(Not Really a) Review: My Four Favourite Sites for Learning Languages

How is it March already?! Seems like Christmas was only yesterday 😮 Anyway, I'm back, my cold is gone, and life is slightly less hectic.

Instead of reviewing a book, series, or film, today's post will be about one of my favourite things: learning languages. More specifically, the sites I've personally found are helpful for teaching languages.

No. 1: Memrise

If you know me in real life you may already know that I'm learning German. It's an uphill struggle that's lasted at least two years, and I'm still nowhere near fluent. I've tried several different language courses, including books (verdict: not helpful; I need to hear words before I know how to pronounce them), CDs (verdict: more helpful), and websites (verdict: depends on the website). Memrise's German courses are the most helpful I've found.

In addition to German, it also has courses in almost any other language you can think of. To say nothing of courses in history, maths, geography, astronomy, and basically every subject imaginable. I haven't tried any of those courses, though, so I can't say how helpful they are.

No. 2: Duolingo

The helpfulness of this site depends on what language you want to learn. It's good for learning something like French or Spanish. It's nowhere near as good for learning languages with non-Latin alphabets, like Korean or Japanese. I tried both those courses a year or two ago. Unless they've changed something since then, the courses lack a transliteration option. That means that when learning Korean you'd better be able to memorise hangeul characters instantly, and when faced with Japanese kanji -- and no hiragana 😣-- you have to copy and paste the kanji into a Japanese dictionary just to figure out how it's pronounced.

Duolingo is also prone to making you learn very strange sentences. There are at least two Tumblrs dedicated to the weird and wonderful phrases it thinks every language-learner should know. They include "Insects can't speak Spanish" (you don't say!) and "The bee writes a letter".

No. 3: Forvo

Forvo is slightly different from the other three sites on this list. It isn't actually a language course. Instead it's a multi-language dictionary. Look up a word in, say, Norwegian, and you'll find an audio clip of a native Norwegian speaker saying that word.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have many words in lesser-known languages. If you want to know how to pronounce something in Georgian, for example, the word probably won't even be on Forvo.

(No image for this one 😔)
No. 4: JapaneseClass.jp

This one will obviously only be helpful for people who want to learn Japanese. I'm not actually studying Japanese (yet), but occasionally I'll do a few lessons to make sure I remember hiragana/learn a few new kanji/guess at what the actresses are saying in a Takarazuka production. This is the most helpful Japanese course I've found: it provides the hiragana or katakana for kanji, it teaches both kanji and vocabulary, and it actually shows how to draw kanji.

If you're interested in learning languages online, I hope this post is helpful! And if you already are using online language courses, feel free to comment with your favourite ones!