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Caption Pop Mini-Review: Use The Free Version

Caption Pop – 4

With Caption Pop you can use YouTube videos to pursue your language learning endeavours using subtitles in both your target language and native language. Tap a single key to repeat the last caption, slow down the playback speed, and bookmark subtitles to study with SRS interactive flashcards. The flashcards will not just have you memorize words, but practice dictations with immediate feedback on your accuracy. Unfortunately there are currently some bugs in the programming, and you may only hear part of the caption you are being asked to transcribe.

You can search for Youtube videos in your target language within the Caption Pop platform, but only those videos with subtitles in both your target language and your native language are available. This means that you will rely on captions translated and transcribed by the video’s creators, which improves your language learning experience but restricts the amount of available Youtube content. Nevertheless, there is a good amount of content from popular channels in more common languages.

The free version of the platform combined with self-made Anki cards may be a better option than subscribing to the premium version, as the bugs in Caption Pop’s programming don’t seem worth the monthly payment.

Visit Caption Pop

The rating is our best guess, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully test and review this resource.

By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azeri Basque Bengali Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Chewa (Chichewa) Croatian Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Inuktitut Irish Italian Japanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Kurdish Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luganda Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Mandarin Chinese Manx Maori Marathi Mongolian Navajo (Diné bizaad) Nepali Norwegian Occitan Papiamento Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua Romanian Romansch Russian Sami Sardinian Serbian Shona Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Swahili Swiss German Tamil Telugu Thai Tibetan Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek

Instant Immersion Mini-Review: No Longer a Good Investment

Instant Immersion – 2

Instant Immersion offers programs in over 120 languages, narrated by native speakers. It claims to help you build your vocabulary, converse with ease, and perfect your pronunciation. It has interactive activities on the computer, interactive games you can play with your family on a DVD, and MP3 files for your car.

Their topics include food, shopping, restaurants, animals, numbers, etc. In other words, Instant Immersion will probably not help you if you are looking to have immediately applicable conversations

A common trend in many reviews is the lack of structure in these courses. While other courses build on what you have previously learned and help you learn vocabulary relevant to your everyday life, Instant Immersion seems to provide a large amount of information without transitions or a clear learning path. There is a lot of content, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you will learn a lot. Instant Immersion may have been a good investment several years ago, but now there are many other options for affordable, quality language learning.

Visit Instant Immersion

The rating is our best guess, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully test and review this resource.

By Nick Arabic Afrikaans Aiki (Runga) Ainu Albanian Alsatian Aramaic Argentine Sign Language Armenian Aromanian Assamese Assiniboine Austrian German Avar Aymara Azerbaijani Azeri Bago-Kusuntu Bagri Balinese Balochi Bambara (Bamanankan) Banjar Barawana (Baré) Bari Basque Batak Toba Bats Bavarian Beja Belait Belarusian Bengali Berber (Tamazight) Bhojpuri Bislama Blackfoot (Niitsi'powahsin) Bosnian Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS) Breton Bugis Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Chavacano Chechen Cherokee Chewa (Chichewa) Chibarwe Chiquitano Choctaw Chukchi Chuwabu Coptic Cornish Corsican Cree Croatian Crow Czech Daakaka Dakota Danish Dari Daza Dela-Oenale Dinka Domari Dotyali Drehu Dutch Dzongkha English Erzya Esperanto Estonian Ewe Ewondo (Fang) Faroese Fijian (ITaukei) Filipino Finnish Flemish Fon (Fon gbè) French Frisian Friulian Fulah Fur Ga Galician Gallo Garifuna Georgian German Gikuyu Greek Greenlandic Guambiano Guarani Gujarati Gullah Haitian Creole Hakka Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hokkien (Taiwanese) Honduran Sign Language Hungarian Iban Icelandic Ido Igbo Indonesian Ingush Inuinnaqtun Inuktitut Irish Italian Ixcatec Jamaican Creole Japanese Javanese Judeo-Tat K'iche Kachin (Jingpho) Kalanga Kalmyk Oirat Kannada Kanuri Kazakh Kekchi (Q'eqchi') Kenjeje Khmer (Cambodian) Khmu Khoemana Kinyarwanda Kirundi Koisan (Tsoa) Konkani Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Ladin Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Lakota Lao Latin Latvian Lau Limburgish Lithuanian Litzlitz (Naman) Lombard Luganda Luo Luxembourgish Maasai Macedonian Maithili Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maldivian (Dhivehi) Maltese Mamuju Manchu Mandarin Chinese Mandingo (Madinka) Manggarai Manx Maori Mapudungun Marathi Marri Ngarr Marshallese Masalit Mauritian Creole Mazatec Mekeo Mexican Sign Language Minangkabau Mingrelian Mirandese Miyako Mnong Mon Mongolian Montenegrin Nahuatl Nambya Natchez Navajo (Diné bizaad) Ndebele Neapolitan (Napoletano) Nepali Neverver Newar Nigerian Pidgin North Efate (Nakanamanga) Norwegian Nubian Nuer Occitan Odia Ogiek (Akiek) Ojibwe Okinawan Oneida Oromo Pa'o Palauan Papiamento Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Qashqai Quechua Rohingya Romani Romanian Romansch Russian Sa Sami Samoan Sanskrit Sardinian Scots Scottish Sekani Sena Serbian Sfyria Shan Shanghainese Sherpa Shona Shoshoni Shumashti Sicilian Sign Language Silbo Gomero Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Sotho Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swazi Swedish Swiss German Syriac Tajik Tamang Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tharu Tibetan Tigrinya Tlingit Toki Pona Tongan Tsonga (Xitsonga) Tswana Turkish Turkmen Tutong Twi Tz’utujil Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Venda Vietnamese Waray Welsh Wolof Wyandot Xhosa Yakut Yiddish Yola Yoruba Yucatec Maya Zaghawa (Beria) Zapotec Zarma Zaza (Northern) Zhuang Zulu

italki Review – The Good, The Bad, & The Just Alright

Quick Review

4.5

Summary:

italki is the most flexible and affordable place to find a tutor for the language you’re learning. They have a huge number of teachers offering classes to students of over 100 different languages. As a learner, you’ll be able to find a tutor that best fits your learning style, schedule, and personality. Teachers are able to set their own prices and make their own schedule.

Teacher Quality

You’ll find everyone from long-time professionals to brand new teachers.

Platform

The overall platform has tons of useful features but also some room for improvement.

Value

Huge number of teachers, low prices, and flexible scheduling.

I Like…

There are large numbers of teachers available even for less common languages.

You can find skilled teachers even at low prices.

The flexibility to schedule lessons whenever convenient. The huge number of teachers guarantees you’ll find someone to fit your schedule.

The extra features in the italki Community make it easy to ask questions, get your writing checked, and find a free language exchange partner.

I DON’T LIKE…

Community features are only available through the app.

You may need to try several tutors before finding one that fits your learning and personality style.

It’s easy to not take classes as often as you should.

Price

The prices vary by teacher and language with some being as low as $4 and others as high as $60 per hour. Most will fall somewhere near the $10 per hour range.

Visit italki Now

(more…)

By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Basque Bengali Bosnian Breton Bulgarian Cantonese Catalan Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Italian Japanese Kazakh Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Malayalam Mandarin Chinese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

Sublearning Mini-Review: There Are Better Uses For Your Time

Sublearning – 1.3

Sublearning is a very simple website that supposedly helps you learn languages through movie subtitles. You will be presented with 1 to 6 lines of subtitles from your chosen movie, and then you can reveal the translation after thinking about the response.

There are 62 source and target languages, which does make one wonder where the translations are coming from; be wary of Sublearning’s translation quality.

Just to clarify, the subtitles do not seem to be sourced from the most iconic phrases from your favourite movies; rather, they seem to be random lines from the movie, sometimes as simple as “I don’t think so”. If you’re just looking to reminisce about anything that was said in movies you have seen, you can go to Sublearning to pass some time. However if you’re interested in language learning, I recommend checking out some of the many resource reviews we have on this site.

Visit Sublearning

The rating is our best guess, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully test and review this resource.

By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Assamese Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bhojpuri Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Croatian Czech Danish Dari English Estonian Faroese Filipino Finnish Flemish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Maithili Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Mandarin Chinese Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Oromo Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Shona Sicilian Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Somali Spanish Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu

Bluebird Languages Mini-Review: Over 160 Languages Available

Bluebird Languages – 3.5

Bluebird Languages has several types of lessons you can choose from, including a daily lesson, core vocabulary, essential verbs, creating sentences, powerful phrases, and conversation. Each topic seems to have a beginner, intermediate, and advanced lesson, although it’s not clear how advanced “advanced” is.

In each lesson, an English-speaking narrator will ask you to listen to and repeat translations of various phrases. The recordings in each language seem to use native speakers’ voices, which is quite the feat considering they have lessons in over 160 languages.

Bluebird Languages’ phrases don’t construct a replicable dialogue, so the phrases don’t seem to have a lot of context other than the topic at hand. Furthermore, the topics seem to be identical in all languages, so most of the phrases will not be culture-specific. They also don’t break down complicated pronunciation, but you can try to break it down yourself by slowing down the recording to 0.5x speed.

Bluebird Languages seems similar to Pimsleur but appears less organized and will probably not improve your communication abilities as quickly. Nevertheless, it may be a good free alternative for beginners, and the program will probably help you develop some confidence in speaking languages that have less challenging pronunciation. The conversation and personalized lessons require a monthly membership, but there is enough free content that these add-ons may not be necessary.

Visit Bluebird Languages

The rating is our best guess, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully test and review this resource.

By Brian Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Kannada Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Lao Latvian Lithuanian Malay Malayalam Mandarin Chinese Marathi Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

Ling Review — Gamified Practice in Less Common Languages

Quick Review

3.2

Summary

Ling is a gamified language-learning app with courses on over 60 different languages. Practice happens through short themed lessons, making for convenient and entertaining study time. It isn’t the most comprehensive resource out there, especially for more popular languages, but it can make a decent way to get started with a less common language.

Quality

The app is easy to use and visually appealing, but I found some mistakes in the material.

Thoroughness

There aren’t many explanations, and the materials are the same for each language, but practice is varied.