able to express opin­ions and hypothe­ses, and sus­tain an argu­ment using a vari­ety of reg­is­ters. You will also expand your vocab­u­lary to include top­ics beyond every­day con­ver­sa­tion. This course is from Welles­ley Col­lege.
• Duolin­go Ital­ian — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Head Start — Web site
  • Text­book, glos­sary, cul­ture notes (PDF) and 21 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Fast Course — Web site
  • Includes a text­book (PDF) and 30 audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ital­ian Pro­grammed Course — Web site
  • Text­book and instructor’s man­u­al (PDF) and 24 audio lessons (MP3).
• Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — Web site
  • MIT instruc­tor Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co uses cook­ing to help her stu­dents learn to speak Ital­ian.

Book­mark our free Ital­ian lessons sec­tion.

Japan­ese

• DuoLin­go Japan­ese — Web site
  • Learn Japan­ese in just 5 min­utes a day. For free.
• Easy Japan­ese — Web site
  • A free course from the Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er, NHK. This audio and text-based course of 48 lessons is designed for begin­ners.
• Easy Japan­ese for Work — Web site
  • Accel­er­ate your Japan­ese lan­guage skills! Learn prac­ti­cal, effec­tive work­place expres­sions, under­stand busi­ness cul­ture and improve your kan­ji. From NHK.
• Easy Trav­el Japan­ese — Web site
  • When trav­el­ing in Japan for the first time, what phras­es do you need? Each 3‑minute episode pro­vides sim­ple expres­sions you can put to use as soon as you land. The pro­gram also offers tips for get­ting around the coun­try.
• Easy Japan­ese: Gram­mar Lessons — Web site
  • Learn gram­mar from NHK.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Japan­ese — Web site
  • Stu­dent guide, text­book, glos­sary, flash­cards (PDF) and nine audio lessons (MP3).
• JapanesePod101.com — iTunes Free — Feed
  • Over 100 qual­i­ty lessons aimed at the begin­ner. Users give it high marks.
• Let’s Speak Japan­ese Basic — YouTube
  • 26 video lessons pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Let’s Learn Japan­ese Basic II — YouTube
  • 25 video lessons pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Maru­go­to Japan­ese Online Course — Web Site 
  • The Maru­go­to Japan­ese Online Course is a course for learn­ing Japan­ese lan­guage skills com­pre­hen­sive­ly. It’s oper­at­ed by the Japan Foun­da­tion.
• Week­ly News in Sim­ple Japan­ese — Web site
  • From the Japan­ese broad­cast­er NHK.

Book­mark our free Japan­ese lessons sec­tion.

Kore­an

• First Step Kore­an — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From Yon­sei Uni­ver­si­ty, this is an ele­men­tary-lev­el Kore­an lan­guage course, con­sist­ing of 5 lessons with 4 units, and cov­ers 4 skills: read­ing, writ­ing, lis­ten­ing and speak­ing. The main top­ics include basic expres­sions used in every­day life, such as greet­ings, intro­duc­ing your­self, talk­ing about your fam­i­ly and a dai­ly life and so on. Each les­son cov­ers dia­logues, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar, quizzes and role-plays.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an — YouTube
  • Orig­i­nal­ly aired on Ari­rang, Korea’s Eng­lish-lan­guage tele­vi­sion net­work, these lessons soon made their way to Youtube, where you can watch hun­dreds of episodes that start teach­ing the Kore­an lan­guage from the very basics onward.
• Intro­duc­tion to Kore­an — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Get an intro­duc­tion to the lan­guage and cul­ture of Korea, with this online Kore­an course from Hanyang Uni­ver­si­ty in Seoul.
• Intro­duc­tion to Kore­an: 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Devel­op your under­stand­ing of the Kore­an lan­guage and explore Kore­an cul­ture.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Kore­an — Web Site
  • Includes the orig­i­nal and updat­ed cours­es, each with text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Kore­an Head­start — Web site
  • Text­book, cul­tur­al notes, and eight units of audio lessons (MP3).
• KoreanClass101 — iTunes Free
  • Fea­tures dai­ly audio lessons, video lessons, word of the day, etc.
• Kore­an Learn­ing for Cor­rec­tion Pro­nun­ci­a­tion - Web Site
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 1 - YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 2 — YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 3 — YouTube
  • 130 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 4 — YouTube
  • 100 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Let’s Speak Kore­an Sea­son 5 — YouTube
  • 26 video lessons pro­duced by Ari­rang TV.
• Path­way to Kore­an: Begin­ning Spo­ken Kore­an from Zero — Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by the Nation­al East Asian Lan­guages Resource Cen­ter at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. When you get to the web­site, look for the “Units” in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar.
• Talk to Me in Kore­an — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Kore­an learn­ing made sim­ple and easy. Quite pos­si­bly the most thor­ough, fre­quent, slick, and enter­tain­ing lan­guage-instruc­tion pod­cast of any kind.

Lao

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Lao — Web site
  • Basic text­book, read­ing text­book (PDF), and two parts of audio lessons (MP3).

Latin

• Night­ly News in Latin — Web Site
  • “Nun­tii Lati­ni — News in Latin — is a week­ly review of world news in Clas­si­cal Latin, the only inter­na­tion­al broad­cast of its kind in the world, pro­duced by YLE, the Finnish Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny.
• The Lon­don Latin Course — YouTube
  • Learn Latin from the ground up. This is a ser­i­al course, struc­tured to bring you to a high lev­el of Latin flu­en­cy. The pace is slow and unhur­ried. This course is suit­able for all abil­i­ty lev­els. Restored Clas­si­cal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Find relat­ed course mate­ri­als here. You can also find lessons on advanced vocab­u­lary here.
• Latin Intro­duc­tion — Web
  • The UT-Austin Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an overview of Latin and 10 lessons based on famous Roman texts.

Lithuan­ian

• Lithuan­ian Out Loud — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • Offers begin­ners, inter­me­di­ate and advanced lessons.

Lux­em­bour­gish

• One Minute Lux­em­bour­gish — YouTube
  • Anoth­er niche lan­guage cov­ered by the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.

Maori

• Toku Reo - Web Site
  • Learn Maori, the lan­guage of New Zealand’s indige­nous peo­ple. Although these lessons accom­pa­ny a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme that is cur­rent­ly run­ning, the essen­tial bits of the episodes are avail­able to be watched right here on this site. The course starts at square 1. Site includes video lessons. Anoth­er use­ful site for learn­ing the gram­mar can be found here.

Nor­we­gian

• Intro­duc­tion to Nor­we­gian — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo. Start learn­ing Nor­we­gian today. Learn to speak, write and under­stand basic Nor­we­gian with this free four-week course.
• Intro­duc­tion to Nor­we­gian 2 — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn to write, speak, and under­stand inter­me­di­ate Nor­we­gian with this fun and engag­ing four-week course.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Nor­we­gian Head­start — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and eight audio lessons (MP3).
• One Minute Nor­we­gian — YouTube
  • Learn Nor­we­gian in min­utes with the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.
• Easy-to-Read News­pa­per - Text
  • This is not audio, but it’s use­ful nonethe­less. A news­pa­per that helps you learn Nor­we­gian by using large fonts and basic lan­guage.

Pol­ish

• One Minute Pol­ish — YouTube
  • Anoth­er help­ful audio series pro­vid­ed by the Radio Lin­gua Net­work.

Por­tuguese

• Lín­gua da gente — iTunes Free — Web site 
  • Por­tuguese learn­ing pod­cast for Eng­lish speak­ers. Fea­tures a lot of dis­cus­sion, con­ver­sa­tion, cul­tur­al tid­bits, and slang. From the Cen­ter for Open Edu­ca­tion­al Resources and Lan­guage Learn­ing (COERLL) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas.
• Brazil­ian Pod­Class — iTunes Free
  • Free pod­cast is released once a week, for all lev­els, with a focus on con­ver­sa­tion, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar and pop­u­lar expres­sions.
• Brazil­ian Por­tuguese 101 — iTunes Video Free
  • 45 lessons by Seman­ti­ca.
• Duolin­go Por­tuguese — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Por­tuguese Pro­gram­mat­ic Course — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute From Span­ish to Por­tuguese — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and three audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Fast — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• Ta Fal­a­do: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Pro­nun­ci­a­tion for Span­ish Speak­ers — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Cre­at­ed by the Texas Lan­guage Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter in the Depart­ment of Span­ish and Por­tuguese at UT-Austin.
• Talk Por­tuguese — Web Site
  • From the BBC, a video intro­duc­tion to the lan­guage in 11 short parts with audio clips for key phras­es.

Roman­ian

• One Minute Roman­ian - iTunes Free
  • Quick lessons by the cre­ators of the One Minute lan­guage series.

Russ­ian

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Russ­ian Fast — Web Site
  • Text­book (PDF) and eight audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Russ­ian: An Active Intro­duc­tion - Web site
  • 11 lessons and a text­book.
• Learn Russ­ian — Web Site
  • A free course by RT.com that cov­ers all aspects of Russ­ian includ­ing alpha­bet, pho­net­ics, vocab­u­lary and gram­mar. It also has mul­ti­ple gram­mar tables and tests. RT.com is a Russ­ian 24/7 Eng­lish-lan­guage news chan­nel.
• Learn Russ­ian Flu­ent­ly, Eas­i­ly and Effec­tive­ly - Spo­ti­fy
  • A 4‑hour series of lessons that are freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy
• Russ­ian Gram­mar — YouTube
  • 50 free, short videos on top­ics in basic Russ­ian gram­mar. Fund­ed by a grant from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the videos were cre­at­ed by Cur­tis Ford, a senior instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture — Web Site
  • Also pre­sent­ed by UCLA, the lessons help users improve their com­pre­hen­sion and vocab­u­lary by lis­ten­ing to excerpts from Tol­stoy, Gogol, Chekhov and oth­er Russ­ian lit­er­ary greats.
• One Minute Russ­ian — YouTube
  • Learn the absolute basics of Russ­ian with a 10-les­­son course of “espres­­so-break” episodes. In this course you’ll learn to greet peo­ple, say that you’re learn­ing the lan­guage, intro­duce your­self and ask peo­ple how they’re feel­ing, and lots more.
• RussianPod101 — iTunes Free
  • Helps you learn Russ­ian and Russ­ian cul­ture at your con­ve­nience.

Book­mark our free Russ­ian lessons sec­tion.

Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian Basic — Web site
  • Includes two text­books (PDF) and twelve audio lessons (MP3).

Sign Lan­guage

• Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage — Web Site
  • Lessons that will get you start­ed with the sign lan­guage preva­lent in North Amer­i­ca.

Span­ish

• Basic Span­ish 1: Get­ting Start­ed — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Learn Span­ish and explore Span­ish cul­ture in this intro­duc­to­ry lan­guage course, designed for Eng­lish speak­ers. Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty Poly­tech­ni­ca Valen­cia.
• Basic Span­ish 2: One Step Fur­ther — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Begin­ners course for learn­ers of Span­ish that focus­es not only on lan­guage, but also on cul­tur­al aspects, specif­i­cal­ly designed for Eng­lish speak­ers. Cre­at­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty Poly­tech­ni­ca Valen­cia.
• Basic Span­ish 3: Get­ting There — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • Begin­ners course for learn­ers of Span­ish that focus­es not only on lan­guage but also on cul­tur­al aspects, specif­i­cal­ly designed for Eng­lish speak­ers.
• Begin­ners’ Span­ish: Get­ting Around — Web Site
  • Pre­sent­ed by the Open Uni­ver­si­ty, this free course con­cen­trates on Span­ish as a tool for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it also pro­vides some insights into His­pan­ic soci­eties and cul­tures through authen­tic print­ed and audio mate­ri­als. This Open­Learn course focus­es on pub­lic spaces and how to get by in a His­pan­ic city.
• Des­ti­nos: An Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish — Web Site
  • This telen­ov­ela, or Span­ish soap opera, immers­es stu­dents in every­day sit­u­a­tions and teach­es speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, and com­pre­hen­sion skills in Span­ish.
• Cof­fee Break Span­ish — iTunes Free — Web Site
  • Learn Span­ish in a low-key, effec­tive way.
• Cof­fee Break Span­ish: To Go — YouTube
  • Build your Span­ish com­pre­hen­sion by lis­ten­ing to real native speak­ers.
• Duolin­go Span­ish — Web Site
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments. Check out Duolin­go’s iPhone and iPad apps.
• Show Time Span­ish - iTunes Free
  • Pro­duced by the same folks who cre­at­ed Cof­fee Break Span­ish, this pod­cast is for inter­me­di­ate and advanced learn­ers.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Basic Course — Web site
  • This course in the Latin Amer­i­can dialect pre­pares stu­dents to func­tion effec­tive­ly in con­ver­sa­tions. Pro­nun­ci­a­tion, inflec­tion, and into­na­tion are heav­i­ly stressed.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Pro­gram­mat­ic — Web site
  • Two vol­umes includ­ing text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Puer­to Rico — Web site
  • Stu­dent text, glos­sary (PDF), and four mod­ules of audio lessons (MP3) with self-eval­u­a­­tion quizzes.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Spain — Web site
  • Text­book and cul­tur­al notes (PDF) and four mod­ules of audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Span­ish Head­start for Latin Amer­i­ca — Web site
  • Text­book (PDF) and fif­teen audio lessons (MP3).
• Learn Span­ish: Basic Span­ish Vocab­u­lary — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC)
  • This spe­cial­iza­tion is designed for the begin­ner who may have no expe­ri­ence with learn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage but who wants to be able to read, write and speak Span­ish for per­son­al, trav­el or busi­ness use, or who just wants to learn a sec­ond lan­guage and build cul­tur­al aware­ness. From UC-Davis.
• Learn Span­ish in Your Car — Spo­ti­fy
  • Gram­mar and vocab­u­lary to begin­ners, offer­ing guid­ance in pro­nun­ci­a­tion and lan­guage fun­da­men­tals.
• Learn Span­ish on Spo­ti­fy — Spo­ti­fy
  • A col­lec­tion of audio cours­es on Spo­ti­fy, that will take you from begin­ner lessons to advanced conversations–featuring essen­tial trav­el phras­es and vocab­u­lary.
• Med­ical Span­ish for Health­care Providers - Web Site
  • This site is pre­sent­ed as a free med­ical Span­ish immer­sion, with vocab­u­lary includ­ing greet­ings, his­to­ry, exam­i­na­tion, and every­day speech, all with trans­la­tion and audio. It is designed to be help­ful for a vari­ety of med­ical per­son­nel. Cre­at­ed by a gen­er­al sur­geon turned Span­ish teacher.
• Notes in Span­ish — iTunes Free — Feed — Web Site
  • Pro­duced by Ben Cur­tis and Mari­na Diez, a hus­band-and-wife team out of Madrid, Spain. Ben is British and Mari­na is Span­ish and they too have built quite a large fol­low­ing for their con­ver­sa­tion­al Span­ish lessons, (for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ates and advanced stu­dents), which promise to teach lis­ten­ers “real Span­ish” the way it is actu­al­ly spo­ken every day in Spain.
• One Minute Span­ish — YouTube
  • Cov­ers the absolute basics of Span­ish, focus­ing on the pro­nun­ci­a­tion used in most parts of Spain.

Book­mark our free Span­ish lessons sec­tion.

Swahili

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Swahili — Web site
  • Includes “Swahili: An Active Intro­duc­tion” and basic course with text­book (PDF) 150 audio lessons (MP3).

Swedish

• Duolin­go Swedish (for Eng­lish Speak­ers) — Web Site  
  • A pop­u­lar free lan­guage-learn­ing and crowd­sourced text trans­la­tion plat­form. As users progress through lessons, they simul­ta­ne­ous­ly help to trans­late web­sites and oth­er doc­u­ments.
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Swedish Basic — Web site
  • Includes text­book (PDF) and six­teen audio lessons (MP3).

Thai

• Let’s Learn Thai Lan­guage — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ti Malaya
• Let’s Learn Thai Lan­guage: Basic Con­ver­sa­tion Skills — Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) — Uni­ver­si­ti Malaya
• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Thai — Web site
  • Text­books (PDF) and 50 audio lessons (MP3).

Turk­ish

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Turk­ish — Web site
  • Text­books (PDF) and 50 audio lessons (MP3).
• Hands On Turk­ish — Web site
  • Fea­tures a short course for absolute begin­ners, and a full course for peo­ple learn­ing the lan­guage for busi­ness pur­pos­es. The project was fund­ed by the EU.

Twi 

• Intro­duc­tion to the Twi Lan­guage - Web Site
  • 17 audio lessons by the Peace Corps will get you start­ed speak­ing Twi, one of the most wide­ly spo­ken of the 70 lan­guages in Ghana.

Viet­namese

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Viet­namese — Web site
  • Includ­ed famil­iar­iza­tion course and basic course with two vol­umes of text­books (PDF) and audio lessons (MP3).

Welsh

• Say Some­thing in Welsh — Web Site
  • 25 half-hour lessons avail­able for free.

Gen­er­al How-To

• GLOSS — Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute — Web Site
  • These lessons (6,000 in total) are devel­oped for inde­pen­dent learn­ers to pro­vide them with the learning/teaching tools for improv­ing their for­eign lan­guage skills.  Read­ing and lis­ten­ing lessons are based on authen­tic mate­ri­als (arti­cles, TV reports, radio broad­casts, etc.) and con­sist of 4 to 6 activ­i­ties. GLOSS offers cer­tifi­cates pro­vid­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion of work accom­plished.
• The WWW Vir­tu­al Library: Inter­na­tion­al Affairs Resources Web Site
  • This web­site direc­to­ry, which is part of the WWW Vir­tu­al Library Sys­tem, fea­tures over 2000 care­ful­ly select­ed, anno­tat­ed links in 37 inter­na­tion­al affairs cat­e­gories. The site offers a great way to under­stand our chang­ing world, but it also includes its own sec­tion of lan­guage learn­ing resources, and it includes sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to Span­ish, French and Ger­man.

Our col­lec­tion of for­eign lan­guage lessons has been fea­tured in the New York Times, The New York Times again, and yet once again in The New York Times.

The Joy of Math

in Math | April 12th, 2010

If math went over your head in high school or col­lege, here’s a great way to redis­cov­er what you missed. In late Jan­u­ary, Steven Stro­gatz, a pro­fes­sor of Applied Math­e­mat­ics at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, began blog­ging math­e­mat­ics for The New York Times. And his whole goal is to show you, the read­er, the joy of math. Or, as he describes his mis­sion:

I’ll be writ­ing about the ele­ments of math­e­mat­ics, from pre-school to grad school, for any­one out there who’d like to have a sec­ond chance at the sub­ject — but this time from an adult per­spec­tive. It’s not intend­ed to be reme­di­al. The goal is to give you a bet­ter feel­ing for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

Start­ing this week, this blog will be delv­ing into the great ideas at the heart of cal­cu­lus. You can jump on board right here. Thanks to Gregg for the heads up on this one.

Tony Judt on our Uncertain Future

in History, Life | March 30th, 2010

As we men­tioned two weeks ago, Tony Judt, a promi­nent his­to­ri­an and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al, has been grap­pling with ALS (oth­er­wise known as Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease) since 2008. With the dis­ease now tak­ing its toll, Judt has gone more pub­lic and start­ed pub­lish­ing with more urgency. On Mon­day, he was inter­viewed by Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air (lis­ten below, here or on iTunes). Of the many items dis­cussed, one par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me. When Gross asked whether his­to­ry still mat­tered deeply to him, the his­to­ri­an answered: yes, but:

I think now, I’m more wor­ried about the future. The past is always going to be a mess. It’s going to be a mess because it was mess and because peo­ple are going to abuse it, get it wrong and so on. But I’m rea­son­ably con­fi­dent that with each gen­er­a­tion of his­to­ri­ans, we keep fight­ing hard to get it right again. But we could get the future very seri­ous­ly wrong, and there it’s much hard­er to get it right… I’m encoun­ter­ing the first gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple in col­leges and schools who real­ly do not believe in the future, who don’t think not just that things will get evi­dent­ly and per­ma­nent­ly bet­ter but who feel that some­thing has gone very bad­ly wrong that they can’t quite put their fin­ger on, but that is going to spoil the world that they’re grow­ing up into.

Whether it’s cli­mate change or polit­i­cal cyn­i­cism or over­re­ac­tion or lack of reac­tion, to exter­nal chal­lenges, whether it’s ter­ror­ism or pover­ty, the sense that it’s all got out of con­trol, that they, the politi­cians and so on, media peo­ple, are nei­ther doing any­thing nor telling us the truth. That sense seems to have per­vad­ed the younger gen­er­a­tion in ways that were not true in my expe­ri­ence.

Maybe the last time that might have been true was in the 1920s, where you had the com­bi­na­tion of shock and anger from World War I, the begin­nings of eco­nom­ic depres­sion and the ter­ri­fy­ing real­iza­tion that there might very well be a World War II. I don’t think we’re on the edge of World War III or IV. But I do think that we are on the edge of a ter­ri­fy­ing world. That’s why I wrote the book [Ill Fares the Land].

The first chap­ter of Ill Fares the Land is now avail­able (for free) on The New York Times web­site, and it will give you a quick feel for the issues that Judt thinks we need to con­front. The com­plete Fresh Air inter­view ranges much more broad­ly, going into Judt’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence with ALS, and I’d encour­age you to give it your time. (Stream below.) Also please vis­it Move For ALS to con­tribute to a new cam­paign affil­i­at­ed with Tony Judt to fund ALS research.