This past year, my travels (business and pleasure) have taken me to China, the Czech Republic, England, India, Poland, Switzerland… not to mention many cities throughout the USA. What universally impresses me on all of these travels is the number of languages my peers and friends know. I am personally limited to English, and some college French and German …. and a few words in Czech. By US standards even this amount of knowledge might seem admirable, but it is not. When one is doing business, or visiting friends in another country, the ability to converse in the local language and understand cultural norms is not only an advantage, rather if possible, it should be considered the expectation.

Okay … now that you’ve read my sermon, here are resources to assist in the task of learning another language. One neat smaller company out of the United Kingdom, Eurotalk. Although you will have to spend a few dollars to purchase their training, the number of languages upon which they provide instruction is amazing … and not just to and from English.

All right, I always seem to have suggestions for "free" content. Many public libraries provide free access to language learning, and other eContent.  The most common eLearning provided free by libraries in the USA is Rosetta Stone.  Here are some links to help you determine if your local library has access:

<Question: What if my library does not have Rosetta Stone?>

<Answer #1: See my Annenberg Language Learning Resources Post>
<Answer #2: Everyone should see my Language Learning eBooks Post>

This posting is a follow up to my original Language Learning Posting. The third posting in this series is Annenberg Language Learning Resources.
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Language Learning eBooks

Obviously one can purchase language manuals and dictionaries from Amazon or your local book store, however there are other free resources available on the web.  Here are some I have noted that will support your language learning efforts:

It is often possible to use Google Book Search and WikiTexts to access or create your own eBooks. Some examples are provided, along with a tutorial explaining how to create and use your own Google eBooks.

• WikiTexts examples (downloadable pdf)
• Chinese: Mandarin
• French
• German
• Japanese

Using Google Book Search to create your own eBooks:

• Tutorial

Finally, it is one thing to learn the language.  It’s also good to become familiar with a country’s norms and background.  An excellent resource for this is the CIA World Fact Book.

This posting is a follow up to my original Language Learning Posting. The second posting in this series is Language Learning eBooks.
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Annenberg / Corporation for Public Broadcasting Language Learning

It is one thing to take lessons, or use eLearning to learn a language, but the best most optimal way to become fluent in any language is to visit a given country.  However, since that is not always practical, Annenberg has a number of language learning video series which are streamed free via the net where you follow an story line acted our and presented by native speakers.  If you are so inclined, there are manuals available for purchase that correspond to the series.

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish – Level 1
• Spanish – Level 1

Important Notes: A free registration is required to view this content.

The Dewey Decimal System, this ain’t! However, this has to be the strangest search engine I’ve ever encountered, Ms. Dewey.  The lady in the photo (Ms. Dewey) takes you on a trip on the World Wide Weird Web. Make certain your audio is on …. and to begin with, don’t enter a search … just wait:

• From Microsoft – The Ms. Dewey Search Engine

I don’t know about the significance of this fact, but I learned about Ms. Dewey … all dressed in black … via the Librarian in Black. None of this has anything to do with Halloween … kind of freaky.

Yesterday’s announcement that the SocialText wiki will now run under Microsoft Sharepoint really surprised me. Ross Mayfield, the CEO of SocialText is a Wikipedia kind of guy (literally and figuratively), thus this is an interesting alliance:

• Read Announcement

The fact that Sharepoint 2007 will include both Microsoft blogging and wiki software, makes this even more unusual. I need to grok this, and don’t.
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Update on November 3rd:
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Open Source and Microsoft seems to be a contradiction of terms.  However, I may be wrong. Here is a conversation between Ross Mayfield (CEO of SocialText) and Sam Ranji (Microsoft) on this very same issue.