Resources

I recently came across lingro.com through my ‘net travels, and while it could be improved in many areas, it’s already one of my favorite tools. While the site has a regular dictionary look-up, what I really love is the overlay feature (or “web viewer” as they call it). You go to lingro.com, select your target language, and enter a website URL; once the page loads, every word on the page is clickable. Click one, and a pop-up window appears with the meaning of the word. There’s also a toolbar at the bottom of the window that you can type a word into, to look up a word that isn’t on the page. (It’s also helpful to look up compound words, as many that are logical in nature don’t have a unique entry.) Here’s what it looks like:

Once you’ve made an account, Lingro keeps track of all of the words you look up. It also maintains a list of all of the sentences that the words appeared in, which makes it all that easier to add sentence items to your SRS application (I recommend Anki).

The site also has a rudimentary flashcard system, but it really is that: rudimentary. I’ve already poked the developers to add an “export” feature.

The dictionaries themselves are all open source, meaning they’re free, and they always will be. Furthermore, they’re largely user-built, so if you hit a word that isn’t in the dictionary you’re using, add it. If you’ve ever used the German dictionary dict.cc, Lingro works more or less the same way. The definitions aren’t always as good as you’d find in a commercial dictionary, but the ease of use - click the word, get a definition - still makes it a worthwhile tool.

Lingro currently has dictionaries for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Swedish.

I’ve been doing a lot of listening to German lately, mostly podcasts. I’ve been listening to Alltagsdeutsch from Deutsche Welle, along with two from Annik Rubens, Slow German and Schlaflos in München. To perhaps stop other German learners from going mad with frustration, I thought I’d point something out: either the variety of stuff I’ve listened to thus far is misleading, or Annik Rubens speaks extraordinarily fast in Schlaflos in München.

For a long while, I thought it was that my ears just weren’t accustomed to normal speaking speeds; I thought I just needed more exposure to the spoken language. The more I listen though, the more I think Annik just talks really, really fast. In Alltagsdeutsch, there are often large segments in each podcast where they’ve interviewed people on the street, and I can usually understand these people just fine. While I very rarely understand the meaning of everything they say, I am at least able to understand what they’re saying, so I can look up the unknown words. With Schlaflos in München there will often be segments of each podcast that I just can’t understand at all - the words are flying by so fast I can’t pick any out, they’re just a bunch of syllables squashed together.

This, of course, is not an “attack” or any such thing on Annik Rubens. It’s her podcast, and she should be allowed, if you will, to talk however she wants. After all, she makes a specific Slow German podcast for us learners. I do think, though, that learners might find it useful to know that, in my opinion, her speaking speed is not representative of the normal speed at which Germans speak. If you listen to a few episodes of Schlaflos in München and suddenly feel as if your listening skills have taken a lunge backwards, try listening to something else. It may very well be the material, not you.

Can anyone else comment on this? Have you noticed it as well? Could a native German have a listen at Annik’s site, and let me know if I’m crazy or not?

Harold let me know that the Princeton Russian course, which I had made a torrent file for, is now available as a zip file from freelanguagecourses.com. I can assure you from experience that getting it from that site will be 1) much faster and 2) much less hassle, than it would be if you got it via the torrent.  You can locate the zip file link here; just pay attention to the stipulations for the download. (Basically, contact the creator and let him know you’re using it.)

Thanks, Harold!

I posted previously about the wonderful Russian courses available for free from Princeton. They have, however, recently taken the courses down. This happened once before in the past, and the courses were later put back up, but there’s no real way to know whether Princeton will do this again.

However - I have come to the rescue! Before the files disappeared, I had downloaded them all to my hard drive. I was able to contact the creator of the courses, David Freedel, and asked if he had any problem with me sharing them. He said, basically, “Nope, I don’t work at Princeton anymore - feel free to share them however you wish!”

So, I’ve created a torrent of the files. You can download the torrent here. Please note that, since I just created the torrent, I’m the only seeder - so you’ll need to be patient with the download! I’d also ask, if it’s not too inconvenient, that you please help seed the files, at least for a while, once you’ve downloaded them. That way the whole brunt of the downloads won’t be placed on my internet connection.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I screwed up the creation of the torrent, using a tracker that won’t work. I’m recreating the torrent now; I’ll post a new link soon. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE #2: Alright, here is the new torrent link. Please ignore the numbers (0 seeds, 0 leechers); I know for a fact they’re wrong. I checked the actual seeding files a few minutes ago, and there were 25 peers connected out of a total queue of 66. And I know there’s at least one seed - me.

Before I forget…

I was taking a look at my copy of Wheelock’s Latin yesterday, and while looking at it, I recalled having a hard time getting an answer key to the exercises, when I was using the book years ago on my own. I dropped by the amazon.com page for the book, and found that some other folks had issues with getting it as well. (Oddly, some people didn’t have any trouble getting it - it seems that the publisher is quite random as to whether or not they’ll give you the login information for the answer key.)

I think it’s silly that the answer key isn’t made available for free on the Wheelock site, without the need for any login information, but I suppose HarperCollins is making a killing on selling the answer keys to instructors (sarcasm alert).

I thought that perhaps, after all this time of so many people having issues in getting the answer key, someone might have made up an answer key and made it available for free. I was right. The site Textkit.com has a free answer key for Wheelock’s Latin; the key is up-to-date for the 6th edition of the book. Here is the associated forum thread about the answer key, and any errors that have been corrected in it.

By the way, if you’re learning Latin or ancient Greek (or want to get started doing so), definitely dig around at Textkit.com. They have free books and other resources for learning the languages.

Google recently released their new dictionary feature on their translate page. While they offer fairly simple translations (and don’t give any contextual information about the translations - yet), something I thought was pretty cool was that they do offer a large number of “related phrases” for whatever you search for. For example, if you search for an English-German translation for “language”, for the translations, you get:

1. Sprache f 2. (Fach)Sprache f 3. ordinäre Sprache 4. Spr, Sprache

While I won’t list all of them (you can see all of them here), here are some of the related phrases that are offered:

• by making the language extremely scientific ( or technical)
  durch die Verwissenschaftlichung der Sprache
  
• English is used everywhere there as the language of communication
  (die) Umgangssprache ist dort überall Englisch
  
• literary language
  Schriftsprache
  
• first language acquisition
  Erstspracherwerb
  
• technical language
  Fachsprache f n
  
• colloquial language
  Umgangssprache f n
  
• official language
  Amtssprache

Certainly, it needs a lot of work - plural forms aren’t given, irregular verbs aren’t marked, nor are the irregular forms given, etc. But I think it’s a good start, and the related phrases thing is nice, even if the definition section leaves a bit to be desired.

The languages available right now are:

• French <-> English
• German <-> English
• Italian <-> English
• Korean <-> English
• Spanish <-> English

I blogged earlier this month about listening to Schlaflos in München to work on your German listening skills. In my previous post, I neglected to mention that Annik also offers a special version of Schlaflos for learners of German, Slow German. With these, she selects a topic from one of her podcasts and does it again, except slowly (I bet you couldn’t have guessed that based on the title, huh? ). Each episode of Slow SiM (Schlaflos in München) also has a complete transcript, so you can hunt down the words you can’t quite understand while listening.

You can access all of the episodes of Slow German here, at podcast.de. You can access the latest episode, along with its associated transcript, at slowgerman.com.

I came across a good resource for learners of Russian just now: this page, which has the top 2000 words used in modern Russian. The words provided are based on The frequency dictionary for Russian.

According to the frequency dictionary, the top 2000 most used words in Russian account for 72% of the word forms used in texts, so if you learn these, you’ll be well on your way to being able to (slowly) work your way through many Russian texts. The site provides both lists of the words, coupled with their usage frequency, along with their parts of speech, and of course, the translations. Also available are quizes for all of the words.

While the frequency dictionary page doesn’t offer any definitions, they offer lists of Russian words beyond the top 2000. They offer one list of “32,000 words with frequency greater than 1 ipm (one instance per million).” They offer a second list, with the top 5,000 most often used words in Russian. I’d say the latter would be more useful for learners of Russian.

There’s a bit of “interesting” data on the frequency dictionary page which I enjoyed reading:

• The average word length is 5.28 characters.
• The average sentence length is 10.38 words.
• 1000 most frequent lemmas cover 64.0708% of word forms in texts.
• 2000 most frequent lemmas cover 71.9521% of word forms in texts.
• 3000 most frequent lemmas cover 76.6824% of word forms in texts.
• 5000 most frequent lemmas cover 82.0604% of word forms in texts.

I think it’s interesting to note that the first 2000 words gets you to 72%, and yet learning another three thousand words will only gain another 10%. Diminishing returns, ineed.

Earlier today I was looking around online for some Russian material, namely a grammar overview. I ended up finding that, and quite a lot more!

For grammar, Cornell has the Beginning Russian Grammar page. While all of the essentials of Russian grammar seem to be covered there, the explanations might seem a bit short for beginners. However, it’s a good reference page if you’re already well along the Russian language road.

What I found far more interesting, however, is their Russian Dictionary Tree. It’s an expanded version of this book, 5000 Russian Words: With All Their Inflected Forms and Other Grammatical Information. The authors of the book, who apparently work at Cornell, have made the expanded online version available for anyone to use. Considering the stand-alone CD version offered by Lexicon Bridge Publishers costs $54.50, this is quite a deal, to have it online for free!

Here’s the description of the Russian Dictionary Tree from Lexicon Bridge Publishers:

This 12,000-entry dictionary allows you to search for a Russian or English word, and gives you all the forms and all the endings for every word. Unlike many electronic dictionaries, it is not an abridged version of a printed dictionary. On the contrary, definitions are far more detailed, and many entries contain examples and extensive notes on style and usage.

I’ve looked up a few words thus far, and they aren’t kidding - it’s quite thorough! All of the words I’ve looked up have had a complete declension table, but most of them also had example sentences showing how the word was used.

To use the dictionary, there’s only one thing you have to do: install one of Cornell’s Russian fonts. This is because they use a special font that allows them to place accent marks over letters. It’s not hard to install, though, if you follow their short instructions.

I have written previously about some German podcasts I listen to, which are produced by Deutsche Welle. Those aren’t the only podcasts I listen to, though. The podcasts by Deutsche Welle, while of high production quality, are more formal than everyday speech. It’s clear listening to them that they aren’t spontaneous, but more like news articles read aloud. They’re good to learn vocabulary from, but Germans don’t really talk like that. That’s understandable; I don’t normally speak like CNN news anchors!

Schlaflos in München, however, is (I think) a better representation of how most Germans speak. Annik (the maker of the podcast) talks about all kinds of things - her cat, her life, stuff in the news. It is essentially a personal German blog, but in podcast format. However, don’t let that fool you - in making over 400 episodes of Schlaflos in München, Annik has learned how to keep the production quality high. The sound quality is great, as are all of the “extras” she edits in - funny sounds, music, clips from listeners.

Listening to her podcast is a good way to train your ear to understand “rapid fire” German, complete with emotions. Unlike the Deutsche Welle podcast folks, Annik often laughs, speaks in fake voices to imitate someone or something, speeds her speech up when she gets excited over something, etc. And let’s face it - we all do this in our native tongues. While it would make things easier for foreign language learners if everyone spoke in the same dull, unemotional voice, it’d get pretty boring.

Her podcast is also a great source of everyday vocabulary. As I wrote in this post, not all vocabulary is alike. While it’s good to know the vocabulary that news articles use, knowing that vocabulary won’t necessarily make it easier to understand natives speaking about everyday things. Some vocabulary is formal; some is informal. You need to strike a balance. Schlaflos in München will give you your dose of informal vocabulary.

So, if you’re learning German and haven’t listened to Schlaflos yet, please give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy it. If you do end up enjoying it, you’ll have plenty to keep your hands (or iPods) full. The complete archive of her show is available through iTunes. (You can also get all of her old episodes via this feed, if you’re not an iTunes user.)

If you’re looking for a full course to get started with in learning a language, you might be able to find what you’re looking for in the FSI language courses. The language courses were made by the Foreign Service Institute in the United States, and are now in the public domain. A few people at http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/ have taken on the mammoth task of gathering and digitizing all of this material.

Quite a few of the courses on the site are complete, i.e. all lessons and books are there. A few are complete are German, Spanish, and French.

I’ve personally used the German FSI course some, and have mixed feelings on it. First of all, I’ll say this: it’s very thorough and very effective. If you were to work through the entire course and master all of the content, you’d have a solid foundation in the language. The problem is that, since the courses were made for government employees and not someone who just takes it upon themselves to learn a language, no real effort is made to make the content interesting. Indeed, much of the audio is drillwork. Is it effective? Certainly. Can it be maddeningly boring, particularly when some of the drills revolve around diplomatic relations, embassies, etc.? Absolutely.

However, if you’re willing to slog through the drills, I think for most people, it will pay off. There’s a lot of grammar in these courses, and a lot of vocabulary. To give you an idea of what really makes up the courses, here’s a bit of the Foreward for the French course:

Planned in two volumes, French Basic Course (Revised) has been designed to help students reach a level of proficiency which will enable them to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations. …

For beginning students, the twenty-four units are designed for a six-month intensive training program of six hours of class per day, plus outside preparation. Each unit presents a situational topic introduced in a dialogue, and usually five grammar points. Each grammar point is preceded by grammar notes which generally are expressed in non-technical terms.

Of course, this program won’t be for everyone. Like I said, some of the drills can be pretty dull. But, with some perseverence, and perhaps some supplement material to break up the monotony, these courses could serve as an excellent foundation learning resource.

The Slavic department of the George Washington University offers a bi-weekly podcast (or webcast, as they call it). The webcast, entitled Новости недели на упрощённом русском языке (News of the week in simplified Russian) offers, as the title of the webcast indicates, summaries of the news from the past 2 weeks. Snippet from the site:

Новости недели на упрощённом русском языке is posted to the web bi-weekly and delivers a survey of the previous two weeks’ news in simplified standard Russian Listeners of Voice of America’s “Special English” broadcasts will recognize the slightly slower rate of speech and textual redundancy which characterize these webcasts.

Why упрощённый русский? Back in Soviet times, the news was easy to understand. The propaganda-laden messages were predictable and the diction clear and slow. Post-communist newscasts feature telegraphic speech and slurry diction. Our webcasts serve as a stepping stone between the teacher talk of the classroom and the “real” Russian of the media.

Authentic news. The news itself is taken from a number of Russian sites, including Lenta.Ru, Vesti.Ru, Ytro.ru and other authentic sites.

Perhaps one of the best features of the site is that there are full transcripts of every episode they’ve ever done. It’s recommended that you listen to the audio first without the text, to get the most out of it - but once you get stuck, you can always fall back on the transcripts. Not only are transcripts available, but there are also exercises for every single episode.

The archives for the website go back to 2003, so there’s a lot of content here. The interface of the website is a bit clunky, but it’s worth fighting with.

In regards to language level, the webcasts are recommended for “students with listening skills at ACTFL Intermediate Mid to Intermediate High. In most cases, that corresponds to college Russian at the end of second-year.”

Last (but certainly not least!), the webcasts are a project of the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC).