Learning Languages: Internet Resources

Audio Files

Start by going to your local library. They usually have audio cds and other resources. While you have the cds, you can burn them to your computer as mp3s. They should be deleted once you return the cd though ;). You can then loop the audio and learn while you work.

Audio Online

Emule and New Nova have a few audio lessons and even instructional software for the most common languages. Just search "learn -whatever-language-", "-whatever-language- dictionary", and simply "-whatever-language-" and pick a file with many sources. You have to be careful though. There may be copyrighted and illegally pirated information so download at your own risk. Pimsleur is a copywritted language tool illegally pirated often, so beware. L&H Power Translator Pro is a great language translating software, but also copyrighted.

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Language Software

Search in sourceforge.net and google for free software specific to your language. Some may be completely free, while others may be shareware, meaning you can only use them for a short period of time. Again, some copywritted language software may appear on the peer to peer networks. Copywritten labels such as Instant Immersion, Tell me more, and most expensively, Rosetta stone should be avoided.

Privacy and Safety in P2P

Will people find out what I downloaded? Will there be viruses? In efforts to protect their content, many companies, mostly music corporations scan peer to peer networks for information. Software has been developed by Bluetack that blocks hundreds of thousands of known IP addresses that can possibly scan your files. Bob's Block list and Supertrick also have information on how to efficiently block spammers and malicious groups. When you download emule, search for "IP Filter" and follow the instructions after downloading the one with the most sources. This prevents leachers and prevents your computer's privacy. The odds of getting your privacy invaded in peer to peer are in many cases much lower than that of just browsing the internet on Internet Explorer. Viruses are becoming more rare among popular, nonpornographic material. Emule allows for people to comment on the software and the fact most people just delete the file lowers its availibility and thus, ranking. Again, people are much more likely to gain viruses from reading their email than downloading educational software. I feel 99% confident downloading large programs above 50mb with many sources that I will not get a virus.

Free Virus And Spyware Scans

Trendmicro and Panda Software offer free online virus scans. Lavasoft and Spybot offer free and quick loading software that detects malicious privacy compromising programs used to steel data from your computer. No one software is perfect, so it recommended you test various scanners for more innoculation accuracy. Cleanup is also a very useful tool for getting rid of windows mess.

Interactive

Just when you're starting to feel confident head to a chat room in the language of your choice. Try out the news sites. Pressdisplay is an interesting new tool that lets you browse newspapers from various countries. Yahoo messenger has various different language channels. The yahoo website itself can be translated into various different languages, go to the bottom! The same goes for Google News. Google also has a Google Toolbar that translator words just by hovering over them. Dmoz Chat Directory has the same category in multiple languages. For advanced students, the Gutenberg Project has thousands of past copyright books in many languages.

DVDs

DVD movies contain subtitles and audio in different languages, as indicated in the back. Adding subtitles in our native language and audio in the studied language after previously watching the movie, can be a very efficient and entertaining way of learning. Even though it may seem awkward, but renting childrens DVDs is useful for lower levels of training. Targetting the DVD by identifying the possible jargon and themes can help diversify the extent of our vocabulary.

Snes RolePlaying Roms

Role Playing games are text based adventures. Roms are games taken from their original consol, in this case super nintendo(SNES), and emulated to work on a computer. Super Nintendo Games are of particular interest because they are very fast to load, spanning from 1,3mega bytes(around 30min-2hour in 56k modem). Playstation and other consol games may be available in Peer to Peer software, but span from 100mb to 700mb. Hundreds of fun games are available in different languages. Try freeroms or cherryroms to get the games, and emuverse along with snake eyes and Zophars' Domain for the translations. You'll need IPS.EXE to patch the game. Some of my favorites are Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 3, and Unchartered waters. These are great for kids too! To play these files you need a small emulator called ZSNES.

General Resources

About.com generally has a language reference center for example, spanish.about.com or frech.about.com. Some sites have collections of foreign books like EbooksGratuits in French, Wikibooks and to a small degree Project Gutenburg. Dmoz always has a large directory of reference sites for any language and Wikipedia is an entire encyclopedia written in various languages. Langenberg is the best online translator I've found. Try search "Short stories", "kids stores", or "stories for kids" translated with the previous link in a search engine of the same language(scroll down). If you find a site you like pass it by HTTrack and it will make all pages on the site available offline.