Difference between revisions of "Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/Internet-resources-for-polyglots"
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=== http://www.everyculture.com/ === | === http://www.everyculture.com/ === | ||
Its information is old, but it also covers peoples. | Its information is old, but it also covers peoples. | ||
=== https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/ === | |||
Cultural heritages. There is an interactive map. | |||
=== https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/ === | === https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/ === |
Revision as of 17:29, 21 September 2018
Best Free Services for Polyglots
The Internet is a giant treasure. It provides so many free services.
The following resources are all free, but you can consider donating or buying premium plans, or even help several of them on the source code.
This page is updated from time to time, not frequently, not regularly.
It would be better if you pay a visit to every site of the list. Don't lose your curiosity due to my blah.
Please also take a look at Category:Free-Resources to find resources for specific languages.
Keyboard
https://colemak.com/
This one supports a lot of languages in Latin script, but it means to learn to type again. It is worth it.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KB_US-Colemak_with_AltGr.svg
Note that the download link on the home page is "Caps Lock Unchanged". The idea of replacing Caps Lock with Backspace is great because of its convenience, but having it unchanged is generally better because it's punitive to press this button, urging you to make fewer misspellings.
There is a flaw of no "„" or "‚", you can replace "÷" and "×" with them.
- For Windows users, you can use https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys/releases.
- For macX users, https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/ will help.
- For Linux users, a guidance is http://rlog.rgtti.com/2014/05/01/how-to-modify-a-keyboard-layout-in-linux/.
People think it's uncomfortable to HE with it, because you need to stretch you index finger and shrink your middle finger. I type E with my ring finger in this case.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kl.ime.oh
It is lightweight and supports many languages, with many keyboard layouts. But it has problems, too.
Basic Course
https://www.duolingo.com/
The best free online language courses. It is actually a collection of exercises instead of real courses. Its web version has "tips and note". Don't neglect their other products.
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/
Courses of Foreign Service Institute, Defense Language Institute, Peace-Corps. FSI is initially aimed for middle-aged officials, so maybe not everyone likes it.
https://www.lingodeer.com/
A promising challenger of Duolingo.
https://www.lingolia.com/en/
A little site with useful basic courses of 5 languages, with good design.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Languages
Books are mostly incomplete and in lack of update, but some are nearly completed or completed, not bad.
International Phonetic Alphabet
https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/
The site of the maker. The full IPA chart can be downloaded here.
https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/
Unofficial site for promoting IPA, with many useful tools.
http://ipa.typeit.org/full/
A keyboard for inputting IPA. Though still lacking some, it's enough for common use.
Speaking
https://forvo.com/
Dictionary of pronunciation.
https://voicenotebook.com/prononce.php
Check your pronunciation through SR and TTS.
https://speechling.com/
Submit the recording and wait for the response. Supported languages are not many.
https://software.sil.org/speech-analyzer/
With this one, you can say you are "studying" pronunciation.
http://www.tongue-twister.net/
Try not to hurt yourself when practicing.
Vocabulary
https://www.memrise.com/
Flashcards in high quality can be found. Some most popular languages have courses of 0-5k and 5k-8k words, or divided differently and still reach 8k. A few can be over 30k.
Though it is said to be memorizing words with "mems", the "mems" are actually not in good quality.
Its app is quite worse than the web version. On the app, you can't add other courses besides official ones, and the download for offline use always fails if the vocabulary is over 3k.
https://quizlet.com/
It is not so good at efficient memorization as Memrise. It is for having quizzes. But you can find specific practice such as reflexive verbs, weak nouns.
https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Offline and free, and its content can be in diverse formats. There are also add-ons for it.
https://www.clozemaster.com/
Learn with cloze. It is effective, but sometimes it is just repeating the same point in different questions.
https://lingvist.com/
Four languages to learn. There is a trial automatically started after you register, so don't expect all features will continue if you don't pay after 48 hours.
https://www.languagedrops.com/
It focuses on visual training, which has both advantages and disadvantages. Free users have to wait 10 hours for the next 5 min practice session.
https://www.learnwitholiver.com/
Simply learn words.
https://babadum.com/
It's pretty good for educating young polyglots.
https://wordofthehour.org/
They may think "word of the day" is very effectless, so do I. It is constantly being improved, but not satisfying for now. The response of a contact is quick and friendly.
https://backwords.fyi/
Great idea of making use of wallpaper. Only for Mac, and languages are few.
https://mainichi.me/
Also, a great idea to learn a word each time you open a tab. Only for three languages. Only for beginners.
Reading
https://www.wikipedia.org/
Numerous articles in many languages and they are usually proofed to read.
https://www.kiwix.org/
Make Wikipedia and some other sites offline. No doubt that you and all other people in your village or apartment can't read them all.
https://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
The largest collections of books in the public domain, mostly in English though.
https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
Library, not encyclopedia.
https://getflowlingo.com/
Read and create flashcards to learn. The response of a contact is quick and friendly.
https://readlang.com/
Articles in many languages, with online dictionaries.
https://www.beelinguapp.com/
Bilingual stories. Voices are from volunteers, the quality is not very good.
http://paralleltext.io/
As what its domain name says, parallel text. Classical works.
https://www.bible.com/
Declaration: suggesting it is not for preaching.
The full Bible has been translated into at least 670 languages, more than double the number of languages supported on Wikipedia.
The site's counterpart in Islam is https://pakdata.com/. Declaration: mentioning it is not for preaching.
http://lwt.sourceforge.net/
This is a PHP project. The page design is very bad, but if you were a learned person, you would have sufficient patience to read the guide and follow it. It's a DIY, offline and free version of LingQ. LingQ is freemium, but it can't be recommended, for its unacceptable limitations on free users.
Dictionary
https://www.wiktionary.org/
Practical, no need to switch dictionaries, translations in many languages are shown together.
https://www.wordreference.com/
It is really completed.
https://www.linguee.com/
It is completed, with example sentences of high quality. You can even find uncommon words with meanings of common words.
https://bab.la/
It is completed.
https://glosbe.com/
It supports so many languages, citing results from other sites. It is somehow messy and in many cases inaccurate, but if the dictionaries listed above have no result about a word, this one may help.
http://www.lingoes.net/
The best offline dictionary. Its update is stopped, but it is still very useful.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luc.dict.lingoes
Unofficial Lingoes on Android.
Translator
https://translate.google.com/
The best translator by now. It also supports optical character recognition on mobile.
https://www.bing.com/translator
It supports several languages that Google Translation doesn't support, but it's not so good as Google's.
https://translatr.varunmalhotra.xyz/
Translate to multiple languages at once.
http://nicetranslator.com/
Similar to Translatr, but it uses Microsoft.
http://imtranslator.net/
Convenient add-ons for browsers.
Conjugation
https://cooljugator.com/
Conjugation and some declension.
Gender
http://www.passion4teq.com/apps/
Apps for practising genders in 4 languages. You can also estimate how long you can practice until your battery becomes empty.
This site is recently offline. You can search "PASSION4TEQ" in your app store.
Grammar Checker
https://languagetool.org/
It supports several languages but works well on few.
Typing
https://10fastfingers.com/
A place to train typing.
Listening
https://librivox.org/
Books read by volunteers.
http://www.listeningpractice.org/
To practice listening. Not very good-looking. Voices are from volunteers, the quality is not very good. It also has conjugation exercises.
https://www.linguistica360.com/
News with transcripts, and the speed is slow.
https://lyricstraining.com/
Listen to songs and fill in the blanks of lyrics.
Text-to-Speech
http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm
A software to read texts. If you don't know how to get the voices, you can see Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/How-to-use-SR-and-TTS-on-Windows.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hesoft.T2S
It can be called the best platform for Android.
Example Sentences
https://tatoeba.org/
Example sentences in many languages.
https://www.dictionarist.com/
Search for example sentences of a word, with lingoes dictionary inserted. Many results are from Tatoeba.
Mind Map
https://www.freeplane.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
The successor of that beloved FreeMind. Java is required. Very useful if you got confused by a grammar, but not only for grammar.
Phrasebook
https://www.funeasylearn.com/
It provides apps for both phrase and vocabulary, but I have categorized it in this one because it provides IPA in the apps of phrases.
https://www.loecsen.com/
It supports many languages, and it is detailed.
https://www.50languages.com/
Actually a few more than 50 languages. You can also have a test there.
Game
https://greatlanguagegame.com/
Listen and identify the language. It has been shut down, but it has links to two other sites in the same type.
https://www.verbling.com/game
Verbling also has this game.
World Clock
https://www.timeanddate.com/
It has not only the world clock for every city but also many other features, such as calendars with festivals of most countries.
Community
https://discordapp.com/
A software to chat, with prominent features, such as text and voice channels. It's very suitable not only for playing games but also for learning languages.
https://www.italki.com/
The most popular language learning community by now. It also pushes helpful articles written by teachers.
https://www.reddit.com/
It is surely a miscellany, and it is a good miscellany.
https://polyglotclub.com/
There are some rare features of it, such as Wiki lessons, Events. It adopts ISO 639-3, almost every language is included here.
Questions & Answers
https://hinative.com/
Ask and answer with people around the world. Unfortunately, don't expect them to be effective in dealing with spamming and abusing. But I'm not encouraging you to do so.
https://www.quora.com/
The most popular site for Q&A.
https://stackexchange.com/
Its advantage, also its disadvantage, is dividing itself into a lot of small sections. As learning language usually does not require inspirations from other fields, this one may be better than Quora.
Language Exchange
http://www.lingbe.com/
An app for talking with people who are as nervous to talk with strangers as you.
https://mylanguageexchange.com/
Free users can be contacted by those who have paid. As they are paid, they are more likely to be serious learners.
Blog
https://blogs.transparent.com/
There are periodly good contents being presented.
Lyrics
https://www.musixmatch.com/
See lyrics and translations.
Subtitles
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search/subs
One of the most popular subtitle sites. Subtitles in European languages are easier to find.
https://subscene.com/
One of the most popular subtitle sites. Subtitles in English, Arabic, Persian, Indonesian are easier to find.
https://bonigarcia.github.io/dualsub/index.html
It can help to merge two subtitles.
Radios and Podcasts
https://mytuner-radio.com/
Radios around the world.
https://castbox.fm/
Podcasts around the world.
TV Channels
https://livetvcentral.com/
The most complete list of worldwide online TV channels. Many links are dead, but some of them just have the URL changed, they are still available somewhere else in those sites.
News
https://unfiltered.news/
It reveals how media around the world report about the world.
http://www.abyznewslinks.com/
Links to news websites.
https://www.newstab.com/
Local news with app or browser add-on.
https://liveuamap.com/
Instant news about hot spots from social media.
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/
No one can be richer in content than this. Heavy censorship, demonetization, weird copyright terms.
https://vimeo.com/
One of the most popular alternative to YouTube.
https://www.dailymotion.com/
One of the most popular alternative to YouTube.
https://www.downloadhelper.net/
Download videos on browsers.
Downloading YouTube videos violates YouTube's terms of service. What a great move of grabbing your videos and claiming them to be their properties.
Live
https://www.twitch.tv/
There are players speaking different languages. Its "IRL" section is people in real life. You can interact with them in their languages.
Language Encyclopedia
https://www.omniglot.com/
It provides information about basic knowledge of many languages. Many "Alphabet and Pronunciation" lessons on this site are from there.
http://aboutworldlanguages.com/
Languages are not so many, but there is essential information about them.
Map
https://www.google.com/maps/
It resolves the exotic sense. If you are careful enough, you can find trivia of a place. You can even guess people's life situations.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Another map site.
https://www.timemaps.com/
Maps of history.
https://omniatlas.com/
It shows you some old news with detailed maps.
http://ontheworldmap.com/
Downloadable maps. It even includes cities. I don't expect them to be up-to-date.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qbis.guessthecountry
An app for practising world map in several languages. Dependencies are not all included. The form of address in Chinese version is a mixture of P.R.China's and R.O.China's, which is not good.
Culture
https://www.worldtravelguide.net/
It's aimed at travellers. It also introduces some cities. And its information is up-to-date.
https://www.commisceo-global.com/country-guides/
It's aimed at travellers. It is mainly about some details about manners.
https://guide.culturecrossing.net/index.php
It tells some details about manners of many countries.
http://www.everyculture.com/
Its information is old, but it also covers peoples.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/
Cultural heritages. There is an interactive map.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/
A famous publication of basic information about countries, information governments are interested in.
https://www.infoplease.com/countries/
Some basic information about countries.
History
https://histography.io/
It looks cool.
http://worldtimeline.info/
Texts are brief and very abundant, with references.
http://www.fsmitha.com/
Texts are detailed for each item.
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
Looks old-fashioned, but it is not bad if you get used to it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.timleg.historytimeline&hl=en
An app about major events of history.
https://outline-of-history.mindvessel.net/
A popular history book by an amateur historian called H. G. Wells. If he were a professional historian, he would not have written it.
Geography
https://www.youtube.com/user/GeographyNow/
Videos about world geography.
https://www.worldatlas.com/
Short articles.
Music
https://www.youtube.com/user/pupsibaerle1
All about traditional music.
Art
https://www.wikiart.org/
All kinds of artwork around the world.
Dance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic,_regional,_and_folk_dances_by_origin
Dances by origin. You can search for them on video sites.
Cuisine
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipes/86/world-cuisine/
Recipes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cuisines
List of cuisines.
Folk Costume
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_costume
List of folk costume.
Fairy Tale
https://fairytalez.com/
Many faire tales.
https://www.worldoftales.com/
Some fairy tale books.
Festival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_festivals_by_country
Not complete, but still good.
http://www.world-festivals.net/
It includes more countries than the one above. I wonder if it is so difficult to gather information about festivals.
Trivia Quizzes
https://www.jetpunk.com/
Trivia quizzes of the world. It is available in multiple languages.
Lisence Plates
http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/
Take a look if you are interested. It's so completed.
Fonts
https://www.google.com/get/noto/
It covers fonts of almost all living and many historical scripts.
Speech Recognition
https://www.speechtexter.com/m/
It recognizes your speech with the help of Google.
Optical Character Recognition
http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/
It recognizes characthers on the screen. Does anyone else know the name of that manga?
Language Identifier
http://www.polyglot3000.com/
It identifies languages.
ISO 639-3
https://iso639-3.sil.org/
The site of its maker.
Resource Links
Unlike this page, those are for some specific languages, and I am not responsible for their qualities.
https://www.lonweb.org/
This one has more languages with fewer links for each one.
https://www.languagelinksdatabase.com/free-language-resources/
This one has more links for each one with fewer languages.
http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons/
This one has references about iTunes.
http://lexicity.com/
This one focuses on ancient languages.
https://nlp.stanford.edu/links/statnlp.html
Academic software. You may wonder why academicians are so dumb at design. That is because they don't have to do so.
Virtual Private Network
mailto:get@psiphon3.com
Those who are hindered from accessing the world Internet, send an e-mail to it.
Endangered Language Protection
If you are capable and responsible, please do your part to protect endangered languages.
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
https://www.eldp.net/
-- AUTHOR --