Resources

10 best language learning apps 2020

October 16, 2019 by lingualift Leave a Comment

We are all eternal learners and we always keep our eyes open for new apps, platforms and methods of learning foreign languages.

We thought we’d make the search easier for you by compiling a list of our ten favourite language learning mobile apps. Some of them you are probably familiar with, but you may also find some new gems!

Like this infographic? Here is another one with top kanji learning tools!

Best language learning apps

1.Memrise

Memrise is your go to place for fun vocabulary practice. There is no shortage of courses on almost every language you can imagine—or invent, as there are also several devoted to constructed languages—created by the vibrant community of users. You can find standardised courses based on popular textbooks or vocabulary frequency lists as well as less expected vocabulary collections such as “Japanese naughty words” or words from the Japanese translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The fun of Memrise lies in two things: memes and gamification. The app follows a learning method that relies on creating funny or bizarre associations with the studied words. Courses are often coupled with memes designed to playfully help remember the vocabulary. The memes are created by the community and everyone can add their own! Both earning, revising and creating memes is a source of points that help you advance in the Memrise hierarchy of users (from Membryo to Overlord).

You can follow fellow learners and compete with them for points as well as see how well you’re doing in a ranking for a particular course. It’s very motivating to outscore others!

The power of Memrise also lies in two things: spaced repetition and mnemonics. The spaced repetition algorithm calculates when and how often you should review each word and the app will send you reminders when it’s time to review. The addition of memes is really helpful in memorising the vocabulary, if you’re new to it, it may take some time to adjust to, but after that you’ll quickly start coming up with your own creative combinations.

2. LinguaLift

This is a language app that is geared more towards serious learners who want a complete language program with the guidance of a tutor. Yes they have a good app, but it’s the extra help from the professional teachers that makes the difference.

The tutors are available to answer any questions you might have. They can help with grammar, suggest extra resources, and will even assign and correct homework for those interested.

If you sign up for this app, remember, USE THE TUTORS they are there to help.

“That’s probably the best part about LinguaLift: having access to real people who want to help and are invested in your learning.”
Kimberly, Seattle, USA

The app itself, is great for a beginner or intermediate, with clear grammar explanations, vocabulary & script learning tools, and a lot of cool cultural insights that you don’t get with most language programs. And of course, the professional tutors that know the material.

Your subscription includes their Language Learning Secrets book and your customized study plan called, A Road Map to Fluency. To receive a road map, you first fill out a questionnaire, telling their tutors about your goals, study habits, daily schedule, etc. The tutors then take this information and create your road map. It guides you every step of the way. Showing you the most effective study routines, telling you what additional resources to use, how much material to cover, and what stage in your language learning to use each resource. You just follow the map!

The courses are broken down into small 10 to 15 minute sections to keep things interesting and to ensure you have enough time to study a little every day. They also use an algorithm that tracks your progress through the course, so your review topics are geared specifically to your needs.

Also unique to LinguaLift, they give you access to ALL their languages with your subscription. They currently offer Japanese, Russian and Hebrew language courses, with French, Spanish and Chinese (Mandarin) courses coming later this year. If your language of choice is not on this list, you should still check out their recently released e-book entitled Language Learning Secrets. This is a must have for any language learner

If you are serious about learning a new language, LinguaLift offers a complete program that’s definitely worth checking out. LinguaLift

3. Duolingo

When you try to describe any other learning app how often have you heard the question “is it like Duolingo?” There is no list of best apps that doesn’t mention it. Luis von Ahn successfully merged gamification and learning addicting people to languages and producing an app with over 100 million users. The app has become a staple example of mobile language learning.

Many Duolingo courses are created by native speakers themselves which empowers communities and language passionates to get involved and gave rise to perhaps less expected courses such as Guarani or Klingon. Another feature that makes Duolingo special to me is that it is not aimed solely at an English native speaker. For each language there are specific courses that aim at those with different first languages, which to date produces 81 courses.

4. HelloTalk

An app aimed to facilitate speaking practice and eliminate the potential stress of real time conversation. Learners can find native speakers and converse with them using a whatsapp-like chat with voice and text messages.

The best feeling is when you come across a native speaker of your target language who also wants to learn your mother tongue—it’s like you hit the language jackpot!

Users can correct each other’s messages with an in-built correction tool, which transforms the language exchanges into tiny tutoring sessions. The app also has an integrated translation system to help you avoid those moments when you really want to communicate something but just lack the one word that gives the sentence it’s proper meaning.

Tips and tricks on using HelloTalk

You can mark your top conversations or messages, so your favourite phrases will not get lost and the text-to-voice option will make sure you always know how to pronounce the messages you receive. To help you with conversation motivation you can also arranged language exchanges with lengths defined by different parameters like time (erm, obviously!), number of exchanged messages or characters.

Extra perk? With HelloTalk you can also exchange doodles. So if you really run out of vocab, you can unleash your inner artist.

5. Mindsnacks

Did I say Duolingo gamified language learning? Mindsnacks takes gamification to a whole different level.

Each out of seven languages they teach comes with eight or nine tiny games are designed to help you learn vocabulary, grammar, practice your listening. There are short simple lessons outlining concepts that then get practiced or tested in the games before they achieve the status of being mastered. Mindsnacks monitors your progress so you can clearly see how much more learning you need to achieve proficiency in every skill. It’s such a fun app though, that even if you do master a skill it is still fun to go back and play more games to practice it!

The design is very enjoyable, cheerful and charming (I would have just said cute, but that may discourage some of you from trying it 😉 ) which really helps to stay involved with the learning. Being timed the games keep you engaged and often at the edge of your seat and on top of that MindSnacks also assigns you quests so you can really feel like a language explorer.

The basic download is free, but it comes only with a restricted number of games. If you pay a little bit you can access more lessons and widen your game options.

6. Busuu

Busuu offers full courses in 12 languages. The app is free but to unlock most of the features and course materials you have to invest $17 a month. The app takes you through learning individual words to simple dialogues and questions about the dialogues all of which include audio where you can listen to native pronunciation.

The lessons are organised in topical themes where we learn skills and expressions connected to tasks. Each course also comes with a separate mini “travel course” for those who need to quickly get the basics before a trip abroad—pretty handy!

The special aspect of Busuu is that you can engage native speakers in your personal learning process. Busuu learners contribute their native speaking skills to the platform by correcting texts created by those who study their language. The desktop version even allows you to chat to native speakers real time. Both studying and contributing to the platform as a teacher allows you to collect “berries”, points used to rank students based on their activity. So if you’re one of the points and badges addict, it’s a good place for you!

7. Babbel

A paid cousin of Duolingo with more free material than busuu? The free version comes with 40 classes, so even without investing money the app allows you to learn a fair amount of phrases in one of the 13 languages it teaches.

Each class starts from step-by-step teaching of vocabulary with the aid of pictures. Then the words are being used in related phrases and short dialogues adjusted to the student’s level to help quickly build conversation skills.

The app has speech recognition exercises, so you can surely scare your fellow bus commuters by shouting in Dutch to your phone! 😉

Handy pop-ups with the app explain most important grammatical points related to the learned material and the desktop version includes short cultural notes.

Apart from the general beginner’s courses Babbel also has separate packages devoted to improving specific skills such as grammar or vocabulary; if you already have some experience with a particular language and know where your weaknesses lie you can focus on improving those chosen skills. Babbel’s classes can be downloaded for later offline study and the app will send you convenient reminders so you don’t miss your daily session.

8. TripLingo

As the name suggests the app is aimed at travellers who need to brush up on their language skills before that dream holiday in Mauritius or a business trip to Mexico.

The app is aimed to get you to speak and be understood so you don’t feel lost in a foreign environment making your stay not only much richer culturally, but also less stressful. In addition, the creators took care so you at least attempt to sound like a local and use the current expressions rather than the textbook formulas. A feature called the slang slider displays different levels of formal or casualty of each phrase so you can adjust it to the specific context you’re in. The lessons are divided into handy sections such as “safety phrases” or “business phrases”.

TripLingo is also your emergency resource. It has an inbuilt voice translator rendering your English in the foreign language, and when you are really at a loss of words you can even call a real translator (that’s when you really desperately need to ask for that extra mayo).

With the free version of the app you get access to about 15% of the resources and no audio, but it’s still a great and fun resource.

I had a little chuckle looking at the vocab categories in the Word Bank for Russian: accommodation, alcohol & arguing — a good summary up your initial experience in a Russian speaking country!

9. MosaLingua

MosaLingua is a fully rounded resource for a number of languages including French, Spanish and Italian. You can choose to go through the standard lesson program starting from simple phrases and numerals, or you can opt to go for one of the specific topical packs, for example people, time or tourism.

This means that if you already went through the basics and are looking to fill in specific gaps in your knowledge you can do it instantly. You can support your learning with dialogues illustrating real life situations.

I have to admit, it’s very handy to listen to a “in a hotel” dialogue just before opening your mouth at a reception desk!

Learning is based on a self-assessed flashcard system which will drill you on the words in a number of ways, asking you to record, speak out, and spell them, so all your “memory channels” are activated.

Of course, not all the resources of the apps are unlocked without paying, and you have to pay for each language separately. But even the free version has ample resources — definitely enough for a quick 5-day learning spree before that weekend in Tuscany! 😉

10. HiNative

HiNative is like a bite-size language exchange. You get the benefits of contact with native speakers without the hassle of searching for an exchange partner or scheduling a chat.

The basic premise is to bring native speakers together with learners to help each other resolve little (or not so little…) language struggles. No question is stupid or too simple: you can ask for translations, input on pronunciation, or advice on cultural norms.

Free bite-size language exchange.

In addition, you get a confidence boost by allowing you to realise that the knowledge you hold about your mother tongue is sought after, and that you can, without much effort, help fellow learners. Another cool point: it’s not only the native speakers who can answer the questions, but also other learners. Those who went through the same struggles as you could have a better idea of how to approach them as a learner!

If all that doesn’t convince you, let me say that all this awesomeness is neatly designed, has a desktop version, and… is free.

**One bonus app! **

11. (How to) Pronounce

What is says on the tin! You may already have some grasp of the language or decided to just go wild and base on a paper phrasebook. Yes you will still encounter words or phrases that you are not sure how to pronounce to be understood. Perhaps you had this experience in a restaurant: when asking for the simplest meal and had to repeat the so-diligently-learned Italian phrase three times. Still the only thing you achieved was the look of bewilderment and confusion on the waiter’s face. They said the phrase back to you and the only thing that you had wrong was the stress.

You can prevent these embarrassing and frustrating moments with (How to) Pronounce. It supports only a few basic languages now, but in a very clever move it offers four of them in two varieties, so you have two options for: English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, plus Russian and Italian. If you feel bored and are a language geek (like all of our blog readers) you can just listen and marvel at the differences between language varieties.

Also, check out our blog post Social Media – the new language learning app, explaining how to turn your social media accounts into your own personal language program.

Have you come across any cool language learning apps? Let us know on Twitter

100 top resources to learn Russian

February 3, 2019 by lingualift Leave a Comment

We find ourselves often giving recommendations of products to learn Russian with, and we thought it’d be useful to compile a list for your reference.

All languages Japanese Russian
Mandarin Hebrew

We have included a number of our own products, only where we are convinced that they are deserving of their place in the list, and we have included paid and free resources without discrimination.

The list is broken up by category and each item is clearly marked as to what proficiency level it targets. Everything on this list deserves your attention, but resources we’re particularly fond of, the kind we’d use ourselves, are additionally marked with a little star.

Russian textbooks
Reviewing vocabulary
Serious games
Grammar reference
Dictionaries
Practice & radio
Podcasts & audio lessons
Vodcasts & video blogs
Cheat sheets
Other

Russian textbooks

Russian LinguaLift E-Textbook

Our very own textbook. Not written in a ‘hold your hand’ style that some require, but clear and comprehensive, covering all that is needed to prepare for the TORFL exams and most day-to-day situations. Native audio, interactive elements and assessments make it a perfect study and revision tool.

V Puti: Russian Grammar in Context

A very well organized, though overpriced Russian textbook with conversational exercises, various readings and grammatical explanations and practice. The example sentences used are a little wanting in some aspects, and it’s the kind of text that’s best used with a teacher or language partner, as it can feel quite concentrated and heavy going at times.

The New Penguin Russian Course

One of the best traditional Russian language textbooks. It’s great if you’re starting completely from scratch, but it’s complete enough such that with enough perseverance, once you have followed its grammar explanations and completed its many translation exercises, you’ll have a very good foundation in Russian.

Learn Russian

An interactive language learning website from the news site RT. The 30 comprehensive lessons include dialogues with audio, exercises, grammatical explanations, and tests. The site also contains sections on the alphabet, pronunciation, and grammar tables.

Fundamentals of Russian: First Russian Course

An excellent Russian textbook—written in the second half of the 20th century, but later revised, and still up to date. It is quite dry (“without sugarpills or fun and games”), but to the point, which makes it the ideal choice for focused, intensive study (the authors recommend it for an “eight classroom hours per week” college course).

Language Metropolis

An online language-learning platform that helps simulate common real-world scenarios and situations through interactive dialogues and mini-lessons.

Oxford Take Off In Russian

A short but easy-to-use integrated course including activities and dialogues with native speakers, accompanied with CDs for practice while on the move.

Ruslan Russian

Ruslan Russian is a series of excellent grammar books and CDs which remain one of Amazon’s top position in the category. Each book has a mp3 series for audio practice. The series also includes a song book and a game book is in the making!

Reviewing vocabulary

Online

Russian LinguaLift Vocab Lab

An SRS vocabulary learning web app full of useful words, accompanied with native pronunciation audio, and tested in a variety of different ways.

morpheem

Morpheem teaches you new words by showing you how they are used in real Russian sentences. By repeating them in different contexts they are safely stored in your long-term memory.

Desktop

Anki

If you’re a dedicated learner and have the time and determination to spend perfecting your reviewing habits and environment, Anki—one of the leading SRS applications—might be the product for you.

Kleio

Kleio is a recently launched competitor to Anki, and while it’s still very young and lacks some of the more advanced features, the app is actively developed and can be found on platforms where Anki is not available. Unfortunately there aren’t many good Russian decks just yet, so you’re best off creating your own.

Print

Russian Vocabulary Cards

The famous Vis-Ed Russian vocabulary flashcards are well worth the price if you prefer learning away from your computer but don’t have the time to create your own set of flashcards.

Roots of the Russian Language

There’s no better place to start learning Russian vocabulary than at their roots. This book will not only show you why, and teach you how, but also provide you with countless example sentences and helpful exercises.

Russian Learners’ Dictionary

A dictionary listing 10,000 Russian words by frequency. All the words have English translations, many have examples of usage and the entries include information on stress and grammatical irregularities.

Serious Games

Fluent Panda

Learn actionable words and expressions through bite-size mini lessons adapted for the small screen and the busy learner. As you progress, grow your very own virtual panda.

Keybr

A great online typing trainer. Customizable, with helpful visual feedback and very detailed statistics. You can change the layout to Russian in the top-left corner of the screen.

Word games

There’s nothing like a word game with friends or family if you want to build and review your vocabulary. The gramota website has a list of countless variations for the next time you’re bored in a train or tired of reviewing flashcards by yourself.

Grammar reference

Online

Gramota

The quintessential Russian resource covering every grammar-related topic imaginable, and in great detail. For every question you might have, there is a great chance that a detailed answer has already been published on gramota.

Russian Stack Exchange

The new addition to the excellent Stack Exchange network, Russian Language and Usage is the place to ask your intermediate-advanced grammar questions. Don’t forget to do a quick search first, as much has been answered in great detail already.

Russian LinguaLift

We’re trying our best to make the LinguaLift E-textbook not only a place to learn the language, but also a handy reference tool. Each chapter is divided into sections dedicated to different grammar points, and all are easily searchable both in Russian and in English.

Alpha Dictionary

An almost legendary online Russian grammar reference, one of the first ones of its sort. Funky design and Java exercises might feel dated, but the content is still very solid and up to date.

Literacy Yandex

A grammar resource based on misspellings in queries on the Russian search engine Yandex. As the Russian proverb goes, «Умные учатся на чужих ошибках, а дураки на своих» (‘Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes; fools by their own.’).

Wikipedia

If all else fails, Wikipedia generally comes to the rescue, especially if you’re ready to wander into its Russian language territory. You can find many Russian grammar points discussed at least in some detail, as well as use it to check how a certain construction is used by searching it in Russian articles.

Desktop

Grammatica

When learning Russian, every once in a while you think that there must be a spell checker made specifically for foreigners, helping you with those parts of the language that may seem common sense to many a native speaker, yet mind-blowingly illogical to everyone else. Grammatica is all that and more, making learning the countless exceptions to common rules, be it in stress or inflection, a cinch.

Print

Essential Russian Grammar

This book is quite old but a classic. It focuses on grammar used in everyday conversation, and manages to do this very well if you’re already past the beginning stages. It’s a little dry and dull, but its low price and ‘dip in and out’ format means that it’s a handy compliment to your grammar-learning arsenal.

A Russian Grammar Workbook

A workbook which is best suited to advanced-level learners, as some of the exercises are quite involved. The grammar rules are well explained, and it goes into sufficient depth in the exceptions to the grammar rules that so often trip up students.

Russian Grammar Illustrated

Yes. This is a picture grammar dictionary! Excellent for visual learners, the book explains complex abstract grammatical structures using easy to understand, day-to-day visual examples, thus avoiding complicated linguistic vocabulary found in other books.

Dictionaries

Online

Academic

The ultimate compendium of dictionaries, including dozens of excellent Russian dictionaries of all kinds and on all topics.

Sokr

The society of the Soviet Union, as well as of Russia of today, has been built around acronyms and abbreviations, which makes this dictionary of Russian abbreviations an indispensable tool for language learners at any level.

Otrezal

An online dictionary of Russian idioms, sayings, film quotes, etc. with meaning and etymology.

Print

English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary

If you’re looking for a dictionary that employs American English in the translations then this is the dictionary for you. Extremely comprehensive and accurate, with a neat definition in English to clarify English terms in the English>Russian section. Better for English speakers than Russian, as no transliterations are given for English words.

A Dictionary of Russian Verbs

Not the first book you should buy when you’re starting out in Russian, but a useful reference tool if you’re serious. There are 20,000 entries which contain the conjugation of the verb as well as other forms such as the long and short form verbal adjectives. It includes information on stress too. Online-only alternatives are available, but probably not as complete or accurate.

The Big Silver Book of Russian Verbs

Probably the best conjugation book for an intermediate student. 501 verbs are clearly laid out, and a great deal of example sentences, using a variety of different tenses ensure that you really know how the verbs work in real life. Irregular verbs are dealt with exceptionally well.

My First Book of Russian Words

Possibly better suited to younger learners, this beautiful recently-published book includes plenty of key vocabulary items. The phonetic pronunciations are mostly accurate, but should be treated with caution.

Oxford Picture Dictionary English-Russian

Another good picture dictionary, though be aware that it contains some archaisms and even outright errors in a number of places.

Ozhegov explanatory dictionary of the Russian language

Based on the Ushakov explanatory dictionary, Ozhegov’s tome has first been published in 1949 and has since gone through over 25 revisions making it the foremost Russian dictionary on the market.

Fasmer etymological dictionary of the Russian language

The magnum opus of German linguist Max Fasmer, this dictionary remains the most authoritative source for Slavic-languages etymology to this day. A great resource for when you want to dive a little deeper into the history of the words you’ve just learned.

Desktop

Babylon

Babylon is an application that sits in the tray and allows you to translate anything by clicking it and pressing a keyboard shortcut at the same time.

Practice & radio

italki

italki is an online language learning service where you can find the best language teachers from around the world. Take a lesson when and where it is convenient for you. All you need is an internet connection.

Lang-8

Write Russian, get corrected by native speakers, help others in return. One of the first, and certainly the most successful site of this kind. Try to write regularly and take the time to understand the corrections and your writing ability will improve in no time.

Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book

A great collection of 19th-century Russian short stories that has been in print for years. The layout is perfect, with the English within easy reach should you encounter any difficulties with the Russian, which you almost certainly will considering the advanced level of the texts.

Stories From Today’s Russia

Intermediate-level stories written by three contemporary Russian-language authors reflecting the aspects of the lives of Russians today.

First Reader in Russian

A basic Russian reader, with humorous drawings accompanying each story and exercises at the end of each section.

Russian Mini Lessons

Great mini-writeups on all kinds of cultural topics teaching related vocabulary in context. Also includes examples from Russian literature.

Library for Foreign Literature

An extensive collection of English literary classics in a side-by-side dual language format in Word format, some with an included vocab reference.

Everyday Russian

Everyday Russian is a great site, translated into French and Spanish for those who’d benefit, with an impressively large selection of cultural articles, each with native-recorded audio and real-world examples.

Russian Language Learning

A joint project between the University of Sussex and the London School of Economics and Political Science covering a number of important Russian writers, including their works in a side-by-side dual language format, interactive exercises and a grammar reference.

Slavic Languages and Cultures, University of Groningen

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, excerpts from the Bible, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Alice in Wonderland in a side-by-side dual language format, with audio.

MOSKVA.FM

The place to listen to Russian radio online… Mosva.fm gives you acces to every major Moscow and national radio station, whatever the topic your interested in, or music style you favour.

Rutube

The most popular Russian video-hosting websites is home not only to countless private videos, but also many TV shows and old Soviet movies. The latter are also available in great number on several official YouTube channels.

Stihi

The largest online collection of contemporary Russian poetry. Have a read, and who knows—one day you might submit your own!

Podcasts & audio lessons

Pimsleur

This is in no case the fastest way to learn the language, but what you will learn you’ll probably remember forever. Fairly enjoyable, well thought out lessons, but beware of the hefty price tag.

Assimil

The Assimil series is a special language learning audio resource that doesn’t quite fit into any single category, and that not everybody can see the beauty in right away, but for the right learner, with the right approach, there’s nothing quite as good.

Radiosafonova

An excellent linguistic radio show for both advanced students and native speakers alike, covering current Russian language tendencies, correct usage, and literature.

Russian Podcast

The audio quality leaves a lot to be desired, but Russian podcast is nevertheless a worthwhile resource with hours of interesting content for learners of all levels.

Ochenporusski

A very good podcast for higher intermediate and advanced students, discussing latest slang, common expressions, idioms and even swearwords.

Ruspod

Good language learning podcasts, plus a nice website with grammar review, cultural tips and exercises.

BBC Russian

BBC Russian videos, radio, and podcasts. The language isn’t easy, but generally moderately slow and very clear.

PodFM

If the BBC podcasts aren’t enough for you, podfm is a great curated resource listing the best episodes from podcasts around runet every day.

Learn Russian Step by Step

A series of audio classes for beginners. Written grammar explanations accompanied by short audio dialogues recorded by native speakers. Great news for those whose first language is not English – there are separate sets of lessons designed for Spanish and French speakers.

Reed College

Audio lessons to accompany the Russian Grammar in Literary Contexts, but they can equally be used independently of the book.

Russian Webcast

News in slow Russian. Not as regular as one would like, or as the website would suggest it is, the podcast is nevertheless very useful for the intermediate level students.

Staroeradio

An intriguing website, whose name translates as “old radio,” playing music, news, and radio shows from the Soviet times.

Speaking Russian

45 audio-lessons—short, well-structured and to the point, on all kinds of topics. The podcast starts by teaching basic phrases to help you start communicating with your Russian friends, and then moves on to more substantial reading and grammar lessons.

10 best Youtube channels for learning Russian

Vodcasts & video blogs

Hot For Words

A Russian YouTube celebrity teaching English in an unconventional way has been contracted by the news site RT to bring all she’s got to Russian language students. If your private or college classes aren’t quite sexy enough for you, Hot For Words might just be what you need.

Eralash

A renowned Russian children’s comedy TV show which kickstarted the career of many a prominent actor. Fun, smart, and generally easy to understand—especially look for older Soviet editions.

Russian Pod 101

Dozens of mini video-lessons by RussianPod101 on all kinds of topics. Basic, but clear and well presented.

RusskogoYazyka

A collection of Soviet videos for foreigners learning Russian as a second language. If you’re a fan of the old BBC language video lessons, this might very well be the site for you.

Goodbye Summer

The actual BBC video Russian language course. Highly educational, interesting to watch, and still very much up to date.

Learn Russian

Video mini-lessons by the Russian news site RT. Especially interesting are their street interviews Живая речь (Living language).

Cultu

Cultu.ru is a beautiful website broadcasting plays from theatres across Moscow, every Wednesday, often with English subtitles.

Cheat sheets

Russian colour names

Our Russian colour names cheat sheet is beautiful and useful at the same time. Quickly lookup the right colour name for the occasion, as well as a bunch of other, related vocabulary.

Russian body parts

If you’re going to visit a doctor in Russia, don’t leave your house without this cheat sheet labeling (almost) every part of the human body in Russian.

Russian cursive writing practice

As a general rule, Russians tend to use cursive when handwriting, and it’ll help you enormously if you learn both to read and write this script before you go to Russia.

Chrome extensions all language self-learners need to know about

Other study resources

Advanced expressions and grammar

Untranslatable Russian Words

A book explaining some of the Russian concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are particularly difficult to translate into English by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Also includes an extensive chart of Old Russian Measurements you may meet in literature.

The Russian Word’s Worth

Written by a real authority on the Russian language and culture, this book would make a great addition to any intermediate learner’s bookshelf. Idioms are a crucial part of day-to-day Russian, and this book makes searching for them a breeze, and provides extremely accurate English translations.

Random House Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms

This collection of idioms is by far the most comprehensive available, and would be indispensable for any advanced learner looking to do some translation work.

A Dictionary of Russian Idioms and Colloquialisms

A most interesting book on Russian idioms, colloquialisms and set expressions with translations and example sentences from day-to-day speech and famous writers.

Russian Motion Verbs for Intermediate Students

Motion verbs are notorious among Russian language learners for their complexity and difficulty, and this handbook presents a more thorough and rigorous treatment of these verbs than any other.

Russian Word of the Day

A word of the day blog providing detailed information on one word per day, with a back story. The site hasn’t been updated for a while, but there’s a backlog of hundreds of entries from the past few years.

Study Russian Online

A website dedicated to the articulation of sounds found in the Russian language with audio recordings, verbal description and pictures showing how exactly you should position your mouth.

A Systematic Guide to Fluent Russian Swearing

There are many books on swearing in Russian but most tend to be cheesy and outdated. This particular one successfully avoids a similar fate by focusing on a handful timeless expressions that will never fall out of use.

History, literature & culture

An Anthology of Russian Literature

If you’re looking to break into Russian literature then you can’t go wrong with this Anthology. Featuring literature by Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenyev and many others spanning many genres, its breadth is unrivaled. Almost all of the content is however legally available online for free if you are prepared to search hard enough for it.

Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia

You’ll find this book a joy to read even if you only have a passing interest in Russia’s cultural history. It’s pretty heavy going, but it covers the major themes, actors and events from 987-1917.

Yale Press

A very interesting, interactive site for advanced learners, teaching the Russian language through history.

Blogs

Explore Russian

Angelos’ blog focuses solely on Russian. Grammar explanations and resources are mixed with helpful tips and comprehensive advise on different learning methods, such as step-by-step guides on learning through film or music.

100 top resources to learn Mandarin Chinese

January 1, 2019 by lingualift Leave a Comment

When chatting to students, we find ourselves often giving recommendations of products to learn Mandarin Chinese with. So, even though we don’t teach Mandarin on LinguaLift, we thought it’d be useful to compile a list for your reference.

All languages Japanese Russian
Mandarin Hebrew

This masterful list was compiled by Michael Dubery, an education enthusiast currently teaching in China. He is passionate about open minds, lifelong learning and movement culture and is one of the few people on the internet without a blog! 😆 If you want to get in touch, <a href=mailto:”[email protected]”>write to us and we’ll pass the message.

The list is broken up by category. Everything on this list deserves your attention, but resources we’re particularly fond of, the kind we’d use ourselves, are additionally marked with a little star.

Mandarin courses
Grammar resources
Audio & video
Reading
Speaking
Pronunciation
Vocabulary building
Dictionaries
Writing
Blogs
Fun
Other

Mandarin courses

HS Chinese

HSChinese is one of the best websites out there to prepare you for the HSK tests, with all vocabulary clearly grouped by topic into neat courses for each level. It has a great system of rewarding your work done on-site with ‘Hansheng Coins’, their virtual currency which can be used to take mock tests, have your writing proofread, and even have lessons with qualified teachers. Of course if you are really working towards an HSK exam you might prefer to pay for some of these services; lucky for you it’s a simple matter of buying yourself some more Hansheng coins on-site and you can study to your hearts content.

Glossika

A diverse selection of courses to learn Chinese by the Glossika audiovisual method, based on thousands of sentences to be used as comprehensible input. One great feature of Glossika is that they offer courses both for mainland and Taiwanese Mandarin, as well as a number of other lesser known dialects.

Hello Chinese

A self-professed ‘Duolingo style’ app which gamifies the basics of the language. Also worth noting is the writing component, which allows you to learn character stroke order and practice your handwriting (similar to Skritter).

Coursera

It might not be the first place you’d think to look, but Coursera offers an increasing number of MOOC’s teaching you Chinese, teaching you about China, and even teaching you in Chinese! (for the advanced/brave among you only). The courses are from Universities and other higher educational institutions around the world and are free to access, all you need is the time and the discipline to keep up with lectures. There is also an option to pay a small fee to have your hard work formally accredited.

BBC

Though a little bit dated, the BBC offer a very comprehensive and accessible introduction to the Chinese language, including a vocabulary list, a quiz, cultural context and a short video clip for each topic. It also links you to a number of Chinese-language media sources, so you can try and put what you have learned to use right away.

EDX

Similar to Coursera, you can find many free courses from world-class institutions around the globe. These courses are typically suited to beginners in that they don’t cover a huge amount of material, but you can trust that it’ll be a well structured introduction/continuation to your learning. Absolute beginners: certainly worth a look!

Rosetta Stone

A list like this wouldn’t be complete without Rosetta stone, as divisive as it is among language learners. I would advise that the wonderful design and intuitive interface make their immersion experience very enjoyable, the 100% Chinese audio from day one helps train your ear to distinguish the tones, and the immediate feedback on your pronunciation does a great job getting you to speak from day one. For these reasons, it can be great for beginners. Be warned, however, that the grammar is never described, so eventually you will have to turn to other sources if you want to better understand the language.

Udemy

Udemy is a platform for professionals to offer their expertise independently of educational institutions. There are courses for everything under the sun, including (luckily!) Mandarin Chinese which has a number of courses taught by professors at Chinese universities. Just be sure to investigate the course descriptions carefully and check reviews to be sure that you find the right course for you.

Fluenz

Fluenz is a complete learning model that loudly compares itself (favourably) to Rosetta Stone. It offers a similarly rich and immersive learning environment with a focus on listening and speaking, but is different in that it does use English to help you grasp the new language. It is a very well designed and thorough course to take you upwards from absolute beginner, the main downside is the price.

CN TV Learn Chinese

The English section of the CCTV webpage offers a whole host of accessible materials for learners of Chinese at any level. Enjoy graded radio, podcasts and video series, as well as extensive English language reporting which can provide key cultural context to beginners just starting to take an interest in China. Of course, as and when you feel ready you can turn to the original site in Chinese to get access to the primary state broadcaster and really put your understanding to the test.

Serge Melnyk Podcast

This is a very thorough beginners course of podcasts, delivered by one Serge Melnyk. Whilst not a native speaker himself, he has the experience and the qualifications to make this a trustworthy source. Listening to these podcasts alone does not guarantee you’ll understand native speakers with ease, but his pronunciation is very clear and measured which can particularly help to demystify this quite different language (eg. the four tones) for beginners.

Open 163

Advanced learners, listen up. Here’s a website which provides access to recordings of countless academic lectures and free courses/MOOC’s, comprising entire modules offered at various Universities around China. There is really no end to how far you can take your Chinese on this website, and how much you can learn besides. Perfect for learners preparing for full term study at a Chinese university or looking to work in a specialist field.

![Learn Japanese with LinguaLift](/blog/content/images/2016/12/jp-monkey-blue-nihongo-q-blog2-01.svg)

Grammar Resources

Online

Routledge Colloquial Chinese

The colloquial series of language learning books by Routledge is highly regarded by learners of all languages, with each book covering all the basic grammar and vocab of the language as well as putting it all into realistic dialogues. Best of all the audio files are available completely free on their website, so even if you decide not to buy the book you can use the audio for listening practice from absolute beginner up to intermediate.

All Set Learning Chinese

This is quite simply THE chinese grammar wiki. Though Mandarin all but entirely lacks inflection and may seem somewhat grammar-free to speakers of Indo-European languages, there are still a huge number of rules and systems that any serious learner should (at some point) take an interest in. This wiki gives clear descriptions with numerous examples as well as connecting you to other relevant articles, books and websites. It covers all the grammar points up to the B2 level (CEFR) comprehensively, and the advanced grammar articles number 40 and counting. Recommended for everyone; even if you don’t like grammar, at least bookmark it as a reference for later!

Center for Chinese Linguistics

This is the free-to-access corpus search engine maintained by the Center for Chinese Linguistics at Beijing University. It’s a truly unparalleled resource for showing you how words are really used in Chinese writing, and no doubt intelligent use can take your reading and writing a long way. The site is entirely in Chinese, so will be most useful for intermediate and advanced learners. Beginners, see JuKuu.

Learn Chinese Now

A great channel that regularly uploads videos teaching you new phrases, explaining cultural oddities and just generally entertaining you with all things sinosphere. Join Ben and his fellow hosts for a mix of outside and inside, sympathetic and critical perspectives on all sorts of things from valentines day phrases to the WWE in China.

Reading

Chinese Reading Practice

An incredibly valuable collection of authentic texts sorted by level from beginner to advanced. The blog author includes interesting introductions to each piece which touch upon cultural notes and possible difficulties for learners, and provides an English translation for every one. The collection is not that extensive but there is great variety, from kids stories to essays, songs to news articles.

Marco Polo Project

A brilliant initiative which translates the best of online writing in China today to make it accessible to all. Beginners, immerse yourself in Chinese culture by reading English translations of authentic texts; intermediate students, challenge yourself to work through the articles in Mandarin, using the English translation as a reference; and advanced students, enjoy reading fresh content from the mainland and consolidate your understanding by translating articles for others to enjoy.

The Chairman’s Bao

With the number of Chinese websites rapidly growing, there is no shortage of things to read. Rather, the problem is finding material suited to your level. TCB is a simplified newspaper, accessible across platforms, which offers you articles which are written with the vocabulary up to the HSK level indicated and nothing more. Their site has a range of features to assist in your learning such as word lists and grammar explanations, and their blog will keep you updated on all things China. Do sign up and have a look through some of the free articles to get a taste of their premium service.

Foreigncy

A brilliant approach to reading practice which sets the stage with an article brief, provides context with a relevant video, explains particularly difficult language items, and works through the necessary vocabulary with games and flashcards before sending you off to the article. Preparing yourself in this manner means you are able to really push yourself to understand real-world articles at and above your level, a great way to get out of your comfort zone and improve.

Chinlingo

Chinlingo is a new website which teaches Chinese through bilingual articles and podcasts as well as providing a Chinese culture/news blog updated daily. The website also offers video courses and flashcards, but I’d say that their rapidly growing archive of articles is most worth your attention.

Qidian

Qidian is a fantastic stepping stone before buying your first real books in Chinese, with swathes of original novels and other light reads ready to read in-browser or on your devices. Their innovative business model means that you don’t have to pay $10 dollars up-front for something you never get round to reading, instead you pay as you read, and even then you only pay if the book is above a certain threshold popularity.

BBC Chinese Language

The BBC news Chinese language site is of course intended for a Chinese audience, meaning it is not intrinsically learner-friendly. However more advanced learners can benefit from the array of world news presented in well written articles from the familiar perspective of the BBC.

A Chinese Text Sampler

Whilst being a pretty bare-bones website that won’t win you over with it’s design, this is actually a fantastic collection of many culturally important texts and excerpts which can really help enrich your understanding of the language and progress towards true literacy.

NY Times Chinese

Enjoy the usual high quality journalism of the New York Times in Chinese. Most suitable for advanced learners (and perhaps brave intermediate learners with pop-up dictionary in hand).

Just Learn Chinese Mini Novels

Here’s a great little collection of short stories broken up into short, manageable chapters and audio clips to go with the text. The level of each story is indicated, from beginner to intermediate-advanced, but with the majority being suitable for elementary learners.

Chinese Bible

Here is a website which allows you to set either the basic English Bible or the King James Bible (an undeniably important work of literature in the English language) beside the Chinese translation in either pinyin, characters or both. Now reading the bible may not teach you a lot about Chinese culture, but if you simply want to practice your reading skills then here is the longest parallel text your are likely to find that is both well written and free.

Decipher Chinese

Decipher Chinese is the perfect app for your daily dose of reading practice, with bitesize news articles graded from HSK 1-5. You get access to 30 or so articles in the free version, so this is definitely one to give a try.

Du Chinese

A great app offering new graded texts each week with an inbuilt tool to translate words, phrases and whole sentences reliably. As well as practicing your reading, you can listen to a native recording of each text and follow along with the audio. It is a little expensive to go premium, but there is a large collection of articles which will remain free to access, so you can give it a decent trial before making up your mind.

The Chinese Text Project

The Chinese Text Project states their goal is to make ‘pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world’. Short of purpose built learning materials, this leaves us non-advanced learners without much to do beside bookmark the site and get back to studying, but for advanced learners this is a treasure trove of reading to help better understand the roots of China; it’s history, dominant philosophies, and literary styles.

Note: A good pop-up dictionary can help with the traditional characters, if needed.

Audio & video

Chinese Pod

ChinesePod is a complete learning resource built around thousands of situational podcasts and clips. The main selling point is that you don’t have to trawl through hours of lessons on, for example, buying fruit and vegetables when what you really want is to learn to ask for directions, since you can select precisely the lessons that you want to study (not often an option in curriculum based courses). Each lesson includes a vocab list, expansion activities, grammar descriptions and practice exercises, which makes it a great place to do a lot of your learning.

A PopUp Chinese

Popup Chinese provide bitesize podcasts that are based around amusing situational dialogues, along with an on-site spaced repition software that automatically prompts you to review vocabulary from studied podcasts. The podcasts do a good job catering to all levels, with English descriptions and full translations of everything at the beginner level giving way to mixed explanations and finally podcasts in full Chinese. There are numerous other perks, including a free handwriting practice tool and additional resources for premium users, but in particular I recommend it for the team themselves who are always quick to respond to emails and comments in the forums to help us learners.

Slow Chinese

This is the perfect source of audio to bridge the gap between purpose-built learning materials, where you understand everything, and media intended for a Chinese audience where you understand next to nothing. Slow-Chinese, as you might guess, provide interesting podcasts delivered entirely in slow, well enunciated Mandarin by a team of native speakers. Each podcast has a transcript which you can follow to practice your reading, and most have translations into 3 or more other languages. This is somewhere to spend a lot of time as an elementary-intermediate learner!

Mandarin Made EZ

MandarinMadeEZ is primarily a series of accessible tutorials grouping need-to-know phrases by themes, which can be be watched either on site or on youtube. These videos are short and snappy featuring clearly spoken mandarin, explanations in English, and often links to further resources. With all resources organised by level on site, you can’t really go wrong. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Kids Chinese Podcast

A fantastic collection of basic Chinese podcasts intended for young learners, meaning the speech in all of the podcasts is slow and easy to understand and the tones are very clearly pronounced. The lesson topics are clearly intended for children (having a snack, elementary school subjects, going to bed) and the cutesy voices have the potential to become a bit grating for us grown-ups, but it’s an all-round beginner-friendly resource nonetheless.

Listening Practice

ListeningPractice is a website that does exactly what it says on the tin. You simply: choose your level and listen to sentences spoken by native speakers, type out what you hear and check your answer, test your understanding against a translation into English (or a number of other languages). Whilst admittedly not the most beautiful website around, it’s a simple and effective tool that can make a great addition to your learning schedule.

Goethe Institut

Here you can find an introductory audio-phrasebook, free to download in either Chinese or Chinese and English. The 50 languages model is one size fits all, so you will find 100 short recordings of a standard set of words and phrases which is intended to take you from absolute beginner through greetings, numbers and everyday phrases up to ~A2 level on the CEFR. There is a lot crammed into a small space here, but with your trusty MP3 player (read: smartphone) in hand and somewhere to walk briskly outdoors, this is the perfect resource to practise shadowing and improve your accent as a beginner.

iChinesePodcast

Though produced as a supplement to the 1-on-1 lessons offered on the site, the podcasts offered on iChinesePodcast are a great way to practice your listening in their own right, with short realistic dialogues and transcripts and grammar points clearly laid out for you to follow and review.

Beginners: If you are using this as a free resource then the lack of spoken English language explanations can be off putting, but the clear, logical layout is definitely a plus.

Yep!Chinese

Yep!Chinese offer another podcast-focused learning method, with their content helpfully categorised under: learning, discovering (intriguing language points put into a broader context), or exploring (authentic news and content related to China today). It’s a service still in development, but there is a free app to play with, and all lessons are arranged by level as is to be expected. Certainly a resource worth trying out.

Pimsleur

Though famously pricey and somewhat limited as a learning resource in terms of vocabulary, the pimsleur system claims with a fair degree of certainty that you will remember everything in their audio-centric courses without too much difficulty. Specifically for this reason, Pimsleur Chinese would be worth trying for absolute beginners (who are prepared to shell out), since getting used to the phonemes, tones and the general sound of Chinese can be a real barrier to progress in the early stages of learning. Though I can’t speak from my own experience, I imagine this could go some way to helping avoid the pronunciation and intonation issues which plague even some advanced learners.

FluentU

FluentU teaches you by immersing you in their selection of the best Mandarin content available online. The audio/video clips are all organised by level (from Newbie up to Native) so it’s easy to learn. Just pick out something that looks interesting, learn all the new words and phrases while you watch, and then review what you learned when their SRS system prompts you to.

YiXi

YiXi is the Chinese version of TED, offering a huge collection of talks given by erudite specialists on a huge variety of topics. The language here is typically quite advanced, and the talks are generally longer than their TED counterparts (usually coming to around 45 minutes), so I wouldn’t call them light viewing, however if you can set aside the occasional hour or two aside then there is really a lot to be learnt here.

YouTube Channels

YoYoChinese

Yangyang Cheng has had a lot of success with her bite-size youtube classes teaching numerous useful phrases and grammar points at the beginner and intermediate levels. With membership you get access to all of the 500+ videos, word lists, anki decks and a study schedule (among other perks).

This Youtube channel collects together the interviews of one of China’s most prized and influential journalists. The interviews are as a rule well produced, with clear audio and a sufficiently engaging format, and of a decent length to cover numerous themes and go into a bit of depth. Each of the videos has Mandarin subtitles, allowing you to read along at the same time, and some of the interviews are conducted in English which gives you a chance to compare to the subtitles and get a sense for how discussions are translated.

Papi酱

Papi酱(jiang4, like soy sauce…) is something of a sensation at the moment in China, and one of the few vloggers that has made it big if not one of the few vloggers full stop. The fast-than-lightning high-pitched torrent of satire can take a bit of getting used to, but the ~5minute long clips touch on many of the hypocrisies and challenges that face modern Chinese society, giving you a bit of comic relief as well as a valuable look into China from the Chinese perspective. You can find her on other platforms including Youku, as well as clips made by others in her style. Best for intermediate learners and above.

WenWen

The youtube channel of WenWen is just one example showing that, though for now (2016) it is still difficult to find good Chinese-language content on youtube, there is an increasing presence of native Chinese speakers being, well, youtubers. WenWen’s is a pretty typical beauty channel with occasional vlogs, ask WenWen videos, and challenges, so if this is your kind of thing feel free to browse and know that you can now practice your Chinese even when procrastinating. Perfect! See related channels for more.

Emma Peng

Another prolific vlogger, this time more rich in travel vlogs, tours, fashion and games. Videos are in Chinese or English with Chinese subtitles where indicated, and though you won’t have any tricky language ‘taught’ to you per se, these sorts of channels make for fantastic listening practice, providing you with a steady flow of the natural everyday Chinese that people really use.

![Learn Japanese with LinguaLift](/blog/content/images/2016/12/jp-monkey-blue-nihongo-q-blog2-01.svg)

Speaking

italki

italki is a fantastic website which allows you to connect with private language tutors who offer lessons (typically) through Skype, as well as socialise and find language exchange partners. The italki marketplace hosts hundreds of tutors offering particularly competitive rates, and the website is dominated by users learning English meaning you have good odds of finding Chinese exchange partners if you speak English at an advanced/native level. The friendly system of community corrections can also be helpful if you want a blog/article you’ve written corrected, or you want to ask a question.

Hanbridge Mandarin

Hanbridge Mandarin are quite a well known language school that have been offering immersion programmes in China for a number of years, and they also offer online courses with their professional teachers covering Business Chinese, HSK prep and Chinese Grammar among other topics. By offering complete course plans and providing a teacher to monitor your progress they take a lot of the hard work away, but of course you have to pay for the privelege. Free trial available.

Speaky

Speaky is a fairly new social media platform to help you find conversation exchange partners and start talking with them right away. The finer details of the website seem to be changing month by month, but one of their best ideas is to offer an in-browser video-call tool, allowing you to get practicing without the fuss of scheduling and exchanging Skype ID’s (though personally I have faced some technical difficulties here!). Their website also streamlines the whole ordeal by making it easy for you to find language matches who are really online, sat at their computer, and ready to start a conversation.

Hello Talk

A great language exchange app which allows you to connect with native speakers (both nearby and abroad) and text, call or video call language partners from the app itself. It is a well kitted out and modern IM which allows you to share and manage all sorts of media with ease. This can make for much more relaxed and natural language practice than eg. hour long skype calls once a week, you just have to stay active and find the right partner(s) for you. They also have an excellent translation/transliteration feature (for a small premium), so you can freely change messages from characters<->pinyin<->English.

Verbling

Verbling is a well designed site which connects you to qualified native-speaking teachers for 1-to-1 lessons through google hangouts. It’s easy to see reviews, to check the schedules of teachers and to get in contact with them to discuss your options. There are not quite as many teachers for Mandarin as there are on italki, and the lessons are generally more expensive, so I would suggest interested learners do a couple of trial lessons on both sites and see what works for them.

Pronunciation

Forvo

Though pinyin is a pretty reliable guide to pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese, there is no substitute for native speakers. Forvo gives you free access to recordings of over 75,000 words and short phrases pronounced by just such native speakers. A great resource to enrich your understanding of new vocabulary.

To enable screen reader support, press ⌘+Option+Z To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press ⌘slash

Nemo Chinese

Nemo Chinese is a great free app for android and iOS which teaches you the most used words and phrases, making it perfect for absolute beginners with courses such as ‘If you only learn 50 things’ and ‘Basic questions’. There are similar lists for a number of topics such as hotels, business and travel, but these are only available as an in app purchase. They also have audio for each word/phrase and a record and playback feature built into the app; great for pronunciation practice.

eChinese Learning

A very handy web-tool to see each of the pinyin finals and initials laid out in a table, as well as every single valid combination in standard Mandarin. Clicking any item plays you the pronunciation, and in each of the four tones for the combinations, making this an exhaustive pronunciation resource for beginners and intermediate learners alike. Definitely worth bookmarking!

Vocabulary Building

Memrise

Memrise is essentially a spaced repetition system which enables you to use mnemonics created by other users (or make your own) to help the words/sentences stick. The huge number of mnemonics already available in, for example, the HSK1 and 2 vocabulary courses are incredibly helpful for beginners, since it can be difficult to know where to start with memorising and recognising characters. The majority of courses are created by users which means that they aren’t always as complete or logically structured as one might like, but it certainly gives you a lot of freedom to customise your learning experience.

Anki

Anki is probably the biggest name in SRS, offering a fantastic (if minimal) program with a huge array of features totally free of charge. It fully supports inclusion of Chinese characters, audio and even video into flashcards so it can be a very rich source of learning. It can take a bit of time to create your perfect flashcard deck, so if you prefer you can have a look online for pre-made decks, many of which are shared by other learners just like yourself.

Shawn’s Mando Chinese

One of my proudest finds recently, Shawn’s channel is a goldmine of minute-long videos each clearly explaining just one word with a number of typical examples. This is the perfect resource to consolidate your understanding of need-to-know vocabulary whether you are a beginner working your way through HSK lists for the first time or an intermediate learner wanting to patch up any gaps in your repertoire. And with videos this short, the excuse that ‘I don’t have time’ just doesn’t hold water anymore.

New Practical Chinese Reader

A pricy but encyclopaedic flashcard system to teach you all the vocabulary and expressions from the New Practical Chinese Reader series of textbooks. Great if you prefer a vocabulary-centric approach, and you want to have everything in one place.

Quizlet

A great flashcard system for beginners. Their offering of community flashcard sets isn’t quite as encylopaedic as the array of courses on memrise, but it’s very easy to flick through new sets to see if they are right for you. Plus, the website has a nice intuitive design and a bit of variety to the review methods.

Got Characters

A collection of games and infographics to help Chinese characters stick in your memory. The ‘HSK1 character map’ and ‘radical view’ are particularly worth your attention, mapping out the characters/radicals in an attractive and easily digestible manner with everything grouped by theme and colour coded for your convenience.

Chinese Tools

This is a brilliant resource specific to understanding cheng yu (four-word idioms), which are typically a major barrier to understanding native speakers and colloquial speech. Even more useful than a simple dictionary is their collection of the short stories traditionally used to explain each cheng yu, to put it in context. Feel free to explore the stories which are interesting in their own right, or bookmark and return when you next come up against an unknown example in your studies.

Dictionaries

Youdao

Probably the most comprehensive online dictionary around, offering definitions and example sentences in not just Mandarin and English but also a host of other languages including Spanish, French and Russian. Multiple definitions are offered coming from a number of sources, including the Modern Chinese Dictionary (an equivalent of the Oxford Dictionary for English), academic papers and multiple other websites, which allows you to corroborate your understanding of meaning and usage.

Pleco

By far the best dictionary application. Besides the extensive and reliable definitions offered which make this a must have for any student of Chinese, Pleco has a number of perks ideal for beginners.

First is the flashcard system allowing you to group, organise, review and otherwise keep track of new vocabulary. Second is the ability to search similar characters based on the radicals present in each character, which can be really useful to see how radicals connect groups of characters by meaning and/or pronunciation. But most useful is the huge number of search options, including scanning the character with your phone, selecting the character from an image, and even drawing it on screen (very tolerant of errors in stroke order). Highly recommended!

Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary

This is, for me, a must have extension as a chrome user. A very reliable pop-up dictionary which provides you with the meaning of the character, word and/or phrase (including all Chengyu I have come across to date!) as well as colour coded pinyin to give you the pronunciation. It has a number of useful features besides, including a wordlist which you can easily add new vocabulary to and which integrates with Skritter. (A tip for those who don’t like to read full instructions: if there is text for which it is ‘not working’, try holding alt.)

Perapera

Perapera offer a great pop-up dictionary plugin which works discreetly and quickly in browser to help you read and understand Chinese articles. The Firefox version is brilliant, including some additional features such as a word list to which you can save new words that you come across in articles, however their chrome version is still quite basic compared to Zhongwen.

HanZi Reader

HanZi Reader is a pop-up dictionary app for apple devices. Even more so than when on a laptop or a PC, copying and pasting new vocabulary into translation tools can be a real drag when reading Mandarin on a handheld device, so this app allows you to bring up an English language dictionary entry just by touching the word you don’t know.

Zdic

Zdic is the perfect dictionary to complement the use of Youdao, offering less information in English but providing vital information for beginners such as a native speaker recording of each word and the stroke order of the character. It also holds a wealth of information just waiting for you intermediate and advanced learners to explore, such as common collocations (for single characters), etymology and even readings in other dialects.

Jukuu

This is an excellent website for getting a sense of how to use new words/phrases (a very different matter from just learning what something means). When you search a word (/phrase/sentence part) it returns authentic Chinese sentences with your search item indicated and an English translation above. It works as a translation tool too, in that you can search what you want to express in English and find out the most natural words used to do so in Mandarin. It also displays statistics indicating the most commonly used options; brilliant!

Baidu

Baidu is the Chinese answer to Google. Besides being the perfect place to explore the Chinese internet at your leisure, Baidu can be a brilliant dictionary encompassing modern colloquialisms and internet slang terms. I’d recommend searching ‘–search– + 是什么意思?’ under the tabs 知道 and 百科 to find the best results.

Hanzicraft

Another handy dictionary which focuses on grouping words in which the character appears by frequency and on breaking characters down into their radicals and stroke components. This would not be my first stop when looking for a definition, but it makes it really easy to find similar characters and to browse collocations (which you can understand and translate using one of the pop-up dictionaries we’ve mentioned).

Writing

Skritter

Skritter is the biggest name in Chinese handwriting practice online and on iOS/Android. Their SRS combines with a handwriting input tool to help you learn the meaning of new characters at the same time as learning how to write them through tracing and copying. Also offering audio recordings, radical breakdowns and integration with other learning tools such as Chinese Pod and zhongwen, this is definitely one to at least trial.

Lang-8

Lang-8 is a now famously useful website, allowing you to submit your writing for correction by native speakers. Be it the first scribblings of a beginner or an essay you are nervous about submitting, Lang-8 has you covered, though you will have to correct the submissions of other users in your native language for the privilege.

Arch Chinese

A rich learning system, useful for Chinese learners and teachers alike. They offer too many tools to list here, but features include a Skritter-like application to practice handwriting, animated stroke orders and native recordings for all standard characters, and a great dictionary which indicates the HSK level of common words. Teachers and kinaesthetic learners ought to investigate the huge range of tools they have for creating real-world paper flashcards, worksheets, characters sheets and more.

Chinese Stroke Order

Simply, this is a freely available font for Chinese with stroke orders indicated. It is currently limited to HSK 1,2 and 3, but if you are still learning to write these 600-odd everyday characters, it’s by far the quickest and simplest resource to learn how.

Chinese Skill

ChineseSkill is another cute app that gamifies the basics of Chinese. Some of the features are reported not to function very well, namely the speech recognition feature, however the app offers good tools to practice handwriting, listening and reading through a serious of short-and-sweet lessons. As is to be expected nowadays, they also incorporate an SRS to help the content stick. It may be a little childish for some, but for those that like to play to learn this is worth a look.

Blogs

Hacking
Chinese

Hacking Chinese is a very prolific blog with a huge range of posts offering very particular first hand advice about learning Chinese. It would be easy to get lost and miss the forest for the trees, but the majority of the posts are organised under a list of categories accessible from the homepage which makes it easy to find just the article and exactly the advice you need. Highly recommended.

Sinosplice

The blog of John Pasden, the saint responsible for the Chinese grammar wiki already mentioned. Here you can find a host of original resources for particular learning difficulties, as well as thousands of articles covering everything you might like to know about learning Chinese and life in China.

The World of Chinese

This is a great blog/magazine that teaches you about interesting language points (including slang) and travel in China, as well as turning a critical eye on Chinese current affairs. Their stated mission is to ‘bring China- the China that we see, live and breathe every day- to readers who share our passion for learning’. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then definitely take a look

Chinese Hacks

Chinese Hacks, as the name might suggest, offers you all sorts of inside tips and tricks to take your Chinese learning to the next level. If you are the sort of learner who is keen to try out new methods and incorporate new habits to improve your efficiency, this is the blog for you. Besides this, there is a constant stream of entertaining reflections on all sorts of happenings in the sinosphere.

Transparent Chinese

Another great blog with useful articles such as how to make a phone call and, well, how to even buy a phone in the first place, along with a number of posts about travel around China (though these are pretty light on actual Chinese). I also recommend their article about the features of WeChat, since I struggled to squeeze everything into a little summary for you here.

Forever a Student

This is not a dedicated Mandarin learning blog, but as a renowned polyglot and interpreter of Mandarin Chinese Vladimir is a fantastic source for motivation and general strategy advice when it comes to learning a language. But he has made a number of posts and videos specifically discussing how he reached an advanced level in Chinese and how to overcome various difficulties along the way, and in the upcoming future he will be releasing a book to explain how to understand Chinese characters, widely agreed to be one of the hardest aspects of learning Chinese

Sensible Chinese

Kyle at Sensible Chinese does a fantastic job distilling useful advice from the hundreds of ‘magic’ methods that claim to teach you Chinese quick, breaking down simple principles and key skills to make your learning more efficient.

Mandarin Portal

If like me you love to hoard learning resources, then this is the blog for you, with regular posts reviewing and rating all sorts of apps, tools and websites. Here you can find a second (often) even more detailed opinion on a number of the websites I have collected for you, so be sure to have a look if you feel like investigating further.

Fun

Youku

Youku is commonly referred to as the youtube of China, but in fact Youku goes a lot further than it’s western counterpart in providing feature length films and entire TV series free of charge; you only have to sit through a couple of minutes of adverts before each video (like in the dark ages of TV before Netflix), but even this can be viewed as practice since ads are in Chinese. Browse to your heart’s content, enjoy endless recommendations, and join in the discussion in the comments section. You are one step closer to living in Chinese.

Play Influent/a>

For the futurists among you. Influent is a crowd-funded language learning game, which teaches you various basic words (primarily nouns) by giving you tasks to complete by exploring and interacting with a virtual environment. A brand new project in 2016, they have so far created something which is only really useful for beginners, but this is definitely a project to keep your eye on as they continue to develop the game and release expansions.

Chinese Writer

Chinese Writer is a fun and challenging little game which helps you learn and remember how to write Chinese characters, and encourages you to write them faster! After each frenzied round of writing characters against the clock it’s possible to review the characters you came across to double check stroke order and meaning, and at any time you can browse the characters and their English explanations and audio recordings.Probably best used in combination with a more understanding-focused approach to vocabulary learning, but certainly a good deal of fun!

Nimingban

For those that want to take study a little less seriously (on occasion), here is a pretty minimalist site that functions as something akin to Reddit. Browse and join open discussions on all manner of things, and get up to speed on Chinese internet slang and memes while you’re there.

Viki

Find (basically) every Chinese and Taiwanese series under the sun here on this easy to navigate platform. With titles and descriptions in English, this site can be much easier to browse than the more broad and comprehensive Youku, and it’s better suited to beginners, with many series having full subtitles in a number of other languages (translated by volunteers).

Asia Muse

A wonderful channel holding some of the best of modern Chinese music, including some more niche and indie material. Subtitles abound, as per tradition with Chinese music videos. If a particular artist catches your eye then do also check for a vevo, as you may be in luck.

Transition

The English band Transition definitely deserve a mention here; as a group of once-monolinguals, they have been in your shoes. Their contribution to us learners, and interestingly enough their preferred method of learning, is creating a collection of humorous/touching/excellent songs and covers all subtitled in English and Chinese on their channel. The ideal first stop for Chinese learners looking for a bit of auditory stimulation between study sessions.

Sing Chinese Songs

Kararoke is a much bigger thing than you might think over in China. Here is a fun little site to get your singing skills up to scratch and impress your Chinese friends. Though the website does a lot to help you understand the lyrics, I’d recommend a decent knowledge of at least a good few hundred common characters to make the most of this resource.

Linfair Records

The channel of a Taiwan based record label, this is a great place to delve into the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chinese language music scene outside of the mainland, with music videos and back-stage content galore.

Other

WeChat

WeChat is at the heart of social media and smartphone use in China today, offering a dizzying array of features such as: a comprehensive IM, articles and blog posts, a ‘wall’ of your friends’ updates and even an e-wallet function. Think of it like WhatsApp, Facebook and PayPal all in one. If you are living in mainland China you are probably already using WeChat but for the rest of you, know that this is probably the most useful app to keep up to speed with social media trends and make contact with the Chinese internet generation.

Zhihu

Zhihu is a question-and-answer site somewhat similar to Quora. This is a great place to browse short, long, humorous and technical answers to questions about everything under the sun. With lots of options to filter content, you can easily focus on a specific topic which interests you (say, poetry) or just browse trending topics and answers. Of course being a website by China for (primarily) China, the website works entirely in Chinese, so beginners would do better to ask their questions on a Chinese-learning site/blog. Advanced learners, feel free to ask away and even answer where you have the know-how.

Character Etymology

This website is THE resource for character etymology. Type any character into the search, and see how the character has evolved over time, back hundreds if not thousands of years. This is not a tool that has any immediate bearing on gaining fluency, but for advanced learners wanting to improve their literacy and gain a deeper understanding of 汉字 this is a priceless resource.

Talkify

Whilst being no replacement for listening to native speakers, this is a fantastically useful tool that will read out any Chinese webpage in a more or less natural sounding voice. It provides you with another approach to many of the reading resources we have recommended, where for example a popup dictionary can become somewhat tedious if there are many characters that you don’t know how to pronounce.

QQ

QQ is one of the biggest instant messaging services in mainland China which has also expanded into providing users with a MyApace/Facebook style page (perfect for you to fill with updates on your language progress for all your Chinese friends to applaud).

It is easy to reach out to people and make new contacts through QQ, and if you live in China you’ll find it very useful for it’s email service and for interacting with certain businesses, among other things. It can be a bit of a nightmare to install since multiple parts of the installation process are completely in Chinese, so if in doubt search for an article to guide you.

Weibo

Weibo is a Chinese micro-blogging site that is often compared to Twitter. It allows users to follow others on the site and see their micro-blogs, photos, and videos, and interact through commenting and reposting. The character limit for a Weibo post is 140, but these are of course Chinese characters, meaning a lot more information can be packed into each post.

Though there are some other competing sites in the mainland, this is your best bet and will allow you to stay abreast of trending topics, political commentary and (oftentimes cryptic) internet slang terms. Probably best for intermediate and above, but courageous beginners can sign up with the help of an English language guide to the process.

Chinese Characters

Another simple and easy-to-use etymology database to help you understand where modern traditional and simplified characters came from. It also offers a radical breakdown and mnemonics for many basic characters, meaning it can be useful for beginners struggling to remember them.

Learning Russian? Check out our list of best resources to learn Russian!

100 best language self-learning resources

December 12, 2018 by lingualift Leave a Comment

We often find ourselves recommending products for self-learning foreign languages, and we thought it’d be useful to compile a list for your reference.

All languages Japanese Russian Mandarin Hebrew

We have included some of our own products only where we are convinced they deserve a place in the list, and we have included both paid and free study resources without discrimination.

Everything on this list deserves your attention, but resources we’re particularly fond of, the kind we’d use ourselves, are marked with a little star.

Online courses
Vocabulary building
Speaking practice
Writing practice
Reading practice
Educational games
Podcasts, music & radio
Vodcasts & video blogs
Polyglot blogs
Books on language learning
Forums & communities
Dictionaries & translation
Other

Online courses

LinguaLift

Self-teaching can be much more effective than regular courses, but every once in a while, even self-learners need to ask a question, or receive words of motivation and support. It can also get rather tiresome to keep searching for new resources and learning how to learn. LinguaLift combines quality content, advanced algorithms and personal coaching to give serious self-learners everything they need to succeed.

Duolingo

Created by the inventor of ReCaptcha, the ubiquitous am-i-a-robot checker Duolingo has quickly become the leading free language-learning website. Although the methodology is far from perfect, and you may want to complement the site with other resources, the overall experience is really fun and engaging and you can’t really beat the price!

Mango

These excellent online courses are composed of interactive mini lessons. The interface is friendly and easy to use, and the program does an especially good job at teaching sentence word order through intuitive colour coding and clear explanations. There’s just one snag: you need a school or library subscription to use the website.

Babbel

Babbel is similar to Duolingo, but rather than relying on automatic algorithms to generate the interactive exercises, all content is divided into lessons curated by their teachers. The benefit is twofold: more immediately useful expressions, and a wide variety in the type of exercises you get to do.

Rosetta Stone

You’ve probably seen its iconic yellow box in airport terminals, at the local library or at your favourite bookstore. The Rosetta Stone method of teaching languages is based on the way that babies learn their mother tongue. It is engaging, but becomes rather ineffective once you move beyond the basics. Read our full Rosetta Stone review

Udemy

Udemy is a repository of video courses on every imaginable topic. They specialise in business-related content, but there are also some great foreign language lessons and an excellent advanced English writing course by a former New York Times journalist.

Lingvist

Lingvist is the creation of a CERN scientist, turned language educator. The site shows a lot of promise for the future, and features some novel ways to visualise your progress, but the actual learning method doesn’t offer anything particularly innovative or effective at the moment.

Language Zen

Language Zen’s algorithm adapts to your pace and style of acquiring material and remembers all the vocab you learned across different topical packs and songs. So after you went through greetings you don’t have to go though he same basics when doing the “at a restaurant” course. The site is currently limited to Spanish, but looking at the quality of the course we keep our fingers crossed for the future.

About.Education

About.com has pretty good articles on virtually every topic, and foreign languages are no exception. Their grammar explanations are particularly helpful and generally use simple language without going into unnecessary detail.

BBC Languages

Similar to About.com, the BBC has a variety of resources, both written text and audio, for all major languages. If you’re learning British English, be sure to check out their excellent pronunciation section.

Vocabulary building

Anki

Anki uses the so-called ‘spaced repetition system’ (SRS) to predict when you are about to forget what you’re learning, and remind you just before your memory fades completely. Although there are many other SRS applications, Anki’s active community and extensive flashcard deck library makes this one a particularly good choice.

Memrise

Anki has an online version, but if you don’t need all of its advanced features and would prefer a friendlier interface and more extensive flashcard library, Memrise is the way to go for learning vocabulary in your browser. The methodology revolves around memes, or mnemonic devices that use imagery and associations to help you remember a word.

SuperMemo

Think of SuperMemo as the grandfather of Anki. Wozniak invented the original SRS algorithm and the current iteration of SuperMemo remains the most advanced of its kind. You can create your own cards free of charge, and the upcoming version will also, similar to Anki, offer course-sharing options.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne is a distant third in the spaced repetition software race.

Quizlet

Quizlet may not use any advanced algorithms to predict your memory patterns, but it is by far the leading repository of online flashcards. The free library includes hundreds of thousands of decks on any topic, the interface is very easy to use, and the PDF export feature has no equal.

CoolJugator

Can you guess from the name what it does? 😛 The site lists full conjugations of verbs from over 35 languages. The verbs are accompanied by example sentences, and information about usage.

Speaking practice

Italki

Self-learning a language is great, but sometimes it’s good to take a small class or a one-to-one to catch up with a standardised test curriculum or brush up on more formal language. Italki is the place to find an online tutor or conversation partner who will do just that.

Forvo

Not quite sure how to pronounce Yokohama? Meeting your Russian pen-pal for the first time and struggling to read his name? Forvo is a free collection of pronunciation recordings for the vocabulary of every language, and is recorded by volunteer native speakers around the world.

RhinoSpike

On the rare occasion that a particular word is not available on Forvo, RhinoSpike is at your service. Simply enter whatever word you’re struggling to pronounce, and wait for a benevolent native to send you a recording from across the globe. The service is especially useful for languages where pronunciation changes according to the surrounding words and the wider context of the sentence.

HelloTalk

HelloTalk allows you to chat with native speakers all around the word by exchanging text and voice messages. The system has an easy facility for correcting written messages, so you’ll immediately get feedback on your writing. When recording voice messages, HelloTalk relieves the stress of an immediate conversation (although you can also call people if you wish) and on top of that, HelloTalk has an inbuilt dictionary!

Verbling

If italki didn’t meet your needs, give its latest competitor, Verbling, a try. The site has a nice interface and makes use of Google Hangouts to automatically set up the tutoring sessions, but the community is still rather small, particularly if you’re learning a language other than Spanish.

Fluentify

Another alternative to italki, similar to Verbling. The feature-set is largely identical, but Fluentify’s founder also offers bespoke, one-to-one prep courses for English language job interviews.

Coffee Strap

Pairing you with your conversation partners based on interest, Coffee Strap not only allows you to practice the language but also to find friends. If you don’t buy into that cheesy promise, think of it as a completely free language exchange app form.

Myngle

This one is for learners who need language training in specialist fields (hi-tech, pharma). As mYngle comes with a personal coach and study plan, all you need is attendance and motivation.

lingo live

Like mYngle, Lingo Live targets business customers and tailors plans to groups of employees from one organisation. Courses are developed following the Common European Framework, but are personalised to specific groups.

Writing practice

Lang-8

The golden grail of writing practice. Write anything from a sentence to an essay in your target language, get corrected by native speakers, help others in return. One of the first, Lang-8 is also one of the most successful sites of this kind. Try to write regularly, taking the time to understand the corrections, and your writing ability will improve in no time.

Skritter

Whether you’re learning Japanese, Mandarin or Cantonese, Skritter is the place to learn the stroke order in Chinese characters. The software is a pleasure to use, it is compatible with most popular textbooks, and there’s just no better way to practice kanji and hanzi handwriting than by tracing the characters on the screen.

Reading practice

Readlang

The basic concept—open any text in your target language, mark words that you haven’t met before, track your progress—is nothing new, but the difference is that the brand new Readlang is free, lightweight and better designed than all its competitors. If you’re a Google Chrome user, make sure to install the Readlang extension.

LingQ

Devised by polyglot Steve Kaufmann (Lingo Steve), and one of the first websites of its kind, LingQ has a big library of texts at different pronunciation levels. It teaches an impressive (and growing!) number of languages and includes a community component: students can post and reply to language requests from other learners.

Lingualy

Lingua.ly proves to students they can read “native” content even at the earliest stages of language learning. It pulls internet content appropriate to your level (and topic of interest), asking you to mark words you don’t know. Marked words get explained and added to a word-library where you can review them.

BliuBliu

A similar concept to Lingua.ly, BliuBliu has an added community aspect. You can upload your own books, join challenges and find native speakers of the language you’re learning. You will, however, have to “earn more minutes” to use the app without breaks for longer than the initial trial period of 5 minutes.

Listening practice

Pimsleur

If you have the time and money to spend, there’s nothing quite as effective as Pimsleur. The renowned spaced repetition audio course is slow to get going, and only covers a small subset of the language, but you will remember every word, expression, name and location taught in the course forever, with minimal effort.

Creative Language Learning Podcast

Kerstin and Lindsay discuss language learning methods with invited guests from the language learning sphere. With a casual atmosphere and friendly style, the authors share advice based on their personal polyglot experience, making it fun and informative at the same time.

LanguagePod101

JapanesePod101 is one of the best, and certainly the longest-running podcast for Japanese learners of all levels. Although the company has now released podcasts and audio courses for other languages, the quality is not quite on par for many of them.

Survival Phrases

A collection of basic phrases in over 25 languages. In each short, 1-2 minute audio lesson a native speaker explains one basic phrase giving the context of its use. Each lesson has a free downloadable pdf guide. Great to learn the basics on the plane before you land at your next destination.

Radio Lingua

Longer than the lessons in Survival Phrases, the Radio Lingua 20 5-minute episodes of stories are native speaker conversations on levels from beginner to advanced. The foreign language text is accompanied with word-or-word or phrase-for-phrase translations and explanations. Wonderful resource for learning while commuting.

FluentU

Watch trailers and fun YouTube videos in your target language; learn new vocab and expressions through interactive exercises based on the video subtitles. Excellent resource if you find yourself spending too much time watching the latest adventures of Maru, rather than learning the language.

myLINGO

MyLINGO’s mission is to make the world of non-English speaking cinema goers a better place. The service provides synchronised audio for foreign language films so you can watch them in the theatre without subtitles. Though currently there’s not a lot of content, MyLINGO is one to keep an eye on in the future.

Assimil

One of the most effective and underrated methodologies for improving one’s day-to-day conversation, listening, intonation and pronunciation is known as ‘shadowing’. Assimil is the collection to get if you decide to try this method. Read our shadowing how-to

Lyrics Training

Careful with this one because it gets addictive even in your mother tongue! Choose a fave song and a level of difficulty then try to fill in the missing words in the subtitles while the track is playing. Great way to improve your listening skills and… typing speed!

Tunein

Radio is a great way to improve listening comprehension, acclimatise your ear to regional dialects and accents, and simply keep your language up-to-date while commuting or doing house chores. Tunein makes it easier than ever to, well, tune in to thousands of radio stations around the world.

Educational games

MindSnacks

A fun little language learning app with a collection of games teaching you the writing system, basic vocabulary and grammar of your target language. The content is somewhat limited but the games provide a nice break from more serious learning.

Leaf

Leaf is a 21st Century phrasebook for every context. Based on your location and phone usage the app suggests most relevant content to enhance your English making you feel comfortable in any new situation you encounter.

With inbuilt AI the app suggests contexts to suit the needs of the moment.

Influent

Crowdfunded on Kickstarter, Influent let’s you explore a virtual world from a first-person or third-person point of view. In the learn mode, walk around and click any object to learn its name in a foreign tongue. In the timed review mode, do your best to quickly find objects whose names appear on the screen.

Language Nut

Languagenut helps teachers create tailored, gamified language classes for students. Schools and individual students can then compete with each other.using a wide selection of languages, including minority ones.

Vodcasts & video blogs

Babbel Channel

Channel belongs to the creators of the Babbel app. The funniest series of their videos features an amusing twins cover topic related to language-learning methods and learners’ concerns. A few other series cover language basics and offer bite-size lessons on specific topics.

Introverts by Jade

As far as languages go, Jade focuses on English, pronunciation and accents using funny videos to explain the quirks of British English. A second strand of her videos deals with introvertism and its impact on language learning.

Easy Languages

The very friendly videos here present the basics of a big variety of languages, featuring native speakers as teachers and also in conversation with the presenters. Everything is done in casual reporter style.

Lingo Steve

You probably know Steve Kaufmann already, and now you can actually hear him speak about his personal experiences in language learning and really follow his progress and learning routine. A lot of videos have to do with LingQ, but that shouldn’t be a surprise.

Luca Lampariello

If you’re looking for an approachable polyglot, try Luca. His channel is a mix of his multilingual interviews and lectures as well as his thoughts on and experiences in language learning.

The Travel Linguist

Travel Linguist is a series of vocab learning videos providing 101 basic phrases in 15 different languages. Each phrase is written on the screen and as spoken by a native speaker. It can get pretty monotonous, but nonetheless is rather useful.

Fluenz

You get video content from the payable software, so you will not get the interactive exercises here! Yet the videos are very easy to follow and will slowly walk you through the basics of French, Spanish Italian and Mandarin; all with clear explanations. A separate strand is devoted to learning tips and to learning success stories.

LangFocus

Paul is not afraid of controversial topics or strong opinions. He answers common questions regarding language learning as well as sharing his learning story and giving honest product reviews. He has separate playlists devoted to Arabic, Hebrew, Tagalog and Japanese.

Polyglot blogs

Fluent in 3 Months

Benny Lewis only started to learn languages seriously in his early twenties, but has quickly become a polyglot through his 3-month language acquisition methodology based on using the language actively from day one.

The Wondering Linguist

Suzie Kelsey’s blog focuses on language learning, especially in the context of travel. She has posts about learning the languages of different countries around the world, and focuses the most on Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese.

The Linguist

Remember LingQ? The prolific polyglot Steve Kaufmann is also an author of this blog — a frequently updated resource aimed at learners of all ages.

Speaking Fluently

Richard Simcott is something of a celebrity on the polyglot scene…Having studied 40 languages, and fluently speaking 16, he definitely has something to say on the matter of effective learning. He also runs Polyglot Workshops with (fellow polyglot) Alex Rawlings, so check out his events page to see if there isn’t one near you!

Actual Fluency

“Anyone can learn a language” is the tagline of this blog and Kris Broholm is working to motivate us all by producing interviews with language experts, bloggers and product creators. At the same time, he is himself trying to learn 10 languages in ten years—visit if you’re looking for inspiration!

I will teach you a language

The promise in the title of this blog may seem a bold claim, but Olly speaks eight languages and has recorded over 65 podcasts on language-learning methods. Visit to check if he knows what he is talking about 🙂

The Polyglot Dream

This dreamy blog is perhaps unusual in that its author, Luca Lamparello has posts in the various languages he has mastered. What’s more, Luca managed to learn 10 languages in his home country despite the common misconception that learning without travelling is impossible.

Eurolinguiste

Shannon is not only a polyglot, but also a musician, which begs the question: are language learners better at music, or does musical ability enhance language learning? Or both? If you enjoy her posts, have a look at her resource page too, where she lists all the materials she regularly uses.

5 Minute Language

Agnieszka is not only a Polish language fan (see what I did there?) but is also a motivating writer. Her blog, which began as an attempt to teach her boyfriend Polish with short 5-minute lessons, has grown to be one of the more popular sites in this field.

Lindsay Does Langauges

Lindsay is one of the more creative bloggers out there and it’s hard to miss her brightly coloured posts on Facebook. She does Instagram challenges and a monthly “Clear the List” where she shares her language learning goals with her fans, encouraging them to do the same.

Omniglot

From Abaza to Zuni, this site has you covered. Are these even languages?-—you may ask. Yes, Simon Ager has made a point in including lesser known languages in his resources so whether you want to get an idea of a language or learn phrases, this is the site to visit.

The Mezzofanti Guild

Donovan from The Mezzofanti Guild is a polyglot, specialised in the Arabic language. This is a highly recommended read both for language learning tips as well as insights into the life and culture of Egypt and Kazan.

Language Mastery

Apart from sharing tips on learning specific languages, John also draws from his university education in linguistics and writes about psychology, brain health and motivation, among other topics.

The Polyglotist

Siskia started as a bilingual so you may say she had it easier to become a polyglot, but that’s not the case! She shares her leaning struggles, tips, product reviews and occasional videos in an engaging, Mexican style.

RawLangs

Alex Rawlings, dissatisfied with the style of language teaching at his university, has made it his mission to show other learners more efficient methods of study. In 2012, he became Britain’s Most Multilingual Student, so his blog is definitely worth checking out.

Itchy Feet Comic

Learning languages can be a dreary business, so why not have a fun break? Join the multinational and multilingual at the funny Itchy Feet and laugh at the problems or common situations that happen to all of us abroad.

Languages Around the Globe

There is probably no topic that Brian, the author of this blog, hasn’t covered. From reviews of language learning tools, tips on learning specific languages and unusual learning methods, to posts directed at language software and app producers. Brian spares no one! 🙂

Language Crawler

Language Crawler’s posts aren’t your regular short “7 ways to do X” style, but are fairly well-researched pieces on specific aspects of languages and linguistics.

Language Surfer

Language Surfer Ron aims to turn his blog into a technical manual for language learning. Coming from Florida, he learned Arabic, Spanish and German; all in flip flops of course 😉

What is the best language to learn?

Books on language learning

Like book but have no time to read? Try Blinkist and get an exclusive 20% off!

Fluent in 3 Months

We’ve already listed Benny Lewis polyglot blogs “amonth” on our site, but his book is an equally good read. All his great tips on self-learning a language quickly by using it from day one are expanded, improved, and adapted for this hardcover format.

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

This book is a step-by-step, method by method review of the most common memorisation techniques and learning methods, supported by references to academic research on which they are based—sort of like the articles on our blog! Read the author’s definition of fluency in the blog post below.

What is fluency in a language?

Lingo: A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe

Short read (like maybe a flight between London and Poland) with fun facts about European languages. Not all the facts and not all languages, but definitely a fun choice and a good present for those who seem to have “all the books about languages”.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Translation is just rendering one language in another, isn’t it? You may think that until you start speaking a foreign language and try to translate to your interlocutor a phrase like “kick the bucket”. This funny book shows how our lives are indeed all based on translation and describes some comical results of this setup.

Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages

How do people acquire colour vocabulary? Why would we have a hard time to understand directions as explained by Tzeltal speakers? Topics from linguistic theory and psycholinguistics are explained in an approachable manner with a lot of research examples.

In the Land of Invented Languages

Anyone bored with learning Spanish, German or even Japanese? Why not try Klingon, Láadan or Ido? Arika Okrent tried that and the book is a record of her experiences as well as stories behind constructed languages and their creators.

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

If you are a language fan, you must have at least heard about Stephen Pinker. In this book he argues that humans have an innate capacity for language acquisition and, perhaps, an in-built grammar “software”. Is it true? Read the book and tell us what you think.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

This one is for those of you who are addicted to SRS language sites and want to upgrade their brain’s memorisation skills. The advice in this book comes from a former American Memory Master, so there is reason to believe that after reading it you will memorise a deck of cards in 2 minutes

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

Human history is a history of wars, movement and (add whatever you believe). All this is reflected in the languages and dialects we currently speak, and the discipline that studies it is called historical linguistics. For those who weren’t fans of this topic at school, trust me, Nicholas Ostler can even make historical linguistics interesting.

Get more book recommendations from our blog

Linguistics Stack Exchange

Stack Overflow has become a go-to Q&A site for programmers, and the Stack Exchange (SE) network is promising to do the same for other fields. The Linguistics.SE is a good place for general language-related questions, but you should also explore language-specific subsites such as English Language & Usage.

Linguistics Reddit

Language Learning Reddit

HiNative!

Have you ever found yourself at a loss for words in a specific situation, or not quite sure about the precise wording of this or that expression? HiNative! positions native speakers around the world just a click away, and they’re ready to answer simple questions about language usage and nuance.

How to Learn any Language

A site that does exactly what it says on the label—comprehensive self-learning guides for around 20 languages, covering linguistic information and providing relevant resources. All that combined with a vibrant forum with discussions on language learning methods and materials, also in languages other than English.

Meetup

Language exchange groups, polyglot conferences and other language-related events are a great way to make new friends, practise your target language, and find out about the latest learning techniques and products. Meetup makes it super easy to find a language learners’ group near you.

Couchsurfing

Most people think of Couchsurfing as a fun, personal and, last but not least, free way of traveling in foreign countries. If you can’t afford to take a holiday, however, the service can also double as a great way to learn your target language by hosting and guiding visitors who speak it.

The Polyglot Club

You must subscribe to gain access to the community that allows you to connect with language learners in your town, to see the meetups that are happening, find language partners for language exchange and ask for advice online.

InterNations

InterNations has a “foreigner search” that helps you find and connect with your language community (or simply a community of non-locals) in a new town. We all love new languages and interacting with the locals, but sometimes, when you feel homesick, it’s good to have a supportive community-cushion to fall back on.

Dictionaries & translation

Babylon

Babylon is an application that sits in the tray and allows you to translate anything by clicking it and pressing a keyboard shortcut at the same time. The free dictionaries included with the software are in no way exceptional, but what makes Babylon unique is the huge choice of premium dictionaries that can be loaded into it, including gems that are virtually unattainable in print.

Lingoes

A good alternative to Babylon, Lingoes is an on-demand dictionary offering translation in around 80 languages.

Linguee

This website is indispensable when a traditional dictionary doesn’t give you enough context to figure out what the appropriate expression in a given situation would be. Simply search for a word, expressions, or part of sentence in your native language, to bring up a table highlighting your search phrase in professionally translated documents, most often from government websites or academic publications.

WordReference

As the name suggests, this WordReference is home to an extensive collection of dictionaries that are especially useful for looking up nuanced translations of set expressions and word groups. Even better, however, is the site’s forum, which hosts some very interesting discussions on language usage and nuance.

Gengo

When Google Translate just doesn’t cut it, that doesn’t mean you’ll have to spend a fortune on a traditional translator. Simply upload your text to Gengo, and the service will instantly match you with the ideal freelance translator that fits your budget and requirements.

ProZ

If your goal is to become a professional translator, ProZ is the community to join. You’ll find an extensive collection of resources for translators, niche dictionary tools, and never ending discussions of language usage and nuance.

Chrome extensions all language self-learners need to know about

Other

IFTTT

IFTTT stands for ‘if this then that’ and the four words pretty much sum up this online service. Choose a source web app or software, define a trigger event and channel it to one of a myriad of other services. If its purpose for language acquisition isn’t immediately useful, see our guide on automating your language learning.

Triplingo

TripLingo wants to make foreign travel less stressful. The app has many features like a voice translator (helpful if you want to ask for soy milk in a Latvian Starbucks), a phrasebook and various courses, as well as useful tools related to specific foreign travel (local emergency numbers and currency converter).

OneNote

A journal is a language learner’s best friend, but as more and more aspects of our lives turns digital, you may want to consider online alternatives. OneNote is an excellent digital notebook application that syncs across all your devices and allows you to easily combine typed text, handwritten notes, audio recordings and even documents in a single entry.

Evernote

Evernote is another digital notebook application, in many ways equivalent to OneNote. There are some differences between the two (such as support for handwritten notes, useful for Asian languages), but you’re likely to be happy no matter which one you choose.

Phew! This would be it! We hope you found something for you on the above list. If you did, feel free to share it with your friends!

Top resources to learn Modern Hebrew

December 14, 2017 by lingualift Leave a Comment

Looking to learn Modern Hebrew? Finding the right resources can be surprisingly hard. While there is a variety of courses aimed at religious individuals, and focused on Biblical Hebrew, quality resources for Modern Israeli language are few and far between.

Rather than creating the longest possible list including anything that ever touched Modern Hebrew, we opted for quality.

We have to admit it was hard work to scavenge the net and dig up this selection. It does however bring a feeling of accomplishment to any language nerd to locate treasures hidden among the chaff, and we’re pleased to share this bank of resources with you.

Cheers to happy learning! Or even,

לחיים! 🍸

Hebrew courses
- Audio courses
Apps
Resource pages
Reading practice
Vocabulary building
Speaking & pronunciation
Blogs
Videos & YouTube
Dictionaries
- Verbs
Miscellaneous

Hebrew courses

LinguaLift

LinguaLift is an all-round course that teaches not only grammar and vocabulary but gives an insight into the culture of Israel. Lessons are jargon-free and written in an accessible, conversational style and the course is equipped with a spaced repetition algorithm which won’t let you forget what you learned. Friendly tutors available on hand through a handy chat system, will coach you to learn efficiently.

Udemy

For all you MOOCs fans, Udemy to the rescue! A video based language course with 5.5 hours of content to cover basic Hebrew skills. The curriculum is the same as on many other sites, chose it if: you prefer a video delivery method, and are willing to pay a little.

Learn Hebrew Easily

Delightful resource, finally with a different colour scheme. With friendly explanations, each lesson covers a little bit of each of the different aspects of the language. The alphabet section has nice animations to illustrate how the letters are written. 15 lessons cover beginner material.

Foundation Stone

Actual desktop software. Do you remember those? Not a web based course but a package you have to download 😱 It may look slightly complex if you glance at the screenshots, but has a lot of functionality. It teaches vocabulary based on the frequency of usage, uses SRS, and allows you to record your pronunciation. Minus the 90s design, it’s a handy resource to try.

eHebrew

Basic course with little explanations, mainly tables of words to learn. Divided into distinct, small parts and employing a slightly unusual approach based on transliteration. An interesting part is the verb dictionary, with a collection of verbs categorised by the first root letter.

Audio courses

Hebrew Lessons

A list of 15 audio-based lessons with dialogues and downloadable PDFs. Each is divided in sections devoted to listening, vocabulary, grammar, and speaking. The PDFs are mainly in Hebrew, with new words translated into English and Russian. It’s a resource for intermediate learners, and best used with a teacher.

Pimsleur

What more to add… Pimsleur is a world known learning method that you either love or are ambivalent about. It’s pricey, but remains a leading provider of foreign language audio courses, and will definitely help you improve your listening and pronunciation skills.

Hebrew Podcasts

A selection of lessons at levels from easy to advanced, each with audio, video, and downloadable transcripts. Limited amount of free content. Being a member you can also access extra games and flashcard decks.

Defense Language Institute

Lessons designed to both teach you the language, and explore more advanced concepts related to life in Israel. Materials are based on authentic newspaper articles, radio and TV broadcasts.

Apps

Duolingo

Anyone who ever tried to learn any language has heard of Duolingo. If you are a fan of their method, rest assured — the app also teaches Hebrew. You need to know the Hebrew alphabet first, and best be able to type it on the keyboard to use the lessons, so it’s not an ideal option for those learning from scratch.

Memrise

Memrise has a devoted fan base and to their (and our!) delight they launched their own courses incorporating short videos from native speakers. Unfortunately, Hebrew doesn’t have a course yet, but the community is not idle. The library includes courses on a variety of topics, and based on other external resources (course with all words from Duolingo, or from popular textbooks).

Free Nemo

As the name suggests, this one is free! 100 basic phrases with audio and recording option to compare your pronunciation with the native speaking teacher. Best for practicing speaking and pronunciation.

Write it! Hebrew

Trace the letters with your finger on your phone screen while listening to native pronunciation. Practice recognising characters using flashcards. Great help in the beginning of your learning, especially if you can’t be asked to carry around a notebook for writing practice 😛

Clozemaser

An app using cloze method to expand your vocabulary and context understanding. Exercises show you sentences with a missing word which you have to fill in. To make it easier you can choose to see suggestions for the words. Cool, old-school looking design, and as any self-respecting app it lets you collect points 😋

Resource pages

Polymath

A great site splitting the Modern Hebrew grammatical knowledge into parts and sorting them by topic. Vocabulary lessons are sorted by theme, so you can learn all the shopping or school related words at one go. There is also a separate section devoted to phrases. One minus: no audio.

Let’s talk in Hebrew

A blog-type interface explaining different aspects of grammar from the basic ones to the more complex topics, including a lot of helpful nuances. The site is hard to navigate unless you know what you’re looking for. But, if you’re looking for extra explanations on something that was nly briefly mentioned by your tutor this is a place to be.

Teach Me Hebrew

Well designed clean-looking site with clear division into sections to explain the alphabet, specific grammar aspects, and listing groups of verbs. There is a list of practice dialogues about daily topics, and for an extra morsel of fun, a list of songs with full lyrics translated and transcribed so you can sing along before you learn to understand!

Ulpan Net

A repository of knowledge with five short lessons of a beginner’s course. With short sections devoted to specific aspects of the language, and one even to curses and slang 🤫 The design isn’t to die for, but if you’re looking for extra reading practice and exercises it’s a good supplement to your studies.

Reading practice

Hebrew today

Newspapers in Easy Hebrew, printed in large letters and with vocalisation. Covering regular topics from politics, through health and science, to celebrities — a welcome departure from the regular beginner content focused on favourite animals and fruits. Bershit is aimed at beginners and Yanshuf at more advanced learners are available both online and in print.

Sha’ar L’Matchil

Similar to Bereshit and Yanshuf this newspaper in Easy Hebrew comes out Weekly and is a little more expansive. Only one level — for advanced students. Online version comes with audio, you can access a free sample on the site.

Hebrew Short Stories

Don’t be scared! This page is all in Hebrew, but it’s just links to free pdfs with short stories. Excellent materials for reading practice for intermediate and advanced learners.

Vocabulary building

ZigZagWorld

A cool browser game to help you learn vocab using pictures. Aimed at beginners who already know how to read. The topics of different vocabulary learning sections relate to daily activities, and religious traditions.

Daily Dose of Hebrew

Short posts focused around a single word, released daily are a great and fun supplement to a more structured course helping you see the relationships between different Hebrew words.

Anki

One of the first flashcard platforms that reached mass popularity. A wide choice of vocabulary decks to satisfy demands of even the most demanding learners: based on popular textbooks, courses, and with translations between various language pairs. Anki also offers atone of customisation options for making your own flashcards.

Tatoeba

A community-created repository of sentences translated into different languages. Great for comparisons among languages you already know. You can discuss sentences with the community members and even connect with native speakers.

Speaking & pronunciation

italki

If you’re looking for a real life tutor, head to italki — a state of art platform that connects you with teachers around the world. You can choose between community tutors for more casual practice and professional educators.

Hello Talk

Practice chatting with native speakers, make friends, and learn about the culture… for free! App based casual chatting and video messaging, a favourite resource of all language learners!

Forvo

A go to option to check pronunciation of new words, compare different versions and submit new entries. Hear how natives say words you are unsure about, and, once you feel comfortable with speaking yourself, maybe you can even submit your own recordings? 🤔

Blogs

Lingua Junkie

Nice selection of posts to introduce you to the quirks of Hebrew and give ideas on how to practice. As all language blogs, it’s aimed at language nerds 😛 Some posts have audio and some downloadable materials for extra practice.

Teacher Mike

Teacher Mike is a tutor based in Tel Aviv who, with a very direct and slightly sarcastic approach, gives you tips on learning Hebrew. Not too many posts here yet, but let’s hope the blog will grow.

Transparent Languages

When you’re bored with verbs, but still want to learn head here. From grammar, through tradition to restaurant recommendations, this blog has lovely bits of fun related to Israel and the Hebrew language.

Videos & YouTube

Lessons

eTeacher Hebrew

Several playlists each focused on different theme: grammar lessons, introducing single new words, and a teacher Q&A.

Hebrew Pod 101

Hebrew Pod does an excellent job making Hebrew fun. With a variety of instructors and thematic channels, here you will find everything from structured classes to funky introductions to slang.

Shalom Adventure

Recordings of lectures from a religious instructor. Nothing interactive, but if you’re looking for a consolidation of beginner knowledge and a new explanation style, this is an ok resource to play in the background.

Disney Videos

Youtube playlist with popular Disney songs in Hebrew. If you’re like us and know some of the Lion King’s tracks by heart this is definitely for you. A little short, but it’ll surely inspire you to do more YT Disney research on your own 😋

Israeli Songs with English Subtitles

Learn by singing along! And, while you do that get introduced to classic Israeli tunes and most famous Israeli artists like Arik Einstein or Shlomo Artzi. A delight! 😍

Dictionaries

Morfix

The top, probably most used Hebrew-English, English-Hebrew online dictionary. Bookmark it immediately.

HebrewPedia

Picture dictionary divided into topical categories including pets in Israel, and Knesset. Words come with a little more context than just a dry translation, so you can explore a little more about the Israeli culture while building your vocabulary.

In Hebrew

The site markets itself as a video collection, but the videos are basically selections of flashcards arranged by topic and supplied with audio.

Reverso

An online translation service that wouldn’t be that special if it didn’t pull out example sentences from the internet. You can quickly see how the word or phrase you’re looking for is used by natives.

HaDorbanot

Proooobably more advanced students, this Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary is the Israeli version of the Urban Dictionary.

Verbs

####[Pealim](https://www.pealim.com/dict/prepositions/)
Beautiful collection of Hebrew verbs with conjugation tables illustrating all the forms 😍 It has an inbuilt Hebrew keyboard so you can avoid copying and pasting the text from other sites. Also, a handy section dedicated to prepositions and their conjugations.

Hebrew Verbs

Verb tables on a nicely designed platform, but unfortunately the most useful content is paid. Non-pro members only have access to selected verbs, and can’t listen to the recordings.

Miscellaneous

Cartoon Hebrew

Even if you already know Hebrew this is a fun one to visit, the author writes in a very conversational style an introduces original mnemonics.

Hebrew Jokes

A collection of jokes, nothing more to add. Written on flashcards cards with vocalisaiton — memorise a couple to surprise your friends on the next Shabbat dinner.

Alphabet Animation

What it says on the tin. Click on a letter, see an animation of how it’s written, get hypnotised!

Hebrew Books

Download books for free. Oh yea, it’s raaaather for advanced peeps 😎

Anything missing? Let us know!

And, if you’re feeling inspired to learn try our free class now!

How to use a foreign language dictionary to learn faster and improve your style

April 6, 2017 by lingualift Leave a Comment

We’ve all used a dictionary, whether it was to look up an unfamiliar word in our mother tongue, or a translation in a foreign language. But, like any tool, dictionaries have the potential to do more harm than good if not used properly.

Let’s look at some of the common types of dictionaries and how to best leverage them in your studies!

Bilingual dictionaries

Level: Beginner–Advanced

Use: Look up vocabulary translations

A bilingual dictionary offers direct translations between two different languages. It is an indispensable tool for any serious language learner, and there are still significant benefits to using a paper one over a digital version.

In a good bilingual dictionary, you can find the following:

translation of a word in your native language
correct spelling and pronunciation of a word
grammatical information about a word
the register (level of formality) of a word
example sentences and expressions

When to use a bilingual dictionary

If you resort to a dictionary for every new word you see or hear, you’ll quickly burn out and cease to enjoy using the language. Efficient language self-learners are careful to choose which words to look up, and the right time to do so.

When you come across a word you don’t understand, keep reading until the end of the sentence, or better yet, the paragraph ☝️ If by the end of the passage the word still seems important, and you still haven’t guessed its meaning, go look it up.

Similarly, when you hear a new word in class or presentation, keep listening. What the speaker says next may give you more context and clarify the word’s meaning. If the word appears important, quickly jot it down and later ask your teacher or a fellow student.

It’s also an indispensable tool to find the correct word in your target language. Say you want to find out how to say ‘jumper’ in Italian.

Tips on using a bilingual dictionary

One word can have several translations

Vocabulary in different languages rarely matches one-to-one. An example often quoted as an illustration is the Inuit language, which, allegedly, has over fifty nuanced words for ‘snow’. Worse yet, a foreign word can encompass several meanings that are mutually incompatible in English:

Entry for 青い (blue) from the Japanese-English dictionary Weblio.

Does the Japanese word 青い (aoi) mean blue or green? 🤔 You’ll be hard pressed to answer the question without looking at some example sentences:

Example sentences for 青い (blue) from the Japanese-English dictionary Tangorin.

Ah, that’s better, 青い means green in the context of traffic lights, but blue when you’re talking about the sky… Looks like a tricky word to use correctly. It would probably be worth discussing its usage with a native speaker, or reading up on the Japanese perception of colours.

A word can be untranslatable

Some languages have more nuanced vocabulary than others, and some use complex grammar patterns to convey a meaning of just one English noun. Russian, for example, may resort to diminutives rather than adjectives to convey emotional context.

Entry for ‘dépaysement’ from the French-English dictionary Wiktionary.

“In France, the feeling of being an outsider is known as dépaysement (literally: decountrification). Sometimes it is frustrating, leaving us feeling unsettled and out of place. And then, just sometimes, it swirls us up into a kind of giddiness, only ever felt when far away from home. When the unlikeliest of adventures seem possible. And the world becomes new again.” — From “The Book of Human Emotions: An Encyclopaedia of Feeling from Anger to Wanderlust”, by Tiffany Watt Smith

That’s certainly a word I can relate to! I might just start using it in English… 😆

One word can belong to different parts of speech

Many English words can act as nouns, verbs and adjectives. This is however, much less common in many other languages.

Entry for ‘best’ from the Russian-English dictionary Academic.

In the abbreviated example above, the English word best maps to different Russian adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs.

Grammar words can be misleading

Words that are more a matter of grammar than vocabulary are best learned outside of a traditional dictionary. One of the best examples are prepositions. You might think finding the translation for the French à, for example, would be straightforward, but that is not the case:

Elle est à Paris. — She’s in Paris.
Elle va à Londres. — She’s going to Tokyo.
Elle est à la banque. — She’s at the bank.
Elle prend de l’eau à la rivière. — She’s getting some water from the river.
Elle a une robe à manches. — She has a dress with sleeves.

In cases like this a bilingual dictionary is just not enough, as it is necessary to learn the relevant grammar patterns before you can use the word correctly.

Fixed expressions break the rules

Fixed expressions, or groups of words that are always used together can add further difficulty to learning new words. Individual words in these expressions can gain a completely different meaning or even refuse to obey any grammatical rules!

For example, in English, we can ‘push’ a button, a stake, or a wheelbarrow, but in French, all three would use a different verb 😮

Entry for ‘to press’ from the French-English dictionary Le Grand Robert & Collins

A good dictionary will have a list of nouns paired with each verb, and some example sentences for context, but it’s impossible to make the list exhaustive.

Additionally, unless the dictionary has an extensive list of good example sentences with translations, you may not always be getting the word that you’re looking for. Asking somebody how old they are in Japanese isn’t as simple as looking up the word for ‘old’ or ‘how’. You may not know that the correct way to ask somebody’s age is いくつですか？without reference to an external source.

Monolingual dictionaries

Level: Intermediate–Advanced

Use: Look up same-language definitions

Monolingual dictionaries provide definitions in the same languages as the words you’re looking up.

Entry for the antagonym ‘sanction’ from Merriam-Webster.

You can use a monolingual dictionary to look up:

the definition of a word
correct spelling and pronunciation of a word
grammatical information about a word
the register (formality) of a word
examples sentences and expressions

Although we don’t support the popular position that students should switch to monolingual dictionaries exclusively early on in their studies, they do have some unquestionable benefits for language self-study.

Monolingual definitions, especially in dictionaries adapted to second language learners, are written using easier vocabulary than the target keyword ✍️ This gives you an opportunity to review vocabulary in context and with a clear goal, two key ingredients for long-term retention.

Starting to use a monolingual dictionary can be a daunting tasks, so here are some tips for making the transition.

Tips on using a monolingual dictionary

Find a dictionary adapted to self-learners

There are two types of monolingual dictionaries: those adapted to native speakers, and those for foreign language learners. If possible, try to get hold of the latter version as it will have simpler definitions, and in case of Asian languages, furigana/pinyin (Chinese character readings).

Start with simple words on the tip of your tongue

To dip your toe in, start by using monolingual dictionaries for easy words that you’ve mastered a long time ago, but struggle to remember now. By the way, having a personal vocabulary book 📙 where you write the words that were difficult to remember or understand for you is a great idea, you will be able to remember them more easily when writing them down and have material for your thesauri use.

Use monolingual dictionaries to pick the right definition

Early on, we recommend using monolingual dictionaries together with their bilingual counterparts. As we’ve discussed above, very often a single word in your mother language can have several definitions in the one you’re learning.

A great way to figure out which of the available translations fits your needs is to look them up in a monolingual dictionary and peruse the detailed descriptions.

Use bilingual example sentences with monolingual definitions

To get more comfortable using a monolingual dictionary, start using it to look up new words, but continue to refer back to bilingual example sentences. Think of them as training wheels that give you the confidence to go forward 🚲

Thesauri

Level: Beginner–Advanced

Main use: Look up related vocabulary

Once you reach the intermediate level in your target language and start writing longer texts (or poetry!), you’ll want to get a third type of dictionary, called a thesaurus.

A thesaurus doesn’t give you detailed definitions or much insight into grammar and usage, but instead lists vocabulary related to a target keyword.

The entry for 言う (to say) from the Japanese thesaurus goo.

In a good thesaurus, you can find:

synonyms (words with the same meaning, ex. drunk and sober)
antonyms (words with an opposite meaning, ex. enormous, huge, gigantic)
homonyms (same reading but different meaning, ex. write and right)
related vocabulary with a broader or narrower meaning

A thesaurus is an indispensable tool, especially for languages relying on a wide range of nuanced vocabulary, such as English or Chinese.

Tips on using a thesaurus

Always look up definitions after using a thesaurus

It’s very tempting to open a thesaurus, pick a word from the list of synonyms, and call it a day. But some of the synonyms can be archaic, too casual, or make no sense in the context of what you’re trying to say! ☝️

The only reliable solution is to look up the definition of every word that seems promising in a monolingual dictionary. After some time you might find yourself guessing which word will fit your need best before confirming with a monolingual dictionary, but when you do take the time to look it up you are working towards making it your active vocabulary!

Online thesauri can save you time

There are many benefits to all online dictionaries, from pronunciation audio, to handwritten lookup, but it is the thesaurus that has benefited the most of digitisation.

Unlike in a traditional paper dictionary, where you’d be presented with a never-ending list of words, its online counterpart allows you to quickly click through to the right context:

The entry for ‘press’ from the English Thesaurus.com.

Even better, you can then filter words based on complexity, length, usage and more:

Once you’ve narrowed down the list, you can then find their definition in a single click!

Grammar dictionaries

Level: Intermediate-Advanced

Main use: Look up grammar patterns

A lesser-known type of dictionary is a grammar reference. Grammar dictionaries are perfect for non-romance languages, since their grammar systems are really what provides the nuance, not the vocabulary.

Entry for あげる (to give) from the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

Unlike French or Italian, where the grammar rules (although sometimes complicated 😬), tend to be consistent no matter what the tone or context, languages such as Japanese use grammar heavily to convey a more subtle meaning. Want to convey to your interlocutor that you’re passing on information that you probably shouldn’t have heard in the first place? A grammar dictionary will tell you of this!

Entry from A Comprehensive Russian Grammar.

A grammar dictionary will help you:

grasp the nuance between grammar patterns
master exceptions to grammar rules
find more formal or casual ways to express yourself

Tips on using a grammar dictionary

Try reading the grammar dictionary like a book, not a reference

Although grammar dictionaries often called reference books, when you want to learn how to say something specific in your target language, a regular textbook is often a better place to find the answer.

Where grammar dictionaries excel, is as a place of discovery of new turns of phrases and nuanced ways of conveying the same information. This is why I prefer to read through them chapter by chapter, or have a peek at a random section every day 🤓, to make my language more expressive and learn to think like a native speaker.

Corpus dictionaries

Level: Advanced

Main use: Look up word usage in context

Very often you’ll come across words and expressions that are difficult to use based on dictionary information alone. In such situations, corpus dictionaries are a translator’s best friend 😌

A corpus dictionary allows you to search a word, phrase or expression and then highlights it’s in a side-by-side view of professionally translated.

English/Chinese results for ‘“is a dynamic process”’ from Linguee.

Consult a corpus dictionary to find:

equivalents of sayings and set expressions
translations of seemingly simple words in special contexts

Tips on using a corpus dictionary

Always check the source

See the little warning sign in the screenshot from Linguee? 😒 It means that the particular translation does not come from a verified source and could be wrong.

Even if the source is verified, like most translations from EU organisations, you should still take care to check the original document to see whether the word use matches the context and register of your work.

Look through at least a handful of translations

Especially when translating more culture-specific expressions, browse through the entire list to see how different translators approached the same problem.

In the example above, the same Russian word ‘Бог’ is translated as ‘God’, ‘god’, and ‘Lord’ depending on the publication and context.

Now you know all about dictionaries! What mistakes have you seen people make most often regarding using them?

Share this post with your fellow language learners to help them make the most of these tools!

5 books a word-lover can’t go without

November 8, 2016 by lingualift Leave a Comment

Learning languages involves a certain love for words, don’t you think? Scripts, and grammar may be like crockery and cutlery, but words are the essence of the language meal.

Many language learners are also drawn to poetry and produce verses like:

“A slight accent sets you apart,
but it would mark you on that peddlers’-cart
street now.
Which language, after all, is yours?”

— From Desesperanto, by Marilyn Hacker

That’s a slightly melancholic fragment perhaps, so let’s move on to happier topics. Love of words. Words are power, words are weapons, just type “words are” into your Google search bar and see what suggestions you get—probably infinite wisdom.

You can’t avoid words in your life. I mean, I tried, but even if I wasn’t speaking the words of others kept coming from all corners. A better idea is to learn how to tame them, investigate their mysterious ways, and understand what they say about us… when we say them.

The books below will make you reflect on your daily verbiage and help you use it more efficiently. Also, all the links lead to handy book summaries on Blinkist, because I know busy learners like you don’t have time to read so many words 😉

The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us

James W. Pennebaker

Pronouns are a group of people who constantly fight for equal rights for the nouns. Ok, fine they aren’t. They do seem to have a secret life though, a life that they spend monitoring and reflecting our psyches! 😮

Researchers have been studying the usage of words since the first computer was built, and some of their findings will probably not surprise you. For instance, people who use more positive words like happy and care have a better mental well-being. Doh!

Apart from these obvious findings, it also turns out that the amount of pronouns we use says a lot about our inner life. What and how? Read the book summary to get the key points.

My top highlight: “(…) 77 percent of the couples with the high LSM (language style matching) scores were still dating three months after the initial speed-date, compared to only 52 percent of the couples with low scores.”

So, for a long-lasting romantic relationship, make sure your pronoun usage converges!

Magic Words: The Science and Secrets Behind 7 Words That Motivate, Engage, and Influence

By Tim David

You couldn’t have more buzz words in a book title, could you? That should serve as a proof the author knows what he is talking about! After reading this book, you might just end up motivated, engaged and influential. The words Leith lists aren’t in themselves that revolutionary (no abracadabras or flamingos there), but it’s the way in which they get employed that makes all the difference.

My top highlight: “You’re more likely to be successful if you can get the other person to say yes two or three times before you get to the actual request.”

Well that’s a good tip on how to go about convincing someone to sponsor your LinguaLift subscription.

Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear

Dr. Frank Luntz

This book comes straight from the world of marketing, and will explain to you the principles of persuasion. Convincing others of your points and influencing them to act requires a huge dose of empathy. As the title indicates, rather than focusing on yourself, you need to first understand how people process what they hear. Dr. Luntz will explain to you all the tricks how to effectively communicate your message, and make it stick in the minds of your audience.

My top highlight: “Alongside its visual components, the sonic quality of language also plays a central role. (…) Returning to the M&M’s famous slogan, the repetition of the letter M in “Melts in your Mouth” makes it stick (…)”

Well this has just explained why all packets of M&M’s disappear so quickly when I’m near. I’ve been tricked!

Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama

By Sam Leith

Rhetoric. To me it always sounded like a term only applying to ancient times. But, while it originated there it’s still well alive and thriving. Although it did get a bit of a dirty association with the world of politics and advertising… What rhetoric means is to speak well and to have a good rhetorical skills is to be able to achieve your desires through words. Sounds pretty compelling, right?

My top highlight: “It’s a better bet that you’ll be persuasive using plain, straightforward language that’s earnest, honest and not showy.”

I guess I will have to cease exploiting circuitous verbiage, alas!

5 language TED talks you shouldn’t watch

Talk Like TED: The Nine Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds

By Carmine Gallo

Are you a TED addict like me? Well, even if you’re not I’m sure you have, perhaps even unknowingly, watched at least one TED talk in your life. These talks are highly-condensed messages of expert wisdom, on topics from neuroscience, through creative arts, to social change given by experts in their fields.

If you worked on something for 20 years, how do you summarise it in a 15-minute talk, making it clear and compelling enough to inspire your lay audience to act? Well, this book tells you how. Carmine Gallo interviewed authors of top TED talks and distilled their lessons in what is essentially a guide to public speaking.

My top highlight: “One in 100 regular people is a psychopath. So there’s 1,500 people in this room. Fifteen of you are psychopaths. (Jon Ronson)”

I’m sure the above will make you look at your work and uni-mates differently… 😛

Do you know any word-lovers, book-worms or other types of knowledge explorers? Share this post with them, I’m sure they will appreciate (I would if I was them).

<a href=”https://twitter.com/share” class=”twitter-share-button”{count} data-text=”5 books a word lover can’t go without” data-via=”lingualift” data-size=”large”>Tweet this now!

5 language TED talks you shouldn’t watch

September 13, 2016 by lingualift Leave a Comment

Are you a TED fan? Who isn’t! I have to admit that my “TEDdiction” sometimes leads me to what I call TED binges: watching a gazillion TED talks in a row.

It is perhaps for people like me that TED has created topical playlists, but I use them only sparingly. There is much more joy involved in compiling your own playlists, and in this post I decided to create one especially for you.

The talks I chose are on the topic of language, and are quite funny—if you like my sense of humour, that is. Are there any other components you need for top-tier entertainment? I don’t think so 😉

Now, because I know you are a rebel and would surely do only what I forbid you here are:

5 TED language talks you shouldn’t watch if…

1. If you don’t want to lose respect for the president of the USA.

We know that words have creative power. In this talk we learn how the word president came to describe the first ruler of the USA, and… how it was George Washington who defined its meaning.

Having authored a few books on English etymology, Mark Forsyth is an (almost) unworldly word expert, who delivers his wisdom with wit, charm, and many curious words!

Listen to books like you do to TED talks — subscribe to Blinkist with LinguaLift and get 20% off!

2. If you don’t want to boycott English.

Whether English is your first or second language Patricia Ryan will make you question its value. Teaching English, she argues, has moved from being a mutually beneficial practice to being a massive international business. This development doesn’t come without consequences. The boundaries created by standardised language exams can prevent modern day Einsteins from accessing the global education market.

At the end of this talk you may end up shouting: “Down with the TOEFL!”.

3. If you are a grammar nazi.

You may know John McWhorter from books like the Power of Babel and The Language Hoax. In this talk he defends the modern menace of grammatical writing: texting. I have to add: It’ not just texting, but any informal messaging such as the LinguaLift chat!

McWhorter argues that texting is simply reflecting the natural way we all speak, have emerging conventions, and yet insufficiently investigated level complexity. So, prepare to have your inner grammarian challenged!

P.S. I have to confess I also sometime don’t use apostrophes in words such as who’s or that’s when I message… How about I write a whole blog post in text-speech? Lmk if u wud like 2 c this!

4. If you are fighting your word addiction.

Have you ever come up with your own word? Sometimes I’d start saying one word and then combine it with another creating weird combinations like sping —speak and sing, you know… like preachers do—, or sappy—a much better alternative to happy-sad. I still wonder how come my wonderful creations didn’t become “real” words*.

In this talk Ann Curzan enters the minds of dictionary editors, explains how words get approved and asks the question: if it’s not in a dictionary, does it mean we don’t know what it is?

This talk will only foster your passion for words. Avoid at all costs if you want to reclaim your life.

*feel free to use them, perhaps we can make them enter the dictionaries!

5. If you want to keep your faith in human linguistic creativity.

“Oh! Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!/ You really are beautiful!”

If you had to analyse poetry in your literature classes, I’m sure you came across “pearls” like these and thought: who in the right mind has created it? Well, the evil being contributing to the demise of your grades could have been pretty mindless.

In this talk Oscar Schwartz shows us that computer algorithms are perfectly capable of creating poetry indistinguishable from the human one. And I’d say, it’s sometimes even better.

Listen to books like you do to TED talks — subscribe to Blinkist with LinguaLift and get 20% off!

HelloTalk: 10 bizarre tricks no one told you about

July 19, 2016 by lingualift Leave a Comment

We’ve not stopped talking about HelloTalk recently. As you can see from our emails and messages, HelloTalk is one of those apps that a language learner just can’t do without You can text and voice message fellow learners and native speakers using the inbuilt dictionary and translation service also with the help of the automatic corrections—if you dreamt it, you wouldn’t believe it.

There are plenty of reviews of HelloTalk online so I thought it would be a waste of words to add ours to the pile. Instead, we think it’s more helpful to share some tips and tricks on how to make the most of the app.

Whether you are a complete newbie or have used HelloTalk before, we have something for you.

Below you will find:

1 thing to know
2 things to do
3 exciting options
4 wild ideas

1 thing to know

One thing to understand is that HelloTalk is essentially a social network, and not a language learning service. It facilitates finding partners for language exchange—with over 3.5 million users of the app, help is definitely at hand!—and there are helpful tools for efficient learning with others. With that in mind you should first decide exactly what you want from the app, and how you want to use it. Here are some points you may want to consider:

Think about how much time you want to spend teaching others, and how much on learning.
Decide which language(s) you want to practice.
Make a list of the skills you want to gain, or the topics you want to practise talking about
Decide how much time you want to spend on HelloTalk. It can be seriously addictive, so it’s better to set the limits in advance!

2 things to do

Have a good photo

Reaching out to a stranger on any social platform is an act of trust, based on the first impression. The first impression on HelloTalk comes from a profile picture. Research shows we draw conclusions about a person’s personality in only 40 milliseconds, so your choice of a picture is likely to have a big impact on how others perceive you.

A comprehensive study done at the Department of Psychology at the University of York analysed a wealth of facial expressions that help make a good first impression. If you’re on any dating site it may be worth having a look at the detailed results, but for HelloTalk they can be boiled down to a few simple tips:

Smile, preferably showing your teeth, as this makes you look approachable!
The photo should show your face and shoulders, or your body from the waist up.
Avoid face-obstructing details like hats, and make sure your eyes are visible—so that’s a no for sunglasses too!
Choose a plain background.

Add an introduction

Remember to write one. Many people don’t bother, but even a description of only one sentence will add to your credibility as a HelloTalk user. An introduction or brief bio not only makes you less likely to be a bot, but also gives you space to actually “pre-sort” your language partners. If you mention your interests, you are more likely to be contacted by people who share them—it’s pretty obvious, but so many people don’t do it!

Spending an extra three minutes on the bio also demonstrates your commitment to using HelloTalk.

It communicates to other users that you are serious about the language exchange, and are unlikely to disappear after the first two messages.

Apart from creating a good first impression and briefly mentioning your interests, there are a few more things you can add to strengthen your introduction even more…

3 exciting options

Add more languages

With a free HelloTalk account you can list yourself as a learner of only one language, and a speaker of only one language. What if you know more? Add them in the introduction! People do read through the intro, and your ability to help with an extra language on top of your native one can be the decisive factor for someone contacting you.

Similarly of course, if you want to practice more than one language, go ahead and list it in the introduction along with the level you’re at. The languages you set as your main ones should be those you are focusing on at the moment.

Sift through the partners

If you want to learn, you have to be selective. HelloTalk is an app to help you meet up with others for practise, not for finding professional tutors.. Choosing the right person to chat to is part of the game, so invest time in finding the best partner. I don’t mean you should do an NSA-style background check on all of them, but a 30-second consideration is better than bling messaging.

Check if people have written introductions, as this is a potential indicator of commitment. Look through the text for common interests and for other languages you may be able to practice with them.

Look at their activities on the app—do they have many learning points? Having these points can be another good indicator of commitment to the service, although not a foolproof one.

Many users start a lot of conversations, but drop the contact after exchanging only a few messages, so an unusually high number of experience points can also be suspicious.

Are there people you don’t want to talk to? I’ve seen profiles of women, for example, who clearly indicate in their introduction they only wish to speak to other women.

It’s hard to control who contacts you, but any sensible person will understand your preferences, so it’s worth indicating them in the intro.

If you’d rather filter your partners, make sure you check the settings section. HelloTalk allows you to set specific parameters as to who can find you, and for which information is visible on your profile (in the “Privacy” section).

As you can see, the “Who can find me” filter enables you, for example, to allow only people of the same gender to approach you if you wish. Alternatively, you can hide yourself completely for a week or a month, which is helpful when you feel you’ve already met the right conversation partners and want to focus on chatting with them.

Find free “tour guides”

We HelloTalk users most often practise languages before we travel to the country where they are actually spoken. What’s more, using HelloTalk abroad can be like having a personal tourist service! Let me explain.

The fact that you can search for speakers by location means you can get in touch with the locals as you’re travelling! You can set the settings to display those who are “nearest”, or search by city. Make sure you first set all the basic search settings—you can access the options by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper right corner.

Wherever you go, there is bound to be someone relatively close by who wants to learn your first language or to practise English. Asking them about the best places to eat, have a drink, or for weekend entertainment suggestions are always good conversation starters.

You can also be a bit sneaky, and make HelloTalk friends in towns you plan to visit in the future. If you play it well, who knows, they might host you in their house 😉

Either way, you have a good chance of turning an online acquaintance into a real-life meeting. If you feel shy or insecure about meeting someone, remember there is never any obligation: if someone suggests to meet for a coffee and you don’t feel like it, just say no. They will surely understand that you prefer to keep your friendship online.

Note: Sometimes it can be hard to find the right city in the “search by city” field as the options don’t seem to be standardised. Typing in “London” for example, produces quite a lot of different results, some of which were clearly referring to the same place in the UK:

Users can be listed as living in different name variants of the same town, so if you’re looking for someone specific, you’ll have to search through all the variants.

4 wild ideas

Become a superhero

This one is for the aspiring actors and cosplayers among you. Why not try to create a HelloTalk persona? You can become a character from your favourite French novel or Japanese manga, or even… be a Portuguese-speaking tortoise!

Create a funny introduction describing your character. Make sure it’s transparent that your aim is still learning a language, so that others don’t think it’s a scam account. Choose a character whose personality and place of origin would allow you to practice the topics and phrases you want to focus on. It’s a good way of creating an opportunity to use less usual phrases, and explore topics away from the standard “why are you learning language X?”.

Talk about pizza

It’s a bit boring to see a column of introductory messages all starting with “How are you?”. To increase your chance of a reply, try standing out from the crowd by using more original opening lines, for instance:

If you could only eat one fruit, which one would you choose?
What’s your favourite pizza topping?
How about a panda 🐼 ?

Why not spark off your imagination and give it a try?

Revisit your mistakes

I know… this idea is so wild it will make your socks fall off! Did you know that HelloTalk automatically saves the corrections you receive to your favourites? That’s a subtle reminder that you should revisit your mistakes, and learn from them.

As much fun as you may have talking about pizza toppings with your new friend Pietr from Croatia, remember that you’re also on HelloTalk to learn some grammar. Use the saved corrections as review material. Set one day each week to go through the corrections or, if you use HelloTalk a lot, you’ll benefit from a daily review of the previous day’s corrections.

Talk without words

Tired of talking? Challenge your exchange partner to a picture exchange. You won’t be typing or sending voice messages, but using only HelloTalk’s drawing board instead.

What would you answer if I sent you this?

I am obviously asking about your drink of choice, although I’d understand if you thought it said “why is there a huge snail on a road sign?”.

Drawing is definitely a good way to exercise creativity. In addition, it can help you learn something new about cultural symbolism.

HelloTalk also allows you to draw on pictures. You can use this function to quiz your student-interlocutor by giving them little tasks. For example, send a picture and ask them to point to the green dinosaur. Hopefully you’ll receive it back with an arrow in the right place.

Or, you can try to give them instructions to draw a particular item. For example, to practice numerals and names of body parts, you can challenge them to draw a monster… with two heads, five eyes, three teeth and four legs! Feel free to email me if you want to see my rendition.

Last piece of advice…

Don’t panic

Sometimes you might feel a hyper-motivation boost, and want to practice a language right there and then.

Remember, you are exchanging messages with real people all around the world: their time zones may be different to yours, and not everyone will be up for a short exchange at 3am!

HelloTalk helpfully lists the local time of your interlocutor, so you don’t have to spend any extra Google-time checking whether your 3pm is a sensible time in Guangzhou.

Use the time display feature to greet your language partner appropriately: depending on the time of the day in their location. If, for example, your interlocutor in Japan is a night owl after all, maybe you can find an appropriate greeting in Japanese to start that 3am conversation about pizzas, pandas and monsters!

Share this post with your fellow HelloTalk users!

And, if you haven’t used the app yet, give it a go and tell us about your impressions!

10 best free Russian language learning resources

May 23, 2016 by lingualift Leave a Comment

I think it’s wise to invest into your education, and language learning in particular. You might have to give up a few beers or coffees every month, but that one good book, app, or online resource may easily make the difference in how fast you progress.

That doesn’t mean that there is no high quality material for Russian learners that is free, but it certainly takes quite some time to find it, and to use it properly.

To save you time, I’ve decided to share some of my favourite free resources below:

Free Russian study resources

RT Learn Russian

An interactive language learning website from the news site Russia Today. The 30 comprehensive lessons include dialogues with audio, exercises, grammatical explanations, and tests. The site also contains sections on the alphabet, pronunciation, and grammar tables.

Anki

Anki uses the so-called spaced repetition system to predict when you are about to forget new words that you’re learning, and remind you just before your memory fades completely. There are many SRS applications of this kind, but the active community and extensive flashcard deck library makes Anki a particularly good choice.

Memrise

Memrise is an online spaced repetition vocabulary learning website. It’s not language-specific, and you’ll have to spend some time compiling a good Japanese deck (as those shared by other users tend to be lacking compared to the content available at Anki), but the interface is very pleasant to use and there’s an equally vibrant community around the website.

Lang-8

The golden grail of writing practice. Write anywhere from a sentence to an essay in Russian, get corrected by native speakers, help others in return. One of the first, and certainly the most successful site of this kind. Try to write regularly and take the time to understand the corrections and your Russian writing will improve in no time.

dic.academic

dic.academic is an incredibly extensive collection of dictionaries, encyclopaedias and reference books. You’ll need basic Russian to get through the interface, but classics such as the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, Ushakov’s thesaurus, X’s etymological dictionary, and phrasal dictionary are worth the effort.

Readlang

Reading Russian literature online is great, but you won’t get the full educational benefit unless you mark down new words as you proceeed through the storyline. Readlang makes it super easy to create your own library of texts you come across around the internet, lookup translations, highlights words based on how well you know them, and track our progress.

lib.rusek

Once you reach the intermediate level, you’ll want to look for natural native texts in the Russian language. librusek is an incredible popular online library with old Russian classics, new releases, and even translations of foreign works. The legality of the enterprise is questionable, so proceed at your own risk.

Forvo

Not quite sure how to pronounce the city of Blagoveshchensk? Meeting your Russian pen-pal for the first time and struggling to read his name? Forvo is a free collection of pronunciation recordings for vocabulary of every language, recorded by volunteer native speakers around the world.

Russian Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Gramota

If you’re looking for even more tools and places to learn, check out our list of 100 resources to learn Russian and if you’re ready to give up a few lattes to learn faster and easier, be sure to visit LinguaLift.