Articles about 'Languages'
April 17th, 2013
Monique was here visiting from France for the past two weeks and we worked on creating Spanish and French versions of our books and apps. (They should be available soon.)
Here’s a link to our current books and apps.
June 19th, 2012
It can be difficult to roll your R’s when speaking in Spanish. This video gives some great tips to get those R’s a-rolling!
Enjoy!
Mama Lisa
February 17th, 2012
Open Culture has a page of free language learning links covering 40 languages.
Here are some of the languages you can find links for…
Arabic, English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, Gaelic, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Maori, Norwegian, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swahili,...
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January 27th, 2012
A while ago, I talked about how my daughter’s class made drawings illustrating the literal meanings of idiomatic expressions. This is a great way to help children, and people learning English as a second language, to understand these sayings..
One drawing my daughter did was an illustration of the expression "follow your nose".
"Follow your nose"...
November 24th, 2010
You can now listen to and read My Very First Little German Book online or download them onto your computer. The book and recording are both in German and English. The book has nice little illustrations.
View the 1st two pages of the book by clicking on the image above.
The book includes a little...
November 2nd, 2010
French Self-Taught, by Franz J. L. Thimm (1905) was just posted on Librivox with mp3 recordings. (You can listen to it streaming on Internet Archive if you prefer a player.) You can also read the book online while playing the recordings in the background.
The recordings are broken down by chapter on subjects ranging...
September 29th, 2010
In my last post, I discussed how great it is to read books in foreign languages on the Kindle (an electronic device for reading). You can look up words in the other language in the middle of reading a passage.
In order to do this you have to buy a foreign language dictionary for the...
September 29th, 2010
The Kindle is an Electronic device for reading books. In my previous post I talked about the Kindle and explained why I love reading on it.
The Kindle works well for reading in foreign languages. I love reading in French, but the drawback is the time it takes to look up unknown words. If you read...
July 30th, 2010

Librivox just released another bunch of recordings of fairy tales in various languages, including Hungarian, Russian, German, English, Italian and Portuguese (with links to the text of each tale). This is the 3rd collection they’ve posted.
Fairy Tale Collection #1 also includes recordings in Latvian, Danish, Romanian, Yiddish and French. You can also...
June 8th, 2009
Hello songs are a wonderful way to help children who are learning a foreign language. It’s also nice for children to always sing the same song at the beginning of a class. Hello songs are great for this.
The song below is called “Bonjour”. It’s a French hello song written and...
April 21st, 2009
The Spanish Wrangler sings really fun music for kids! The songs are mainly in English, but they’re peppered with Spanish words and phrases. Most of the songs tell a story – which children love. What a great way to expose kids to the Spanish language!
The Wrangler’s music is cool. You feel...
December 17th, 2008
Here are some new and old language tools worth mentioning…
Speech Accent Archive – If you’d like to hear or study accents in English check out this site. People from all over the world recite a paragraph in English.
Internet Slang Dictionary & Translator – also translates internet acronyms like lol
Nice Translator – Uses the Google...
June 26th, 2008
All cultures seem to have their share of disgusting songs. They may gross you out – but they can make you laugh – even as adults! Here’s one I believe is originally from Spain called Yo tengo un moco – I Have a Booger! You can see a silly YouTube video of it after the...
May 19th, 2008
There’s no better way to learn a foreign language than to hear it spoken. The internet can be a great tool for finding recordings that can help, but sometimes it can be hard to find what you need.
Fortunately, the good folks at Open Culture have done the work for us. Here’s an updated...
February 11th, 2008
Ed Gawlinski, who’s been involved with various cultural organizations throughout his life, sent me this email…
I get emails from AFS (American Field Service) from time to time. AFS is an organization that promotes cultural exchange. It was started by members of the United States’ volunteer ambulance corp (American Field Service) who served during...
February 3rd, 2008

My family and I are planning a trip to France! And, yes, that does include my six year old daughter and thirteen year old son.
My husband and I are very excited, but we’re trying to go with our eyes open: It’s not going to be easy! Traveling with young ones is always...
January 3rd, 2008
I’ve been asked twice in the past week for free multilingual books.
Here’s a link I found called Books in Multiple Languages. They have English children’s books with translations in Spanish, French, Polish, Italian, Romanian, German, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish, Maori, Greek, Dutch, Farsi (Persian), Afrikaans, Croatian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew,...
November 26th, 2007
It’s interesting that in France they have children learn poetry as part of their schooling. Children have to memorize poems. Though difficult, memorization can help develop a special appreciation for poems. This is something that most of my generation in America didn’t really get as part of their general education. I...
November 26th, 2007
Here is one last poem about Autumn before I focus on the topic of the upcoming December holiday season.
I came upon this poem while looking for French podcasts to brush up on my French in anticipation of a trip to France in the Spring. There’s a whole podcast in French devoted to...
September 9th, 2007
I found an interesting feature in Webster’s Online Dictionary at http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org . If you set it to “Non-English” and type in a word – it will give you that word in all of the languages it has for the word, with the definition. That’s pretty interesting to see.
For instance, the...
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