a jade by any other name would be just as green

languages

this is still a work in progress

this is the main goal of this site right now, organizing the collection of language resources i've made over my years of language learning. efforts will be made to check that links work, but i can't guarantee that every link will work every time since i've had some of these resources for years. i will also update this page as i add more resources and pick up more languages because i will find more. every language listed in navigation is a language i want to list. languages that i have resources for but don't want to dedicate an entire category for will go in other.

most resources here are free, legally so. this is because i am still a broke college student and why would i spend money on language textbooks if there's free ones out there on the internet? a lot of emphasis on the existence of oer (open education resources) in this page because i think that's the way to go, and the people writing and creating oers are doing some good work.

i hesitate to call this a curated list of resources because a lot of things are things i found once and then stuck on here. i do some quality and vibe checking, but i don't always use everything i have on here. some resources are resources sent to me by other people or that i gathered from language learning communities like my many discord servers. i think it'd be more apt to consider this a very long let me google that for you, just less snarky.

quick rundown of different abbreviations that i think will show up a lot in this list (if they're wrong it's because i'm doing this off the top of my head):

  • dli: defense language institute from the us government. courses and handbooks geared specifically for military personnel deployed to non-english speaking places that require being able to speak the language (civilians working on military bases included). public domain
  • fsi: foreign services institute of the us government whose courses are primarily geared towards training diplomats in the '60s to go abroad. also public domain
  • llp: livelingua project because i'm too lazy to keep typing that out. they host dli, fsi, and peace corps courses online because they're all in the public domain
  • more to be added when i remember

how to find language resources

how did i find all these? how do you find resources for languages that i don't have here? that's a good question!

  1. go to your favorite search engine. please don't go to google because they're tracking your every move and it's not as good as it used to be. if you want google without the tracking, try startpage. if you want even more privacy, try searxng.
  2. search "learn [language]" or "[language] resources". i start my basic searches out with this most of the time, unless i'm looking for something more specific.
  3. go through the search results. skip anything with duolingo, babbel, whatever you already recognize. skip anything that says "learn in x minutes!" it's probably just going to tell you a bunch of phrases and then say you're "fluent". i can't give you a number of pages to skip because it depends on the language. hmong has a lot fewer results than spanish.
  4. trust your gut. now you have to make judgements on the things you find. you'll probably find blog posts telling you "this is how i learned x!". those might not be useful to you if you already have an idea of where to go, but they might be helpful if you want ideas to structure your learning. you'll probably find paid courses. use your own discretion in finding resources and judging which ones you think are worth the work. skip anything that guarantees fluency in a certain time span.

that's pretty much my process for finding language resources. you can also use the same process to look through other places, like social media websites (tumblr is a good one!). in the end, it comes down to knowing what you're looking for and what you want.

resources with a lot of different languages in one place

i don't have a good way of titling this category. basically, if you're looking for one place where you can find a lot of the same kind of language resources, here are a few. some of the resources you can find from these places will be linked in other categories, but not all of them. for example, neri's anki decks include a macedonian deck, but i'm not listing it on my page because i don't want to and i don't have anything to say about it.

duolingo is not on here because i think enough people know about duolingo that i don't need to put it here. if you don't know duolingo, just look it up. i'm not linking it for you.

The Yojik Website
hosts downloadable archives of fsi (foreign services institute), dli (defense language institute), peace corps, cortina, and other miscellaneous resources. cortina is not public domain, but i think they had some agreement with the website builder.
Live Lingua & Internet Polyglot Projects
free online hosting of dli, fsi, and peace corps language courses. very nice interface for actually learning with. only hosts public domain course. you can also get paid language lessons through live lingua if that's something that interests you.
anki decks by neri
if you have anki, neri's decks are a godsend for learning sentences. big fan of learning sentences. all of their decks are just sentences with audio and translations. it's like a step up from learning in context. they also have word lists and a blog, but i don't remember what the link is. i'll add it if/when i find it again, but i'm pretty sure you can find it from the deck descriptions.
lectia
a cool little completely free app from the university of maryland that deals mostly with listening or reading practice. not as many language as the previously mentioned resources, but all the exercises are very well done. no account needed either.
NFLC E-Learning Portal
also from the university of maryland. needs an account, but has many, many things that even i can't get through it all because there's just so many. spans many different levels and different types, so expect to go digging. a bit buggy tho because there's some resources that it wouldn't let me download.
ReadLang
an entirely reading based site that i found looking for specific reddit reviews for different languages. it doesn't even have audio, but it does have a lot of languages (they claim 40+ and i'm too lazy to actually count them all). the free version feels very nice; all you're missing out is unlimited contextual explanations of word meanings, but it's like lingq minus audio and free.
LingQ
i didn't originally list this because it's paid (the free version doesn't give you very much besides a taste of what it can do), but i figured that it doesn't hurt to mention it anyway. by far my favorite completely integrated language learning program. the main problem is that it doesn't focus very much on writing or speaking because the approach is to learn words and sentences first before using those words and sentences.
Steve Kaufmann's YouTube channel, aka Thelinguist
this guy is basically polyglot jesus. his videos are very good and easy to digest. he talks about a lot of different languages that he's learned or is currently learning and gives plenty of insights on how he learns and his opinions on other language learning methods. also he's the guy who developed lingq.
Language Transfer
i've known about these courses for a while and i tried the arabic course once, but i couldn't figure out the methodology and i wasn't willing to sit through the 400+ page pdf of the thinking method. i finally read some of it eventually while considering how to make a moroccan arabic textbook, and then i realized it's basically the speaking counterpart of lingq and readlang. language transfer courses are basically really involved podcasts which get you to think and speak like a native speaker by having you and a volunteer student shadow a native speaker to learn how to speak. it's very different from any other course i've seen before, but i've heard it can be quite good
10,000 sentences
a free, open source, android-only app that does exactly what the title says. you get around 10,000 sentences for each language and their translations. you get their audio (courtesy of the tts already on your phone) and you translate into your target language. the f-droid download actually worked for me, google play doesn't like it, so i think downloading from f-droid or directly with apk is the way to go.
Ba Ba Dum
a fun little website where you get to play minigames. i would say it practicies your vocabulary, which it does, but it makes it sound so dry. i don't know how to explain it so you'll just have to play it for yourself and find out.
Memrise
i feel like this is a classic that i just forgot to add. oops. it's basically a glorified flashcard app where the official courses have audio, but there's plenty of user created decks (they call them courses here) that may or may not have audio. you can pay for extra stuff, like more listening and speaking practice in the official courses, but it's a very solid app without paying. i'd put this above duolingo in terms of quality.
Routledge Colloquial Language Series
yeah, the textbooks might be paid and certainly are piratable, but the audio is legally free. a lot of recordings from natives to accompany their textbooks, but still pretty good even without the textbook i think.
r/languagelearning
there will always be a community more insane than you. if this website of mine somehow gets shared on that subreddit, i'll be happy but also incredibly embarrassed because i probably robbed some resources from them. they have so many resources and so many people. you can't go wrong with going on reddit to find the things you need. probably.
The Language Community tumblr
welcome to tumblr. my go to tumblr blog for language resources and finding other langblrs to follow or slide into their askboxes. like the subreddit, but a little less insane. i'm not sure how active this blog is anymore, but the archives should still be a treasure trove. also has a lot of piracy because welcome to tumblr.
tatoeba anki decks
someone made decks sorted from easy to hard sentences with the tatoeba database. i think i should probably link tatoeba here too, but basically, these decks are like neri's decks, just for a different spread of languages. the audio is recorded by natives, and sentence translations are checked by natives too. yet another anki deck guy.
Tatoeba
a giant, volunteer-run project collecting sentences and their translations into as many of the world's languages as you can. filled to the brim with sentences for pretty much any language you can think of, and the sentences prioritized are the ones that you'll need to start out anyway. it's sort of daunting to face a database of literally millions of sentences and translations, but it's an incredible resource. berber is the language with the most material because one guy spent over a decade putting sentences and audio. some people are just insane like that
clozemaster
the classic post-duolingo website/app. clozes are basically recall practice centered around filling in the blanks where the blanks are key words that you're trying to learn. clozemaster gamifies this sort of recall practice by giving you points, leveling you up, putting you on a leaderboard, etc. it's pretty fun and pretty helpful especially when you're just trying to learn more words and expand your vocabulary post duolingo. the downside is that the free version only lets you practice up to 30 sentences total a day, which isn't terrible, but it used to be infinite.
Wiktionary, the free dictionary
i don't think i need to elaborate very much about wiktionary. please use wiktionary it has so much good stuff, not just definitions and translations, but also etymology, frequency lists, swadesh lists, so much good stuff. i use it mostly for etymology and translations
Language Learning Materials from the COERLL
texas is allowed to live for another day. COERLL stands for Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning which is at the University of Texas at Austin, aka UT Austin. i have not properly gone through this entire site just yet, but i've seen the k'iche course from here and didn't know about the actual center. very cool place with a lot of stuff going on. i should look into it more later.
Lingua Audire
a little listening practice website. not too many languages, but covers the big ones so i put it here. it has multiple difficulties and it's a bit gamified.
LibriVox
free public domain audiobooks recorded by volunteers around the world. if you can't afford lingq or you want audio with your readlang, this might help you out
lingvo.info
crazy website that has resource lists for a whole bunch of languages. europe centric but also has stuff for japanese and chinese from european languages if you look in lingvopolis
Coffee Break Languages
it only has like 8 courses but the courses cover the big 8 languages that people would be looking for, so i'm putting it here. also i'm too lazy to put all 8 different courses down below for now so it's going to sit here until i do that. basically a podcast series with very short podcasts that you could probably finish your coffee to. i haven't personally used them because i don't listen to podcasts often, but if you're pressed for time this is always an option.
ielanguages.com
i was hesitating on adding this website to my language resource page because i personally don't like it that much. this is because it doesn't suit my needs or wants when it comes to a language resource, but when i was looking for stuff to help a friend just have a taste of italian (and not necessarily get too serious about learning italian), this showed up again. it's pretty good as a simple, comprehensible introduction to a lot of different languages, but that's about it. it doesn't go in depth about grammar (which is something i like and look for), and i'm not too fond of the presentation of pronunciation. what does set this website apart is the resources for learning similar or related languages at the same time, like learning danish, norwegian, and swedish at the same time. since i was going to list it for italian, i figured i'd just list the homepage here so that people can look at the many other languages offered on here.
Xefjord's Complete Language Series
i forgot that i'm literally in xefjord's discord server and that he makes good stuff until i was looking at the very little i had for italian. anyway, this is a series of anki decks containing very basic survival phrases in many different languages, one anki deck per language. he covers languages that aren't as commonly covered by most other people, which is very cool and also crazy of him that he can pull off so many different languages through the power of paying voice actors and finding volunteers to translate his set list of phrases. a very good beginner's guide to many different languages, and the decks are made specifically to allow you to expand them for your needs. i've used the vietnamese one and it was great.
WordReference.com
thanks daico for reminding me this exists! i use this all the time to go between english, spanish, french, and german, although there's more languages supported on here! not only is wordreference a dictionary, it also has some synonym/related word search and full conjugations for verbs. very useful dictionary if you don't want to download a dedicated app.
Langpractice
thanks cinderdazzle for linking this site! it doesn't have too much just yet, but it does have a lot of different languages, so that's why i put this site here. i think the webmaster is working on expanding the study sections of each language, but at least for the languages i looked at, there were numbers and counting on there, so there's a start.
FAMiliarization
probably going to get put on a watchlist for this. basically language handbooks for people currently serving in the military. yep, it's from the same dli. an insane number of languages for just one place, but it's a very specific kind of language usage. the weapons guides are unfortunately not public. i do not recommend if you're.... not military or looking for military stuff.
Headstart2
i don't actually know if this is public access; i just assumed it was because it has a public registration page, but i could be wrong. in any case, probably going to get put on a watchlist for this because it's also specifically for the military. please don't use this if you're not interested in the military. i just put it here because i know there's Some people who would be interested in that stuff.
Global Language Online Support System (GLOSS)
finally something that probably won't get me put on a watchlist. just an archive of a lot of different resources for a lot of different languages sorted by level and type. if the government didn't want me finding these, they probably should've not made it public.
Duolingo Forum Archive
every language learner might know that duolingo itself is terrible, but the forums which were sunsetted a couple years back are not. if you ever find yourself missing the forums, here's an archive many forum posts from the old forum! i know the indonesian course is heavily dependent on the existence of the forums, so i'm glad to see that someone managed to preserve it.

there are more resource lists sprinkled throughout the rest of this page. the by organization tab in other also has more lists with multiple languages, but i put them there because the languages they have are less common and so less broad.

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arabic

generally speaking, i don't have much to say about arabic resources because my forays into arabic have always been brief. the variety of arabic that i'm most interested in is moroccan arabic because i have a friend who speaks it. it's ordered that way because that's how i ordered it.

i bet there's arabic langblrs out there but i've already spent too much time on just this so i need a break.

general/MSA

Elementary Arabic I
an open textbook for beginners of arabic. followed by another open textbook Elementary Arabic II. seems like a solid standalone introduction to the arabic language, complete with media and audio links even in the downloadable pdf/epub. as an oer, it's intended design is to be used in a classroom, so do watch out for that. i've only looked through this briefly, but being a free and open source textbook, it's more legal and a lot more accessible than other things i find.
DLI Arabic General courses
i am not sorting through these individually because if i did, i'd be linking directly to downloads. download at your own discretion because it's all military courses from the dli. i haven't used any of these myself, but some people still appreciate stuff like this.
FSI Written Arabic Course
course in written arabic available in the public domain. can also be accessed from the yojik website or from the live lingua project. requires knowledge of the arabic script. since this one focuses on writing, it's structured a little differently from other fsi courses. i think the fsi-language-courses.org download is missing audio, but that was a few years ago so it might have changed. i don't know how complete the yojik or live lingua project archives are. i've only used this once with exactly zero knowledge of how to read arabic. don't try this course without knowing some arabic.

other msa resources that i don't have commentary for:

moroccan arabic

Peace Corps Moroccan Arabic Textbook
somehow i have two versions of this same textbook saved to my computer. one of them is the live lingua project archive linked in the title, and the other one i downloaded off of z-lib.org before it got taken down that i've reuploaded to google drive here. the yojik website also has its own archive of this particular textbook here, but i recommend the live lingua project over all other downloads because it's the only one with audio for some reason. this is probably the best moroccan textbook out there. heavier focus on do first, learn later.
The Routledge Introductory Course in Moroccan Arabic
if you're wondering why i said the free, public domain peace corps textbook is better than an actual 60 usd paid textbook from routledge, it's literally just because the routledge doesn't use the arabic script at all. it's entirely latinization based, which i personally don't like. if having romanized arabic is up to your tastes, then you can buy the textbook if you can afford it, or if you can't, my google drive storage is screaming for help. i do like how in depth the routledge goes with grammar, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.

other arabic

more fsi arabic courses

more peace corps arabic courses

more dli arabic courses

arabic doesn't even look like a real word anymore.

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bulgarian

admittedly, i wanted to start learning bulgarian for two reasons. one of them was composer of two steps from hell thomas bergesen. the other reason was that there is a history of players on the asian genshin server discriminating against russian speakers, and as someone who has an account on the asian server, i thought it would be funny to troll them in bulgarian instead.

Bulgaro
this is The bulgarian course you'll find online. basically a duolingo clone but for bulgarian only. it's paywalled after like 4 levels, but you can get the notes (which are the important parts, let's be honest) by searching up every individual lesson and going for the cache (you can get those by clicking the three dots next to the website name when searching on google, not sure how to do it elsewhere). one of these days i'll collect all those notes, but that day is not today.
FSI Bulgarian Basic Course
like the other fsi courses, this is mirrored on live lingua project and the yojik website. i used it, and like other fsi courses, it's very heavy on listening and speaking, but because cyrillic isn't too hard to learn from a latin alphabet using language like english, they have cyrillic in the student text, albeit in cursive, because no one likes to make language learning easier. the romanization and handwritten (that's what they call the cyrillic) versions are written side by side if you want to throw brain cells at the text trying to learn how to read in cursive cyrillic. other than that, like other fsi courses, it's a bit dated, but still a very good resource if you don't want to pay for bulgaro.
bulgarian anki deck by neri
blessed anki deck. i have this saved but i don't remember using it. scratch that, i've used it a couple times, but haven't made much progress on it yet. the learning method is written in the deck description, but it's basically you learn through sentences, so the entire deck is just commonly used sentences plus translations into english. there's also audio, but it's computer generated, so it's not the best, but at least there's audio. if anki is your jam, try this one out.

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chinese

obligatory disclaimer that chinese is a macrolanguage or a family of languages like arabic is

all/multiple

r/ChineseLanguage
general chinese variety learning and teaching subreddit. a lot of things going on here. i don't use reddit so i have no clue what's on here.
Pleco
literally the best chinese dictionary ever. every other dictionary i list here wishes it could be pleco. you think that pleco is mandarin only but no, you can download more dictionaries to supplement the mandarin english one it already has to expand it to cantonese, german, french, weirdly specific tea vocabulary, so much stuff. some dictionaries are paid, but the app itself is free and continues to be free. the best and only dictionary mandarin learners will need for a long time into their learning journey.
萌典 (Moedict)
a traditional chinese dictionary that supports mandarin (of the taiwanese standard variety), taiwanese hokkien/taigi, and taiwanese hakka. it has a lot of features like chengyu search that aren't present in most english/chinese dictionaries, so i like using this when there's some obscure term that mdbg (see below) can't handle. it also has a desktop, ios, and android app if you feel so inclined to have a chinese dictionary app
百度百科 (Baidu Baike)
unironically, this is a good dictionary site if you can read simplified chinese. it can handle some english as in if you search terms in chinese, some terms have english translations in their articles, but don't bank on it. i use it mostly to handle archaic chinese i don't understand, but since everything is entirely in chinese, sometimes i throw the articles into mdbg so i can understand LMAO
Chinese-Tools.com
old site with chinese tools like the name says. i don't remember if it's just mandarin, so i'm tentatively putting it here for now.

cantonese

Cantolounge Complete Guide To Learn Cantonese (for non-Mandarin speakers)
this is archived from the original, mostly because the website no longer exists. i haven't finished reading this guide, but i'm putting this here so i can find it again and other people can find it too. pretty much what it says on the title, and it's very long because it goes very in depth.
r/Cantonese
believe it or not, i found a lot of resources from the r/cantonese subreddit. a good mix of resources, learners, and natives, i think. you can't go wrong with going on reddit for resources, probably.
CantoDict
the go to cantonese dictionary for all your cantonese to english to cantonese needs. also has other resources like word lists and sentences
Learn Cantonese!
one of the go to cantonese learning sites that has tests, lessons, and the dictionary linked above. thank you adam
Learn Cantonese! 學廣東話！
the other go to cantonese learning sites that has lessons for many levels. probably the most linked site when it comes to learning cantonese, besides like actual cantonese textbooks or maybe the fsi and dli courses.
FSI Cantonese Basic Course
finally i bring out the fsi course! there is a live lingua project mirror of this, as well as a yojik mirror because this is a public domain course. very heavy emphasis on speaking and automaticity, so it doesn't use characters and it uses a terrible romanization (yale, yuck). good thing the audio is there because if it weren't, this course would be unusable lmao. pretty typical of other fsi courses, meant for teaching diplomats, but can be used even if you're not a diplomat. very intense as all fsi courses are.
粵語網路課堂 (Cantonese Online Classroom)
cantonese learning website entirely in traditional chinese. good luck if you can read traditional chinese or want to language ladder mandarin with cantonese. i would if i actually had time to spare

other cantonese resources that i don't have commentary for:

hakka

mandarin

see i'm a heritage speaker, so i don't actually need basic basic chinese textbooks, but i just have them lying around for no reason other than to throw them at people who show remotely any interest in learning.

Cave of Linguists Discord Server Mandarin Channel Resource Doc
wow, you've scrolled so far down, you managed to find something i actually worked on. i helped out with writing and gathering resources for this doc, so i can attest to the quality (or not) of this doc. the resources are pretty good and span a lot of different levels. i wrote the parts about zhuyin because i'm a big fan of zhuyin, and that's what i used growing up. i am the jade mentioned in the doc.
瞎扯学中文 Convo Chinese
a podcast on spotify entirely in chinese aimed for upper intermediate low advanced students of chinese. i listen to this occasionally when i'm trying to not fall asleep at work. i think their topics are interesting and the speakers are very cool. the link goes to spotify, but i bet you can find it elsewhere if you look.
Chinese Romanization Self-Study Guide
a nice book comparing the older chinese romanization systems of yale and wade-giles to the modern standard hanyu pinyin. not super useful to a lot of people because yale and wade-giles are both mostly obsolete, but some nerds like me might like knowing about these and cursing other people with the knowledge.
MDBG Chinese Dictionary
the chinese dictionary i use almost religiously for pretty much anything and everything from doing my chinese homework to translating songs. literally the best and pretty much only chinese dictionary you'll need at least on desktop. also has a nice extension for reading chinese that i've never used before. ad free also. the handwriting tool sucks because you have to have proper stroke order, but other than that, it's pretty much everything you'll ever need from a mandarin chinese dictionary.

other mandarin resources:

shanghainese

r/Shanghainese
honestly, you're not going to find much for shanghainese in english, so this subreddit is the best place to start. the wiki has some links to start out with, but i'm pretty sure some of them are broken because the zanhei site no longer exists (well, the domain exists, but there's nothing on there)
wu-chinese.com
this was a site started by some shanghainese students at the university of chicago, but it definitely shows its age. a lot of the links go to the defunct zanhei site, which you can still find on the wayback machine as far as i saw, but the links listed under introduction still works, so it's still a good start

sichuanese

why am i even here finding shanghainese resources is hard, but sichuanese is even harder because it doesn't have any port cities (and chongqing isn't even part of the province anymore so it doesn't count)

四川话教学 Sichuan Mandarin Lessons (1, 2)
by far one of the hardest languages to find stuff for in english or chinese for that matter. two videos on sichuanese phonology in sichuanese, but there's slides that he's reading off of so it's not impossible to figure out if you don't know any sichuanese and you can read chinese. not exactly the best language for english speakers to be tackling.
四川话教程 Sichuan Dialect Lessons (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
a series i found when trying to find the first series. i haven't watched it, so i'm saving this here so i can find it later and watch it myself.

taiwanese hokkien/taigi

Getting Started & Resource Guide - Learning Taioanese - 食飽未Chia̍h pá ·bē!
as it says on the title, a getting started and resource guide for taiwanese hokkien. aiong is a great guy for learning taiwanese hokkien, and he's probably the biggest one out there teaching taiwanese hokkien. i should watch his channel; i haven't watched it in a while.
阿勇台語 Aiong Taigi
aiong's youtube channel! he's got lots of stuff in taiwanese hokkien and for learning taiwanese hokkien. he even has stuff for english speakers, which is a great bonus because there aren't many english language resources for a lot of chinese varieties. this is the channel i was recommended when i was lookingn for taiwanese hokkien resources

other taiwanese hokkien/taigi resources:

wenzhounese

Glossika Wenzhounese Course
it's free. speaking based with characters and ipa because they think it's useful. no grammar whatsoever because they just throw sentences at you with translations until it sticks. i started using this and will get back to you when i make more progress.

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danish

stød my detested

i picked up danish out of spite (because what danish learner doesn't pick it up out of spite except for the people moving to denmark), and because i wanted to test out the mutual intelligibility of danish, swedish, and norwegian because i had friends who knew the other languages in the trio. joke's on you, i've studied all of them and now i can't tell them apart.

Dansk her og nu
dansk her og nu my beloved. the title translates to "danish here and now" if you couldn't tell. it's entirely in danish, but it's in simple danish so that it's possible to brute force. i know this because i brute forced danish with this website. it's meant for foreigners coming to denmark either to immigrate or to stay for a while, but to be fair, most danish resources are like that.
Vores fællessprog
a nice bilingual grammar site with side by side texts in english (among other languages) and danish. very simple grammar website, i enjoy immensely. very helpful when i was brute forcing my way through dansk her og nu
Speakdanish.dk
a classic recommendation to beginners in danish. i don't recommend it mostly because it's paywalled lmao. there are some free lessons, but not too many. i do like the focus on reading, listening, and speaking, but then again, that's mostly what the target audience is going to need.
Lærdansk
once again another website entirely in danish on how to learn danish. it's actually a blog for people moving to denmark, but what danish resource isn't meant for people moving to denmark. my danish is not that good unfortunately so i can't actually tell you what's on here oops
DR
danish news site for reading practice. i should add more news sites to this page actually
Den Danske Ordbog
the classic danish-danish dictionary that i never used because my danish isn't good enough LMAO

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french

obligatory french i guess. i don't even study french despite it being one of my top languages on duolingo

Kwiziq French Language Learning Library
kwiziq is an ai-assisted language learning program, but they have a pretty thorough resource library including grammar, worksheets, and all sorts of practices you could ever want as a french student. i recommend this to french learners, but i personally haven't used it since i don't study french LMAO

other french resources i don't have commentary for:

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finnish

torilla tavataan

peer pressured into learning finnish by a finnish native friend. shout out to them for getting me to expand my horizons

A Taste of Finnish
a beginner's course in finnish including pretty much anything you'd need to start from scratch as an english speaker. it's targeted towards english international students going to the university of helsinki, but it's a well done course that has lessons for a variety of different situations. audio is native recordings. oh yeah, this was made by the university of helsinki, so they're cool. you can find more resources from this site too
FSI Conversational Finnish Course
i almost forgot that there was an fsi course for finnish, mostly because i haven't used it before and because it's named differently from the other courses. i have no clue why they specified conversational finnish when the typical fsi course is speaking focused to begin with, but maybe you can figure it out if you download this. as with fsi courses, there is a live lingua project mirror and a yojik mirror.
finnish anki deck by neri
very good anki deck that i used before realizing that maybe i should actually study finnish before tackling finnish straight up. my friend was finnishsplaining to me what the sentences meant because they were very simple sentences to them. the learning method is written in the deck description, but it's basically you learn through sentences, so the entire deck is just commonly used sentences plus translations into english. there's also audio, but it's computer generated, so it's not the best, but at least there's audio. if anki is your jam, try this one out.
finnish tatoeba anki deck
anki deck by the tatoeba guy. has all the sentences submitted in finnish with translations and audio at the time it was last updated. i don't remember using this, but i'm adding commentary at 1am so my brain is a little broken. probably not something to start finnish in immediately.

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german

fun fact: this was the second language i studied on duolingo after french. it's not in my top 5 because i do too many languages and grinded indonesian too much for that to be the case

A Foundation Course in Reading German
the very first german textbook i got my grubby little hands on. as the title implies, it's a textbook designed to teach you how to read german with the aid of a dictionary, and that's it. no speaking, no listening, not much writing from what i remember, but you'll be able to read german if you have a good dictionary at hand when you're done with this. i should probably get back to reading it because i really enjoyed it when i was reading.
Willkommen: Deutsch für alle
this is the normal german textbook i throw at everyone when someone asks me if i have german resources. yes i do, and this is the one you're getting. honestly, it's probably the best and most well rounded oer german textbook i've found (not that that's saying very much), and i've used this a little bit myself and enjoyed their approach to teaching german. i even downloaded the pdf and saved it to my laptop.
FSI German Programmed Introduction Course
as with all fsi courses, there is a mirror on the yojik website and on live lingua. if you want an fsi course, this is the one i recommend over the others because the formatting is a lot more approachable than the fsi or dli basic courses. it's a little more general than the fast course from the dli because it's, well, not for military usage only lmao. that being said, it's still a similar teaching style as a basic course just so that you can get your feet wet. i haven't used this in a hot sec.

other german resources that i don't have commentary on

textbooks/courseware:

youtube channels:

resource lists/all in one

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icelandic

wow it's been a long time since i studied icelandic, but i did once upon a time

Icelandic Online
i think this is the main icelandic site that icelandic learners go to. i never finished it, but it was enjoyable to me when i was still doing it.
neri's icelandic anki deck
i did this but i had to stop because one day i opened it and started working through it before realizing that this is icelandic not danish. i was wondering why the danish was spelled funny. don't be me, kids

other icelandic resources

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italian

i've done italian like once for a language jam (event where you study one language for a weekend) and that was about it. most of the stuff i have was collected for a friend who only wanted a little taste of italian and not necessarily full on courses to dive into.

Memrise Italian Course
this is the thing i used to dip my toes into italian for a language jam on the cave of linguists discord server. like all memrise official courses, heavy emphasis on memorizing how common phrases sound and very little, if anything, on grammar.
Free Online Italian Lessons from The Italian Experiment
a list of very simple basic beginner lessons that function similarly to an ielanguages tutorial, but with fewer lessons. should be a good way to get a little sampling of italian

other italian resources i don't have commentary for

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indonesian

you've scrolled down far enough that you've actually found one of my current target languages. congrats!

learning indonesian is a lot more fun when you have multiple native speaking friends roasting you every step of the way

Indonesian Wikibook
simple beginner lessons to get your feet wet in indonesian. i did this and livetexted my experience to my native speaking friends and they were all so nice and helpful and also roasting my basic mistakes. perfectly balanced as all things should be
Indonesian Reader Wikibook
another indonesian wikibook this time focused on the written language and acquiring vocabulary. i also livetexted my experience to my native friends and they started roasting the book even though it was technically correct for the written standard. good times
BIPA Daring
i am aware that despite the english in the top right corner most of this website including the resources are in indonesian. this is by design as this site was meant for students and teachers of indonesian who are already in indonesia getting ready to take the BIPA which is apparently a standardized test of indonesian proficiency. i've downloaded all of the teaching materials from a1 to c2 and bipa 1 to bipa 7 as if i'd actually get that far LMAO. anyway free textbook is free just get an indonesian speaking friend to help you figure out what the indonesian textbooks say.
Sentence Patterns of Indonesian
a more linguistic and grammatical resource discussing, well, indonesian sentence patterns. also discusses words and how to form them (aka morphology) because indonesian affixes sure are affixes. i think they're cool, but most people either don't notice them or hate them.

other indonesian resources

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japanese

disclaimer: i haven't actively studied japanese in about 3 years, and i still haven't gotten back into it. i don't really keep track of resources for japanese anymore, so i won't have much to say about all these resources i'm putting here. also compared to the other resources i've been putting on this site, these resources should generally be more well known to japanese learners

Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese
the classic that every japanese learner should know about. heavy focus on grammar, but does help with some kanji and vocabulary. if you're a fan of grammar, this book will be right up your alley. even if you aren't a huge fan of grammar, this book should still be of some use to you as you encounter more and more grammar when learning japanese. it's been a long time since i've used this, but i still reference it when i'm trying to figure out sentences.
WaniKani
another classic kanji focused japanese learning site. it's free for up to 4 levels and it's a moderate subscription price, but i've heard it's well worth the subscription if you're a serious japanese learner. there are anki decks that mimic the interfact and have the same vocabulary for certain levels, like the one in this discord server, if you don't want to or can't afford to pay for it.
Tofugu
the people behind wanikani. also fairly well known in the english to japanese learning community due to their articles on japanese culture and language. yes their mascot is a tofu pufferfish.
Kanshudo
another grammar ish site masquerading as a kanji learning platform. i mean, it does do what it says, but it has a startling number of japanese grammar articles that you can access even without an account. i used to use this site back in the day, but now i don't really remember what else it does. the free accounts do have limits, like i remember being limited on how many srs cards i was allowed to have, but it's more manageable than say, lingq.
Cave of Linguists Japanese channel resources drive
i didn't work on this personally, but a bunch of my friends in the japanese channel of col did, so i trust the quality of their resources. if you open the guide, you'll find that i actually list a lot of those links below because i put those links first before i put this drive here oops. i promise i didn't intentionally take the links from them; it's just that there are a lot of classics for japanese learning out there because the community is so big
jisho.org
how could i forget the classic en/jp online dictionary. beautiful work of art that also parses sentences for you and links to relevant tae kim grammar entries when necessary. stroke input is a bit messy, but what stroke input isn't. pretty much the only dictionary you'll need as an english learner until you get advanced, then you can start using stuff like weblio or goo
Iku老師/Ikulaoshi
literally my favorite japanese teacher in taiwan youtuber. i follow him on instagram despite me barely using instagram. he has a youtube playlist for learning japanese from scratch that i never finished, but he does a lot of vlogging on his life in taiwan and i love him for that. being a japanese teacher in taiwan, his channel is entirely in chinese.
YUYU NIHONGO
don't ask me how i found a japanese teacher in mexico. i don't know either. anyway he's also very funny if you can actually understand mexican spanish and i enjoyed watching his videos when i was still trying to stack languages.
Kanji Dojo
okay finally something i used recently just to test it out. it's basically an app that teaches you some readings, some words containing kanji, and the strok order of kanji. you can start from different jlpt levels. found this while scrolling through f-droid which means it's unfortunately only available on android. it's not super helpful to me because i already know what kanji mean mostly and their stroke orders (thanks to chinese).

other japanese resources i don't have commentary on:

textbooks/courseware:

youtube/anime:

readers:

resource lists/all in one sites:

other things:

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korean

i have studied korean before. not much, but it's honest work

Talk To Me In Korean
any korean learner worth their salt knows about this website so you should too. i don't normally suggest this because it's so commonly used in korean learning circles that there's no real point and because most of their stuff is paid, which means that i have not personally tried out much of their stuff. however, they do have freebies, like the podcasts i list eventually and some of their trial lessons, which i also still haven't done.
HowtoStudyKorean
the free website that any korean learner worth their salt knows about. it's basically the korean equivalent of the tae kim's guide to japanese, although more example based and less grammar based. i have used this site because it's free and publically available, but there is just so much. there's over 200 lessons there for free, and the things that you could potentially pay for are like pdfs and anki decks (that you could make yourself anyway).
Learnkorean.com
one more free korean lessons website that i'm not sure if it's well-known in the korean learning community. while it's not as in depth as HTSK, it does have some culture notes and other things that HTSK doesn't cover. it's also done by an actual professor of korean, who i don't know if he's still teaching or not.
Let's Learn Hangul!
this is the website i used to learn how to read hangul. most places advertise learning it all in about an hour, and i did it in about 90 minutes with this website. it was fun, but i did this years ago, so it's been a while. i should refresh with this website.
First Step Korean Course
mass open online course (mooc) offered by Yonsei University. i started this course, but never finished it because i got busy. it's a coursera course, so you'll need a coursera account, and if you're willing to pay, you can get a nice certificate that says you studied korean from Yonsei University. great.
FSI Korean Basic Course (new): fsi / yojik
pretty much my go-to korean resource despite it being dated as it is with all fsi courses. however, unlike other fsi courses, this one got a revision in 2009, so it's not as old as the others, but since i'm typing this in 2024, there's kpop stans who were born after this revision, so even the revision might still be considered a bit dated. there's an original version out there too (fsi / yojik / llp vol. 1, vol. 2). i had notes for this when i was sending it to a friend, so let me put them down here:
pros
  • heavy emphasis on listening and speaking. there's transcripts you can read from, but the student text will do you no good if you don't have the audio to go with it
  • when used correctly, can boost your fluency well beyond conversational in a relatively short amount of time
  • free and public domain. you will never have to pay for these in your life. anyone trying to get you to pay for these is scamming you
cons
  • no writing at all
  • very intensive when done correctly. the original environment this course was used in was with diplomats who could only speak korean both inside and outside of the classroom, which led them to becoming well versed in the language in around 6 months
  • old. it's from the 1960s and it shows. you might sound like a grandparent or older if you depend solely on this course
DLI Korean Basic Course: yojik / llp
pretty much the same thing as the old fsi korean basic course, except the target audience was people in the military deployed to korea. if you want to pick up stuff that you'd need for daily life in the military, this is probably the best thing you can get without getting on a watch list! unlike the gloss database or the dli things i put somewhere up there

other korean resources i collected:

textbooks/courseware/similar websites

anki decks

spotify podcasts (i collected these for a spotify user, but you can probably find them elsewhere too)

blogs, subreddits, and resource lists

other korean resources

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lao

i studied this once on a plane ride and forgot about it. i also collected these for a friend of thai/lao descent, but there's really nothing out there.

unlike other languages, i'm going to link the fsi language courses site, the yojik site, and live lingua project separately because they all list the different fsi courses differently, so it's hard to link to the mirrors of the same course. there are three separate courses the fsi released for lao, a basic course (with a 2014 revision), a reading course for learning how to read the script, and one called "Everyday Lao" which is just survival lao.

  • fsi and yojik bundle all three courses (including the original and revised versions of the basic course) in one download, but you can open individual files without downloading them
  • live lingua project splits the courses into their different parts: Lao Basic Course Vol. 1, Lao Basic Course Vol. 2, Reading Lao, and Everyday Lao
  • i am counting these as 3 different courses for the numbers because i can and because there's literally nothing else free out there
  • i am not linking anything to amazon

the one other thing out there that teaches lao to a somewhat appreciable amount is Lao Lessons, but even then, that's not saying much. the sign up button for more comprehensive lessons doesn't even work. at least there's no paywalls as far as i can see.

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norwegian

i started learning norwegian because of hetalia norway and that's pretty much the reason why this site exists because i thought to myself "why stop at norwegian? why not learn other languages?"

FSI Norwegian Headstart Course
obligatory yojik and live lingua mirrors. i used this for a short time trying to learn norwegian but it was a terrible idea because i was learning danish at the same time. cue me being confused at both languages while trying to learn them both. don't do that

other norwegian resources

courseware

norwegian doesn't look real anymore

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polish

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spanish

see, here's the thing: i took spanish classes in high school. i don't know how to teach people spanish besides the basics. despite the length of this list, almost all of these resources were things i collected for myself, so all of the spanish resources i have skew towards the intermediate levels. if you want basics, you can look them up yourself. these are just the ones i have on hand.

JUNTXS
an introductory textbook to spanish with a heavy focus on the current, modern world and multimedia usage. there's an intermediate version called + JUNTXS that i've been meaning to get into as an intermediate learner, but alas, i have not. definitely a different approach than what i had learning spanish, that's for sure, so if something a little unconventional is what you're looking for, this is probably it.
Redes 2. Curso de español intermedio. by Ines Warnock
another textbook in intermediate spanish from portland state university. some of the topics here i felt were on the more beginner side, so i'd put this as low intermediate maybe upper beginner for the first few chapters, but then it gets into solidly intermediate territory from there on. i skipped through because i already know the basics, but keep in mind that this was written for a spanish course at portland state university.
Manual de Redacción
an advanced textbook in spanish dedicated to reading and writing in spanish. i tried this textbook, actually, and it tickles the linguistics brain cells, but it's definitely not meant for beginners. hell, i might not be up to par as just an intermediate learner. a very good experience with this textbook, despite not being actually good enough to use it.

other spanish resources

textbooks/courseware:

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tagalog

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thai

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vietnamese

i haven't studied vietnamese in a long time, but i always want to get back into it, so i have a backlog of resources that i still haven't touched

Basic Vietnamese
basic vietnamese textbook from michigan state university. not much to say, but it's for beginners and aims to get students to upper beginner. you'll see that there are a lot of courses that are called basic vietnamese soon
FSI Vietnamese Basic Course
see what did i tell you about other courses called basic vietnamese? fsi basic vietnamese course that i have actually done and remember doing. it's very repetitive, as all fsi courses are, but at least they teach you how to read vietnamese to an extent because it's written in the latin alphabet and they're willing to spend time teaching you how to read it. after all, you can't romanize something that's already romanized. there are mirrors, but i am tired, so i will put them later. yes.

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other

random other resources i have. i'm not making categories for these ones because i don't want to. mostly things i randomly encounter on the internet while looking for language resources and not necessarily languages i study, have studied, or will study.

by language

by organization

lists from other people

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