I really like www.dunwoodypress.com
They have a truly unique range of materials for those of you into the foreign languages that you can't find at your local Borders.
They have audio as well as books including lots of "newspaper readers" which basically take excerpts from real newspapers to help you learn the "real" language. I just bought the Georgian Newspaper Reader and think it is pretty good. Not only do you get a full English translation but lots of vocab lists and you can buy the cassettes for it too in order to listen to it being read. Yes I said cassettes, I know I was bummed too I couldn't believe anyone even sold them anymore. The good news is you can covert cassettes to a CD on most computers via a "line-in" recoding function. A pain but worth it to hear a native speaker read the dialogues.
They are a little on the pricey side (average around $40 for a book) but considering how rare these items are to find anywhere else it is actually pretty reasonable. These are not books for beginners (i.e. they aren't "helpful phrase books for travelers") but for serious linguist enthusiasts who have a passion for learning exotic languages that are completely useless in 99% of typical jobs. :)
I know they have everything from Arabic (not just Egyptian Standard but Yemeni, Moroccan, Gulf dialects etc.), Cambodian, Romanian, Georgian, Armenian, Azeri etc. you get the picture.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
A Great Study Aid Flashcard Website
In my quest to be fluent in every language in the known world I've run across a website that has been a big help.
www.flashcardexchange.com
Of course those of you who know me know that when it's free it's going to hit my radar :)
This program free (unless you want to upgrade for $20 - that gives you the option to print flash cards, do photos on flashcards and do some other game type memorization tricks - still a great price).
The features of it I really like are:
1) You can "play" with the flashcards flipping them back and forth and doing a random order. You can also mark them incorrect or add and delete any you want.
2) It has a "world keyboard" for those of us into funky fonts like Georgian, Armenian etc. so we can type the real thing in a flashcard (be warned that this doesn't work for the import function though - you're Georgian for example will show up in Latin letters).
3) You can "data dump" all those excel vocab and grammar lists you've been making into the flashcard program which will automatically make all the flashcards for you. Very cool and very time efficient.
I understand that you can share flashcards with others on the Internet as well but haven't gotten into that function yet.
A great study aid for all ages - check it out!
www.flashcardexchange.com
Of course those of you who know me know that when it's free it's going to hit my radar :)
This program free (unless you want to upgrade for $20 - that gives you the option to print flash cards, do photos on flashcards and do some other game type memorization tricks - still a great price).
The features of it I really like are:
1) You can "play" with the flashcards flipping them back and forth and doing a random order. You can also mark them incorrect or add and delete any you want.
2) It has a "world keyboard" for those of us into funky fonts like Georgian, Armenian etc. so we can type the real thing in a flashcard (be warned that this doesn't work for the import function though - you're Georgian for example will show up in Latin letters).
3) You can "data dump" all those excel vocab and grammar lists you've been making into the flashcard program which will automatically make all the flashcards for you. Very cool and very time efficient.
I understand that you can share flashcards with others on the Internet as well but haven't gotten into that function yet.
A great study aid for all ages - check it out!
Friday, April 14, 2006
Studying Egyptian Hieroglyphs
I've recently embarked upon a study of the Egyptian Hieroglyph system and have decided it is just the coolest thing since I don't know what. I've found some great inexpenseive resources if you would like to play with it as well:
http://www.jimloy.com/egypt/egypt.htm - Gives you an overview of anything and everything to do with it.
http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/Hieratic/index.html - A really interesting site and one of the only on the web that deals with Hieratic (Basically Egyptian everyday writing - not the fancy tomb stuff).
http://rostau.org.uk/AEgyptian-L/ - I think the best source I have seen so far. Gives you reviews of lots of books (a great idea so you don't waste your money on books that aren't that good). It also links you to a Yahoo Group where you can study a course in Hieroglyphs for FREE. the course follows a book by James Allen on Middle Egyptian that you can get from amazon.com for around $20. A very in depth comprehensive book that will give you as good a background in the subject as any college course would and certainly for a lot less cost. I highly recommend it.
http://www.etana.org/ - When you finally get the hang of things try out some of these texts. They are all free and you can test how much you've learned by seeing how many of these documents you can decipher.
http://www.jimloy.com/egypt/egypt.htm - Gives you an overview of anything and everything to do with it.
http://home.prcn.org/sfryer/Hieratic/index.html - A really interesting site and one of the only on the web that deals with Hieratic (Basically Egyptian everyday writing - not the fancy tomb stuff).
http://rostau.org.uk/AEgyptian-L/ - I think the best source I have seen so far. Gives you reviews of lots of books (a great idea so you don't waste your money on books that aren't that good). It also links you to a Yahoo Group where you can study a course in Hieroglyphs for FREE. the course follows a book by James Allen on Middle Egyptian that you can get from amazon.com for around $20. A very in depth comprehensive book that will give you as good a background in the subject as any college course would and certainly for a lot less cost. I highly recommend it.
http://www.etana.org/ - When you finally get the hang of things try out some of these texts. They are all free and you can test how much you've learned by seeing how many of these documents you can decipher.
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