DigitalLibrarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web

Digital Librarian is maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York

Languages

Arabic

Semetic Studies - Heidelberg University Department for Languages and Cultures of the Near East. The Semetic Languages Archive contains 1865 audio audio files by 497 speakers.

Chinese I - MIT free online course. “This course provides an introduction to modern standard Chinese (Mandarin) for the absolute beginner by developing basic conversational ability, reading and writing skills, and an understanding of the language learning process all aimed at allowing students to continue learning on their own.”

Study Abroad in China: Do Students Become More Fluent? - Lecture by Hang Du, Assistant Professor of Chinese at Middlebury College, October 7, 2010. [54:00]. From the Middlebury Digital Lecture Archive where you can browse by subject.

Dutch

Digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren (dbnl) - Digital Library of Dutch Literature. Browsable by author (alle auteurs) and title (Beschikbare titels). The News page shows recently added texts. Titles of interest include:

Literature of the Low Countries: A Short History of Dutch Literature in the Netherlands and Belgium - Reinder P. Meijer, The Hague / Boston, Martinus Nijhoff, 1978. Meijer was a professor of Dutch Language and Literature at the University of London.

Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature - Tiemen de Vries, Chicago, 1916. See, in particular, his Introduction and Chapter XI The Influence which Holland Has Exerted on the English Language [p. 97] which contains a list of 448 words compiled by W. de Hoog “introduced into the English language by the Dutch.”

The Influence of Low Dutch on the English Vocabulary - E.C. Llewellyn, Oxford University Press, Londen 1936. "The words treated in this book have been collected from the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Supplement to that work."[p. iii]. See Chapter XV: English and Dutch Intercourse in North America. These words come from the Dutch: boom, bowery, sleigh, bindery, cruller, waffle, slaw, mush, pea jacket, cranberry, scrod, yankee, spook, bamboo, soya, cockatoo, monsoon, crawl, bully, bundle, clump, crimp, dapper, decoy, frolic, glib, grim, guess, hustle, luck, measles, morass, outlander, pickle, rack, rant, scone, scrub, skate, slap, sledge, slim, slip, slurp, spare-rib, splinter, sump, wriggle, yammer.

Dutch Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries.

het Geheugen van Nederland

- Has list of Collections. In Kinderboeken van Bibliotheek Rotterdam you can read and listen to Babar in Dutch as well as search or browse the collection of 299 children's books.

French

Alliance Française - Paris

Agence universitaire de la Francophonie

American Association of the Teachers of French (AATF)

ARTFL Project - Offers free public databases:

Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une Société de Gens de lettres - “Published under the direction of Diderot and d'Alembert, with 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates between 1751 and 1772. Containing 72,000 articles written by more than 140 contributors, the Encyclopédie was a massive reference work for the arts and sciences, as well as a machine de guerre which served to propagate the ideas of the French Enlightenment.”

L'Assemblée nationale - Paris.

Association canadienne d'éducation de langue française (ACELF)

Bibliothèque de l'ABU - l'Association des Bibliophiles Universels (ABU) provides 288 works by 101 French authors as well as access Lorédan Larchey's Les Excentricités du Langage (1965).

L'Académie française - “Fondée en 1635, sous le règne du roi Louis XIII, par le Cardinal de Richelieu, est une des plus anciennes institutions de la France.” Offers a searchable database of current and past Académie française members (Les Immortels). Provides “la liste des 696 académiciens français depuis l'origine, avec mention de leur date d'élection, de leur prédécesseur et de leur successeur, la biographie et la bibliographie des académiciens vivants.”

La délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Dérale à la langue française - “ pour mission de veiller à la promotion et á l'emploi du français sur le territoire national, de favoriser son utilisation comme langue de communication internationale et de développer le plurilinguisme, garant de la diversité culturelle.”

Florilège: Anthologie hypertextuelle de la Poésie Française - This anthology of French poetry, accessible by author, date, theme or form, is provided by Xian.

Français Interactif: First Year French - Video-based first year French program developed at the University of Texas, Austin.

France 3: Les journaux en vidéo

Frantext - French dictionary project with nearly 2000 full-texts drawn from various centuries and disciplines; Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé (TLFI)

French Institute/Alliance Française - New York

French in Action - 52 half-hour programs. Produced by Yale University and WGBH Boston with Wellesley College, 1987.

Gallica - Vast resource from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Some of the resources include the photographs of Eugène Atget, images of bridges, ethnographic illustrations from 19th century books, texts in the fields of History, Political Science, Law and Economics, Literature, Philosophy, Science and History of Science.

Le grand dictionnaire terminologique - “Un ouvrage de référence unique rassemblant un fonds terminologique d'envergure de 3 millions de termes français et anglais dans 200 domaines d'activité.”

France 2 - Chaîne de télévision. Provides videos for various shows including:

D'art d'art - Short videos (just over a minute) on artists (Dürer)

Plein 2 Ciné

Thé ou café - Interviews by Catherine Ceylac with such personnages as Jean Christophe Rufin, Inès de la Fressange, Alain Ducasse, Claude Chabrol, Philippe Starck, and Claude Lelouch.

France-Diplomatie - Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes

French Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries.

National Film Board of Canada | Office National du Film du Canada - Provides a searchable Database of a collection of over 10,000 titles, including a French Film Collection.

l'Office québécois de la langue française - Quebec government site which deals with the regulations and compliance issues for the Charter of the French language (Charte de la langue française). Provides useful Ressources linguistiques consisting of Le Grand dictionnaire terminologique and La banque de dépannage linguistique

Poésie française - Over 6,000 French poems, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.

Le Point du FLE - Free French courses and exercises.

Vive Voix poèmes à écouter: anthologie sonore de poésie française - Created by Kirk Anderson, Associate Professor of French at Wheaton College. Text and audio (in French) of several hundred poems, which are listed by author, title and first line.

German

American Association of Teachers of German (AATG)

Austrian Newspapers Online (ANNO)

Forschungsinstitut für Deutsche Sprache:Deutscher Sprachatlas - Universität Marburg project to digitize Georg Wenker's linguistic atlas, Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs. Their Regionalsprache Project is described in Sprechen Sie Deutsch? How linguistic variations affect where Germans choose to live, The Economist, 18 March 2010.

German Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries

German Studies - James H. Spohrer, University of California, Berkeley.

Goethe-Institut - Provides links to Goethe-Institut world-wide.

Italian

La Camera dei Deputati - Italian Parliament.

Italica: Corso di Lingua

Italian Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries.

Liber! Liber! - Has a Biblioteca: i libri on-line.

Japanese

Kanji Alive - “Free online tool for learning to read and write Kanji.” University of Chicago

Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Classical Language Instruction Project - Samples of Greek and Latin prose read by scholars. Homer, Plato, Pindar, Virgil, Tacitus, Horace, Ovid, Seneca and Propertius. Maintained by Christian Wildberg, Classics, Princeton University.
Classics Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries.
Kentucky Classics - University of Kentucky Classics Department provides information for teachers and students of Latin and Greek.
Mythfolklore.net - Home page of Laura Gibbs, Faculty Liaison for Information Technology at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She maintains the following web sites:: Aesopica: Aesop's Fables in English, Latin and Greek; Bestiaria Latina: Stories about Animals in Latin - With Blog; Biblia Vulgata: Bible Stories for Latin Students; Legenda Aurea: Stories about the Saints in Latin; Mythologiae: Classical Myths for Latin Students
Perseus Collection: Greek and Roman Materials

Portuguese

Dicionàrio Universal da lingua Portuguesa - Portuguese dictionary

Spanish

Badosa EP - Electronic publisher of texts in Spanish, Catalan, French and English.
Destinos An Introduction to Spanish - 52 half-hour programs. WGBH Boston, 1992. Free streaming video provided by Annenberg Media.
Iberian Studies - Annotated resource guide created by the Western European Specialists Section (WESS), Association of College & Research Libraries
Instituto Cervantes / Centro Virtual Cervantes
Learn Spanish - Spanish Learning Resources. Lessons 1-12 have audio drills.

Swedish

Norstedts English-Swedish Dictionary

Accents, Diacriticals and Special Language Characters for Foreign Languages

Academic Film Archive of North America - Their films are hosted by the Internet Archive where you can browse by keywords. See Filmamker Bios. Some interesting examples of educational films:

Quelle Chance (1953) - 10 minute film (in French) Modern Language Association

Mexican Ceramics (1966) - 18 minutes

ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts - Library of Congress.

alphaDictionary

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL)

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

Annenberg Media - Media resources for teachers (free streaming video). Registration is required to view the majority of the free material. See also Annenberg Channel. Among the language-related free video resources are:

Connect With English - 50 fifteen-minute programs. “Instructional series in English as a second language for college and high school classrooms and adult learners.” Produced by WGBH Boston.

Destinos An Introduction to Spanish - 52 half-hour programs. WGBH Boston, 1992.

Fokus Deutsch - 48 fifteen-minute programs. Co-production of WGBH Boston, Inter Nationes, and the Goethe-Institut, 1999.

French in Action - 52 half-hour programs. Produced by Yale University and WGBH Boston with Wellesley College, 1987.

Teaching Foreign Languages K-12 A Library of Classroom Practices - 28 half-hour and 2 one-hour programs. Produced by WGBH Educational Foundation with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. 2003.

Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL)

Babelfish - Alta Vista translation technology. Provide either plain text or the address (URL) of a Web page to translate. Similar resources: Google Translate and FreeTranslation.com.

Berlitz International

British Council - Offers Learn English Online in 12 languages.

BUBL LINK Catalogue of Internet Resources: Language - BUBL Information Service, Andersonian Library, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland.

Center for Applied Linguistics - “Private, non-profit organization applying research information about language and culture to educational, cultural, and social concerns.”

Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) - “One of the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI National Language Resource Centers, whose role is to improve the nation's capacity to teach and learn foreign languages.”

Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) - Monterey, California. “ regarded as one of the finest schools for foreign language instruction in the nation. As part of the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the Institute provides resident instruction at the Presidio of Monterey in 24 languages and several dialects, five days a week, seven hours per day, with two to three hours of homework each night. Courses last between 26 and 64 weeks, depending on the difficulty of the language.”

Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse - Also known as e-DHS, this work consists of short articles on people, places and themes in Swiss history. A History of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland is provided in English which explains that "this trilingual electronic publication contains the complete list of entries of the dictionary as well as all the articles that have been edited so far though without any illustrations. Also after the publication of the printed HDS the e-HDS remains accessible free of charge." There is also a Rumansch version known as the Lexicon istoric retic. Hosted by the Swiss Nationial Library and published under the auspices of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and the General Swiss Society of Historical Research. On 21 October 2010 the 9th volume was issued up to the letter P. Samples of entries:

Neuchâtel (canton)“L'article sur Neuchâtel (trente-trois pages) évoque notamment les sites archéologiques d'importance internationale découverts sur le territoire du canton, la naissance du comté, l'époque de la principauté prussienne (1707-1848), les conflits qui accompagnèrent la fondation de la République et son intégration à la Confédération. Un article est spécialement consacré, sous le titre d'“affaire de Neuchâtel”, aux événements dramatiques des années 1850, qui faillirent déclencher une guerre entre la Suisse et la Prusse. A côté du canton, la ville et le lac de Neuchâtel font l'objet d'articles, de même que la famille des comtes de ce nom et les principaux représentants de cette dynastie. Deux schémas présentent le système politique de la principauté au XVIIIe siècle, unique en Suisse, avec sa tête monarchique et ses familles dirigeantes.”

Musées

the Alps

Bibliothèques

E. L. Easton: Materials for Teaching and Learning

Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature - James Campbell, Western European Specialists Section, Association of College and Research Libraries.

Ethnologue - Languages of the World - Catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries, edited by Barbara F. Grimes, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas.

Fluent Tibetan: An Interactive Tibetan Language Tutorial - Alex Chapin.

Foreign Language Videos - “Collection of video clips in which native speakers elaborate on a wide variety of topics about their culture, family, daily life, and more. Each video clip is accompanied by a description of its contents, the country of the speaker, and additional grammar and vocabulary notes. These videos are produced by the ViewPoints Project of the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.”

Institute of Translation and Interpreting - Independent professional association of practising translators and interpreters in the United Kingdom.

Google Translate

iTunes U - See What's New: Languages.

Learning Latvian Online - Rita Vitols, Codefusion, Toronto.

Linguist List

Linguistics Resources on the Internet - International Linguistics Center.

LOGOS Dictionary - Freely-accessible database, updated and maintained by a network of professional translators, currently has over seven million entries.

Maya Site at Odense University - “Beta version of a fully searchable database composed of the data published in John Dienhart's 3-volume work, The Mayan Languages- A Comparative Vocabulary (Odense University Press, 1989) is now on-line. It contains more than 40,000 entries.”

Ñandutí: Early Foreign Language Learning - “Resource website for parents, teachers and administrators that provides up-to-date information on early start/long sequence foreign language programs.” Collaborative effort of the Center for Applied Linguistics in connection with the Foreign Language Initiative of the Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University (LAB)

National Center for Languages (CILT) - You can Search the Library's Catalogue.

Omniglot: a guide to writing systems - Simon Ager of Brighton (UK) has created a “guide to over 200 different alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems.” Your name in... provides links to sites that will translate your name into a variety of languages and scripts.

Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus - “An exploration of sense relationships within the English language. By clicking on words, you follow a thread of meaning, creating a spatial map of linguistic associations.”

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)

Stochastic Language Identifier - Will attempt to identify automatically the language of a sentence, phrase, or word of your choosing.

Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)

Translator's Home Companion - Tony Roder & Dave Lakritz.

Turkish Poetry Homepage

UCLA Language Materials Project - Learning resources for less commonly taught languages of the world Languages include Creole, Swahili, Zulu, Kyrgyz, Arabic, Thai, Belarusian and Annamese.

Western European Specialists Section (WESS) - Association of College & Research Libraries, section provides annotated resource guides for the following subjects:

Classics Studies

Dutch Studies

Medieval & Renaissance

Yamada Language Center - University of Oregon

Last updated 24 October 2012
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