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September 10, 2010
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400: Language - General

BBC Languages
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

This site from the British Broadcasting Corporation has online beginning language courses in French, Spanish, German, and Italian, as well as introductory educational media in a variety of other languages. The audio and video enhancements are great for travelers and students.

Dialang Projekt
http://www.dialang.org/

Created with support from the European Commission, this site offers self-tests that give you feedback on your strengths and weaknesses in any of the 14 major European languages.

Ethnologue
http://www.ethnologue.com/

This site catalogs more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries, organizing languages according to language families. It includes a bibliography, list of abbreviations, maps, and a ranking of the top 100 languages by population.

Foreign Language Test Database
http://www.cal.org/calwebdb/fltest/

Hosted by the University of California's Center for Applied Linguistics, the Foreign Language Test Database offers a searchable collection of secondary and college level tests in languages other than English. The database currently contains more than 140 tests in 63 languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish.

Language Learning Library
http://www.languagelearninglibrary.org/index.htm

Handy, free Internet resource for learning a language including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Language Portal: A Translation and Interpretation Digital Library
http://www.migrationinformation.org/integration/language_portal/

Migration Policy Institute’s Language Portal gives you hundreds of state and local agency documents used to provide services to Limited English Proficient clients, including contracts, planning reports, and translated material. Begin with the basic search function, or use the advanced search to narrow your query by specifying a service area, keyword, service delivery component, or language.

LingNet
http://www.lingnet.org

Hosted by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, LingNet offers a rich collection of online course materials for both written and  oral foreign language instruction. The Global Language Online Support System (GLOSS) offers over 1100 reading and listening lessons in 12 languages. The Area Studies (Countries in Perspective) series, also hosted on LingNet, provides highly detailed cultural, economic, historical and political information about selected regions of the world.

Live Mocha - Free Online Language Learning
http://www.livemocha.com/

A free, interactive language learning resource with self-paced lessons and a community of language learners who can interact with each other. Requires registration.

WESS Web (Association of College & Research Libraries)
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~wessweb/index.html

Maintained by ACRL’s Western European Studies Section, focuses on information useful to Western European Specialists. Separate pages are available for French Studies, German Studies, Iberian Studies, and Italian Studies. Resources are arranged by subject and by type (newspapers, library catalogs, etc.)or can be searched by keyword.

Wiktionary
http://www.wiktionary.org/

A lexical companion to the open-content encyclopedia Wikipedia, Wiktionary is an open source, collaborative project to produce a free, multilingual dictionary with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations. Special features include a "Word of the Day" weekly translations and (as of this writing) 18 foreign language phrasebooks.

410: Language - Linguistics

Foreign Language Test Database
http://www.cal.org/calwebdb/fltest/

Hosted by the University of California's Center for Applied Linguistics, the Foreign Language Test Database offers a searchable collection of secondary and college level tests in languages other than English. The database currently contains more than 140 tests in 63 languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish.

420: Language - English Language

Acronym Finder
http://www.acronymfinder.com/

Acronym Finder's database of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms contains more than 3 million entries. You can search by acronym or browse by category.

Bartleby
http://www.bartleby.com

Bartleby offers free access to online editions of dozens of standard reference resources, including the American Heritage Book of English Usage, American Heritage Dictionary, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Columbia Encyclopedia, Roget's II, Columbia Gazeteer, Gray's Anatomy, Oxford Shakespeare, Strunk's Elements of Style, and much more.

Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/dictionary/

Free online English dictionary, thesaurus and reference guide, crossword puzzles and other word games, online translator and Word of the Day.

Middle English Compendium
http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/

Hosted by the University of Michigan, this site offer access to a Middle English dictionary, a bibliography of Middle English prose and verse, a "Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse," as well as links to related web resources.

OneLook Dictionary Search
http://www.onelook.com/

Search more than 900 dictionaries at once or browse specialized resources, such as the reverse and rhyming dictionaries. Includes a useful wildcard feature that allows you to search for a word even if you aren't sure of its correct spelling.

Online Etymology Dictionary
http://www.etymonline.com/

An online etymological dictionary based upon several standard sources, including Weekley's "An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English," Klein's "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language," "Oxford English Dictionary" (second edition), "Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology," Ayto's "20th Century Words," and Chapman's "Dictionary of American Slang."

The Phrase Finder
http://www.phrases.org.uk/

An archive of the meanings and origins of thousands of phrases, sayings and idioms. Searchable and browsable, this site can be used to locate phrases related to particular words, to learn the meaning of a phrase, or to identify the origins of phrases.

TOEFL
http://www.toefl.org/

Here is all the information you need about the Test of English as a Foreign Language: dates and locations around the world for both the computer-based and paper-based tests, tutorials and practice questions, and details of the Test of Spoken English.

430: Language - Germanic Languages

Deutsche Grammatik, Online Wörterbuch (CanooNet)
http://www.canoo.net/

An excellent bilingual collection of resources on German vocabulary and grammar. Includes specialized dictionaries as well access to the LEO German/English dictionary.

Fokus Deutsch
http://www.learner.org/resources/series104.html

A video instruction series in German for high school and college classrooms and adult learners originally produced for public television by WGBH Boston, Inter Nationes, and the Goethe-Institut. The site offers 48 fifteen-minute episodes, filmed using native German speakers, covering topics such as work, travel, and social life.

440: Language - Romance Languages

ARTFL Project: French-English Dictionary
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/ARTFL/forms_unrest/FR-ENG.html

A French-English dictionary containing about 75,000 terms.

Bonjour de France!
http://www.bonjourdefrance.com/

Le magazine pour practiquer le Francais et dialoguer sur Internet: a comprehensive resource for students and instructors, offering grammar instruction, vocabulary excercises, games and more.

France in America /France en Amérique
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/

Hosted by the Library of Congress through a partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this bilingual site offers digital access to complete books, maps, prints, and other documents from the collections of the partner libraries that illustrate amd illuminate the history of relations between France and the United States.

Gallica
http://gallica.bnf.fr/

From the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, a digitization project providing access to 90,000 texts, 80,000 images, and hours of audio files. Covergee ranges from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and a encompasses complete range of subjects including history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science.

Poésie Française
http://poesie.webnet.fr/

This site offers access to over 6,000 French poems from the 15th to the early 20th century. The collection is searchable by author, title, century, country, and keyword, and provides links to related resources on the web.

Tex's French Grammar
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/

Tex's French Grammar is the integral grammar component of Francais Interactif, an online French course from the University of Texas at Austin. Includes authentic, spoken French language via digital audio and video clips, a French grammar reference (Tex's French Grammar), self-correcting French grammar exercises, vocabulary and phonetics sections, Internet-based activities, comparative cultural polling, and an electronic workbook.

450: Language - Italian, Romanian Languages

WordReference English-Italian Dictionary
http://www.wordreference.com/enit/

Hosted by Wordreference.com, this online dictionary contains 50,000 terms, plus forums where users can communicate with native speakers.

460: Language - Spanish Languages

Learn Spanish
http://www.studyspanish.com/

Provides free online tutorials with audio, cultural notes, grammar, vocabulary, verb drills, and links to helpful sites. Basic content is free for beginners; advanced learners must subscribe to access premium content.

470: Language - Latin

Classical Language Instruction Project (Princeton University)
http://www.princeton.edu/~clip/

The CLIP Project provides students of classical languages with a method to acquire the sound of spoken Greek and Latin through recitations of famliar texts. Requires IE 4+ and Shockwave/Flash.

Textkit: Greek and Latin Learning Tools
http://www.textkit.com/

Textkit provides several free downloadable Greek and Latin grammars and readers, as well as tutorials, lexicons and dictionaries. The site currently provides over 146 downloadable books. This popular site is an excellent place to begin learning the classical languages or to check on a grammatical issue you note in a particular text.

480: Language - Greek

Classical Language Instruction Project (Princeton University)
http://www.princeton.edu/~clip/

The CLIP Project provides students of classical languages with a method to acquire the sound of spoken Greek and Latin through recitations of famliar texts. Requires IE 4+ and Shockwave/Flash.

Greek Grammar on the Web
http://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0013314/greekg.htm

Hosted by the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium), this portal site has sections devoted to the history of anvient greek, introductory courses, grammar, dictionaries and lexica, and classical texts.

Textkit: Greek and Latin Learning Tools
http://www.textkit.com/

Textkit provides several free downloadable Greek and Latin grammars and readers, as well as tutorials, lexicons and dictionaries. The site currently provides over 146 downloadable books. This popular site is an excellent place to begin learning the classical languages or to check on a grammatical issue you note in a particular text.

490: Language - Other Languages

Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
http://www.ailla.utexas.org/

Maintained by the Anthropology and Linguistics Departments at the University of Texas at Austin, this site provides access to a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America. Access to archive resources is free of charge but registration is required.

AsiaSource: Language Resources
http://www.asiasource.org/reference/language.cfm

Portal site to Asian language instruction resources, including general resources, lessons, pronunciation guides, dictionaries, related software and fonts. Over two dozen languages represented.

ChinaLinks
http://chinalinks.osu.edu/

Annotated links to over six hundred China and Chinese language and linguistics related websites. Maintained by Marjorie Chan, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Ohio State University.

Chinese Characters and Culture
http://www.zhongwen.com/

This online Chinese-English dictionary provides the traditional etymologies of each Chinese character, explaining (on English) the derivation of the character's shape, pronunciation and meaning.

Kanji alive (University of Chicago)
http://kanjialive.lib.uchicago.edu

A free web-based learning application for beginning-to-intermediate students of Japanese who wish to learn or practice Kanji. Requires the Quicktime plug-in.

Learning Chinese Online
http://www.learningchineseonline.net

A directory of online resources which cover pronunciation, conversation, characters, grammar and reading. Also included are directories to additional online resources, including additional learning materials, dictionaries and resources for teachers. Maintained by Dr. Tianwei Xie, Dept. of Asian and Asian American Studies, California State University at Long Beach

RussNet
http://www.russnet.org/

Hosted by the American Council of Teachers of Russian, this site "provides Russian-language learning services and products - information, language modules, courses, materials, in-service teacher training, databases, discussion forums, and gateways to other Russian language resources."

The Japanese Page
http://www.thejapanesepage.com

More than just a Japanese language instruction site, "The Japanese Page" is a dynamic social environment including chat, interactive forums, articles, a wiki, and games that allow users to communicate with one another as they learn. Includes instructional material on Hiragana, Katagan and Kanji.