It's been a while since I've updated with the latest from Free Language. So here goes, in no particular order...

Language Overview Pages

Afrikaans Language Resources
Arabic Language Resources
Cantonese Language Resources
Chinese Language Resources
English Language Resources
French Language Resources
Spanish Language Resources

Loads of Multilingual Links

ItalianPod.com ItalianPod Praxis Italian Lessons Podcast with Free Educational Resources and MP3 Audio
ChinesePod.com Olympics Site with Free Mandarin Lessons, Interactive Map of Beijing, Written and Spoken Country Names
Omniglot.com Abjad Consonant Alphabet about Hebrew Script with Images, Example Text and Audio
eduFire.com Blogs about Top 20 Language Bloggers on the Web
Anki Free Flash Card Software for Debian GNU Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Based on Spaced Repetition
China232.com China232 Fun and Business English Lessons via Free Audio Podcast Lessons with Transcripts
Chinese-Course.com Free Mandarin Course with Flashcards/Sentence Manager and Chinese Character Explanations/Annotations
Online-Spanish-Course.com Free Online Spanish Course with Flashcards+Sentence Manager and Spanish Text Annotation
German-Flashcards.com Free German Flashcard Course with Dictionary and German Text Annotation
Quizlet.com Quizlet Vocabulary Trainer w/Flashcards, Games, Quizzes and Tests w/Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blank, Matching
Radio Lingua's A Flavour of German Podcast Teaches German Idioms (Idiomatic Expressions) via Audio Lessons
MeGlobe.com Jabber-Powered, Web-Based Instant Messenger with Automatic Realtime Machine Translation in 14+ Languages
Polish Wikibook with Basic Polish Language Course
LinguistList.org Links Page Covers Linguistics plus Constructed (Conlangs), Endangered and Natural Languages and Writing Systems
AvatarLanguages.com Avatar Languages Learn English in Second Life Virtual World plus Tutors via Skype, Google Docs, Whiteboards
TheChineseReader.com The Chinese Reader Helps Learn to Read Mandarin with Free Chinese Character Text Annotation
Busuu.com Busuu Social Language Exchange Partner Community plus Multimedia Photo-Audio Lesson Archives and Video Chat Interface
RocketLanguages.com Rocket Spanish Language Audio and Software Course from Rocket Languages
ArabicPod.net Podcast with Free Common Colloquial and Standard Arabic Audio Lessons
Linkua.com Linkua Online Distance Language Learning with Live Video Tutors, One-on-One Lessons and Web Classes
TheLinguists.com The Linguists Independent Documentary Film (Movie) Explores Dangers to Record Dying Languages
French-Flashcards.com Online French Flashcard System, Text Analyzer, Vocabulary List Manager with Audio and Dictionary
Verbix.com Verbix Free Verb Conjugation Website (WebVerbix), Verb Wiki and Windows Freeware (FreeVerbix) for 100+ Languages
Semanda.com Free Chinese Vocabulary Cards with Downloadable PDFs plus Multiple Choice Quizzes for Children (Kids)
french.about.com French Learning+Teaching Resources, French Verb Conjugator, Proficiency Tests, French Grammar Help
german.about.com German Learning+Teaching Resources, Verb Conjugator, Audio Listening Lab, Grammar, Geneology, Culture, Lessons
spanish.about.com Spanish Learning+Teaching Resources, Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Grammar Glossary, Culture, Course Lessons
SpanishNewsBites.com Spanish NewsBites Free Audio News Bites with Transcriptions about Spanish and Latin America
PukkaGerman.com Pukka German Podcast, German Slang, Colloquial German, Idioms, Funny German Sayings for Intermediate to Advanced
Two Resources to Learn the Finnish Language for Free: Online Wikibooks and Byki Freeware
Learn Silbo Gomero, a Whistled Language from La Isla Gomera in the Canary Islands, on Busuu.com
RocketLanguages.com Rocket French Language Audio and Software Course from Rocket Languages
StudyEnglishNews.com Study English News for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Levels plus English Proficiency Test and Grammar
Useful Spanish Phrases for Travel with Downloadable Audio Recordings for Total Beginners from the Omniglot Website
ChinesePod.com Celebrates the 1,000 Free Mandarin Chinese Audio Lessons Milestone!
Vocabulix.com English, German and Spanish Verb Conjugator, Conjugation Tools, Vocabulary Building, Self-Test Tool, Friend Finder
hskflashcards.com Free Download HSK Vocabulary Cards in PDF Format + Print New Practical Chinese Reader Text Flash Cards (NPCR)
eurolanguages.com Find and Reserve an English Study Abroad Program or Language School Free Online: London, England, Ireland...
eurolanguages.com Find and Reserve a Spanish Study Abroad Program or Language School Free Online: Madrid, Spain, Valencia...
eurolanguages.com Find and Reserve a French Study Abroad Program or Language School Free Online: Paris, France, Provence, Nice...
eurolanguages.com Find and Reserve an Italian Study Abroad Program or Language School Free Online: Rome, Italy, Venice, Ski...
LQToronto.com Download Free Texts and View Free Video Courses to Learn the Language of the Quran with Full Madinah Arabic Course

Language Freeware for over 70 Languages

Byki Offers a Free Language Software Application for Learning 60+ Languages at Byki.com (Windows and Mac OS X)

Book on How to Learn Languages Faster and Better

Learn That Language Now! ebook with Quick, Easy and Efficient Method for Learning Any Foreign Language

Study Abroad

Directory List of International Foreign Language Schools and Language Study Abroad Programs

I have know about the Urban Dictionary for a while now, but I happened across it yesterday while looking for definitions of eurotrash, of all things. (I will soon be eurotrash of the best variety). There are loads of varied, interesting and humorous definitions for this term.

The idea behind the Urban Dictionary is simple: users create terms and define them; then other users come along and vote on the validity of the term and how it's defined.

The result is a collective dictionary with various terms for loads of slang words and expressions, including those hot off the street. Some of the terms are vulgar, but most aren't. And there are loads of new terms to discover. It is fun to poke around and see what kind of freestyle language is happening throughout the (mostly US) English-speaking world. Here are several I ran across: collateral misinformation, terrorist voting and expiration dating.

People are good with melding language to their needs, and English is a particularly promiscuous language, in my humble opinion. It flaunts foreign terms left and right, makes nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns and so on. English is a very selfless language, in this respect. It absorbs, morphs, much like a chameleon. Freestyle English - check it out at Urban Dictionary.

FYI: If this article interests you, I wrote about another take on this type of freestyle English use the other day: Verbotomy.com Community for Truly Freestyle English Language Verbiage

I came across Verbotomy about a week ago and have had fun a few times messing around on the site.

I wanted to add the site here because this is truly a freestyle way of coming up with terms for things currently "termless" in English.

The site takes a humorous tone and many of the users come up with very creative words to describe what is taking place in the many drawings on the site. As an example of how the site works, for the image on the right, I came up with the word "multispacing".

From Website

Verbotomy is about creating words. Every day we create a new definition and matching cartoon. Your challenge is to create a word -- a verboticism -- that matches the definition. After you create your verboticism, you can vote for other authors's words to help select the winning verboticism for the definition.

Bravo Verbotomy!

I haven't been posting here of late because I've been working on getting the Free Language Letter complete. Well, now it's complete! I am republishing it here for many reasons - some personal and some altruistic. ;)

This edition really jumps the newsletter to the next level. There are lots of upcoming changes at Free Language to look forward to in the near future.

It's been a very long time since polyglot from Free Language has actually published a list of the latest updates to the site. At last, this happened last night. So here goes with a healthy chunk of language-learning goodness...

Foreign Language Translation Extensions/Tools/Plugins/Add-Ons for the Firefox Web Browser
OneMinuteLanguages.com One Minute Language Lessons for Polish, Irish, German and Russian
SurvivalPhrases.com Survival Phrases in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Swedish, Arabic, Spanish and Vietnamese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Mandarin Chinese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Cantonese Free Audio Lessons Downloads
ExpertVillage.com Instructional Videos on Learning Foreign Languages
The Alternative Dictionary: Slang, Profanities, Insults and Vulgarisms from all the World
Learn Chinese on YouTube with Mandarin Videos from ActiveChinese
Learn Mandarin Chinese Videos on YouTube AskBenny Channel
A Pinyin.info Article on Most Difficult and Challenging Aspects of Learning Mandarin Chinese
FSI-Language-Courses.com US Foreign Service Institute Arabic Free Audio Lessons Downloads
Dickinson College's Language-Exchanges.org Mixxer Free Skype Language Exchange Community
Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
United Nations Declares 2008 the International Year of Languages
nciku.com nciku Free Online Mandarin Chinese Handwriting Recognition, Conversations, Radical Dictionary
LearningIndonesian.com Podcast is a Fun and Easy Way to Learn Indonesian Online
open.ac.uk OpenLearn LearningSpace Open University with Free Courses in Modern Languages
italki.com Free Skype VoIP and IM Language Partner Community
Download Free Open University Courses from MIT OpenCourseWare Foreign Languages and Literatures Department
About.com Distance Learning Free Online Language Courses
MyHappyPlanet.com My Happy Planet Private Social Language-Learning Community
List of Free Foreign Language Courses Online at Education-Portal.com
DigitalDialects.com Arabic Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Afrikaans Language-Learning Games and Activities
English Language Learning and Teaching Article on Wikipedia
A Torrent File for 500 Free Mandarin Chinese Audio Podcast Lessons from ChinesePod.com
JaplishPodcast.com Japlish Podcast of Funny Phrases in English and Japanese Languages
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Bilingual Blog
Spanish-Podcast.com Voices en Español Conversational Spanish Podcast
BYKI.com Download Free Language Software for Learning 42 Languages!
MangoLanguages.com Mango Languages Free Online Language Courses, Audio, Web Software
ISpeakHindi.com I Speak Hindi Website, Podcasts, Dictionary and Resources
Langmaker.com Language Maker Website on Auxiliary and Constructed Languages
Word2Word.com Website
Arabic Language Course for Arabic Learners Familiar with Arabic Script
BitesizedLanguages.com Bitesized Languages Improve Your French, Spanish or Portuguese Skills with Daily Emails
LiveMocha.com Live Mocha Social Language Learning Course and Networking Website
Lingopass.com Free Global Language Exchange Community
DigitalDialects.com French Language-Learning Games and Activities
DigitalDialects.com Russian Language-Learning Games and Activities