Malay

Blog Category
By Nick Malay

5 Best Podcasts to Learn Malay in 2021

If you’re traveling to, working in or moving to Malaysia, then you may find yourself looking into learning Malay.

Podcasts are one of the best complements to any course. Podcasts are available any time, anywhere, and you can find podcast episodes that address just about every language-learning problem you might have.

Want to learn new vocabulary words? You’ll find a podcast for that. Want to learn the history and culture surrounding a language? You’ll also find podcasts for that. Want to test your comprehension skills by listening to the same content a native Malay speaker might? You can also find advanced podcasts for that.

So, interested in using podcasts to complement your Malay language-learning course? Check out these five options. (And if you’re looking for extra resources, from apps and courses to movies and novels, check out our detailed guide to learning the Malay language from scratch.) (more…)

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LingQ

Quick Review

4 

Summary:

LingQ is a language learning platform that makes it easy to read and listen to interesting content at varying difficulty levels. As you read, words will be marked as known and LingQ tracks the total number of words you “know”. The content comes from lots of different places with very little of it being original. They also make it very easy to upload your own content.

Quality

The LingQ reading app is enjoyable in most languages, easy to use, and can expand your vocabulary. However, I found the user content frustrating to navigate.

Thoroughness

With the import function, users can choose to study almost anything they want.

Value

Now that other apps provide similar functions, the monthly subscription may be a bit overpriced. However, the yearly subscription seems fair.

Languages

Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Korean, French, Russian, German, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Esperanto, Belarusian, Latin, Ukrainian. There are also 20 additional languages in Beta.

Price

Premium membership costs $12.99/mo, $71.94/half-year, $107.88/year, $191.76/2-years; single-language lifetime membership costs $199

When I first signed up for LingQ, I wasn’t very impressed. Its seemingly random lesson library, filled with custom cover photos and inconsistent title formats, made me want to click on just about anything to get away from that page.

However, after exploring every function I could find, I realized that the reading tool has several useful functions for anyone trying to learn a language through extensive reading. Most importantly, it makes reading in other languages feel manageable.

The site has three main pages: Lessons, Tutors, and Community. Within them, you can find free and purchasable lessons, coins, an avatar, writing exchanges, a community forum, audio playlists, and challenges.

I mostly used LingQ for reading in Spanish and dabbled in French, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and Korean.

(more…)

By Tanya Afrikaans Arabic Bengali Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Croatian Danish Dutch English Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Igbo Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Latin Malay Malayalam Mandarin Chinese Marathi Mongolian Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Shona Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Xhosa Yoruba Zulu

AmazingTalker

2.5 
Price: From around $10 per 50-minute class

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AmazingTalker is an italki and Verbling competitor that lets you book classes with language teachers and academic tutors of your choice. It has a lot of attractive features for students, but teachers complain about high commission rates and lack of support.

It boasts a 3% acceptance rate for teachers and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not happy with your class, they’ll rebook you another one for free. There are lots of teachers to choose from, or you can also use their AI Matching Service to find a tutor. The teachers’ profiles include videos, reviews, and their résumé.

However, AmazingTalker doesn’t seem a great choice for teachers. It charges English and Japanese teachers astonishingly high commission rates of up to 30%. While these rates fall as teachers earn more through the site, they have to make $1,500 a month before the commission reaches levels comparable to italki and Verbling. Making it worse, there’s an additional 8% fee for payment processing and tax that all teachers have to pay, no matter what language they teach. 

There have also been complaints on Reddit from teachers claiming to have been harassed by students and fellow teachers. However, we cannot corroborate these.

Given all this, we’d recommend trying italki (review) or Verbling (review) first. Alternatively, check out our guide to the best platforms for online language classes.

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My Language Exchange

4.2 
Price: Freemium, Gold Memberships start at $6/mo

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My Language Exchange has been growing since 2000. Although the website seems out of date, it still has an active community of millions of language-learners who speak almost 200 native languages (including less commonly studied languages).

You can choose a pen pal by reading their bios, or there is a chat room available for you to instantly connect with a language exchange partner — note that if you create a Gold account, you can initiate chats with other users, but as a regular user, you will have to wait to be contacted.

Using the Cormier Method, the website provides tools to help intermediate speakers effectively practice with other learners. It advertises a Chat Companion with lesson plans to accompany your exchange, or lesson plans developed by teachers (although the quality of these resources varies drastically). 

You can also find language teachers on the site, but given that the transactions take place directly between you and the teacher, you may feel safer using a 3rd party platform like italki or Verbling. 

Although there are outlines on how to participate in language exchanges, how these outlines are followed depends entirely on you and your partner(s). My Language Exchange will help you build connections with other learners, but it’s up to you to plan how to practice. The concepts can also be used with any language exchange platform, such as Lingbe, italki, Tandem, and Amikumu.

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By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Austrian German Azerbaijani Basque Bavarian Bengali Bislama Bosnian Breton Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Chechen Cherokee Coptic Croatian Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Estonian Faroese Filipino Finnish French Frisian Georgian German Greek Gujarati Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Ingush Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Manx Maori Marathi Mongolian Nahuatl Nepali Norwegian Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Sanskrit Scots Scottish Serbian Sherpa Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Swahili Swedish Syriac Tajik Tamil Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Wolof Yiddish Yoruba Yucatec Maya Zulu

lexilogos

3.5 
Price: Free

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Although Lexilogos seems to have entirely neglected its aesthetics, it holds more than meets the eye. If you click on one of the 130+ languages listed at the bottom of the page, you will find a series of resources to support your studies. This is especially useful for less-studied languages, like Marathi, Basque, and Pashto. Although the lists don’t provide recommendations for applications, they do provide a list of dictionaries, keyboards, news sites, books, and research papers. Additionally, if you switch to the French version of the site, there are even more languages and resources available for you to explore.

Within each language’s page, there is also a dictionary search function. You will notice that more commonly studied languages will have dozens of dictionaries to choose from, while less commonly studied languages may only have one or two.

Overall, Lexilogos is a great option for finding resources for less commonly studied languages. They regularly update their site, so make sure to check back if you don’t find what you’re looking for the first time around.

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By Tara Arabic Basque Bengali Cantonese Catalan Danish Dutch Esperanto Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Gujarati Hebrew Hindi Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Malayalam Mandarin Chinese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Pashto Persian Portuguese Romanian Russian Sinhala Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Zulu

ilovelanguages.org

1.6 
Price: Free

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iLoveLanguages seems similar to iLanguages and Learn101 in that every language has the same content and grammar. The eighteen 30-minute beginner ‘lessons’ in every language are essentially lists of phrases and vocabulary words, with audio recordings by native speakers.

The site seems to provide a local teacher for each language, but for some reason, the same teacher offers at least 11 of the languages (including Gaelic, Basque, Filipino, Marathi, and Cantonese). Oddly enough, this teacher also appears in stock photos around the internet. Considering that the website advertises each language class as being taught by a native speaker, perhaps be cautious if you are considering taking a class from this site — maybe try italki or SpanishVIP for private lessons instead.

iLoveLanguages may be helpful if you want to hear native speakers pronounce words in South-Eastern languages, like Marathi, Gujarati, Vietnamese, or Malay. You can compare the pronunciation with the speakers from either iLanguages or Learn 101 (but not both, as they use identical audio files). You could also check out Forvo, which is probably the most extensive pronunciation database on the internet right now. 

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By Tara Afrikaans Ainu Albanian Arabic Armenian Assamese Aymara Azerbaijani Balinese Bambara (Bamanankan) Banjar Basque Bavarian Belarusian Bengali Berber (Tamazight) Bhojpuri Bislama Bosnian Breton Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Chavacano Chechen Cherokee Choctaw Chukchi Cornish Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Erzya Esperanto Estonian Ewe Faroese Fijian (ITaukei) Filipino Finnish French Frisian Friulian Ga Galician Georgian German Greek Greenlandic Guarani Gujarati Haitian Creole Hakka Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Iban Icelandic Ido Igbo Indonesian Inuktitut Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kalmyk Oirat Kannada Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Kirundi Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Ladin Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Lakota Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Lombard Luganda Luxembourgish Macedonian Maithili Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maldivian (Dhivehi) Maltese Manchu Mandarin Chinese Manx Maori Marathi Marshallese Minangkabau Mingrelian Mirandese Mongolian Nahuatl Navajo (Diné bizaad) Nepali Norwegian Nuer Odia Ojibwe Okinawan Palauan Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua Romani Romanian Russian Samoan Sanskrit Sardinian Scots Serbian Shanghainese Shona Sicilian Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swazi Swedish Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Toki Pona Tongan Tsonga (Xitsonga) Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Wolof Xhosa Yakut Yiddish Yoruba Zaza (Northern) Zulu

Tatoeba

3.3 
Price: Free

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Tatoeba is a sentence-focused reference dictionary, not word focused. Therefore, by searching for a word in any language, you are searching for examples of that word in context. The site is community-driven, but you don’t have to be multilingual to contribute to the site — it needs native-speaking writers to expand the example database and proofread user sentences.

All of the translations are interconnected: even if there is technically no direct translation from Zulu to Chinese, an English translation for the same sentences in both languages will provide direct translations between them.

Although Tatoeba supports about 388 languages, about 200 of these languages have less than 100 sentences, and about 58 have less than 10. Nevertheless, the database is continuously growing, and with more community members, the less common languages may have a chance to develop further.

It is prohibited to use a translation tool or copyrighted sentences to contribute to the translation database. Unfortunately, some contributors write in a language in which they are not proficiently fluent. As a result, the site has grammatical mistakes and sentences that don’t sound natural. You may have to do some digging to figure out if the contributor is a native speaker or not.

Because of the potential user errors on the site, you may want to check out WordReference, Pleco, SpanishDict, Kanji Study , and Linguee to find words in context for more commonly studied languages.

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By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Assamese Azeri Basque Belarusian Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Croatian Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish Flemish French Galician Georgian German Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Kurdish Latin Latvian Lithuanian Maasai Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Mandarin Chinese Marathi Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Odia Oromo Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Serbian Shona Sindhi Slovak Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu

ilanguages

1.3 
Price: Free

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Learn 101 is almost identical to iLanguages; they have the same native speaker audio files, languages, and mostly identical ‘lesson’ layouts. The main differences are that Learn 101 seems to have added some grammar explanations and reformatted a bit, while iLanguages seems to have added some extra phrases.

Since every one of the languages’ “lessons” has the exact same format, including the grammar section, you will learn how to say ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘or’, in 107 languages, but you will not learn where these types of words fit within a specific language’s sentence structure. Every page is just a list of words with a translation (and sometimes an IPA symbol transliteration).

This site could be used if you want to hear native speakers pronounce basic words in very rare languages, or if you want to look up the IPA symbols of a rare language’s alphabet — otherwise, you’re probably better off making flashcards yourself on Anki or trying one of the hundreds of other resources we recommend on this site.

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By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Assamese Azeri Basque Belarusian Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish Flemish French Galician Georgian German Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Kurdish Latin Latvian Lithuanian Maasai Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Mandarin Chinese Marathi Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Odia Oromo Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Serbian Shona Sindhi Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu

learn101

1.3 
Price: Free

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Learn 101 is almost identical to iLanguages, but neither of them seem to be very helpful; they have the same native speaker audio files, languages, and mostly identical ‘lesson’ layouts. The main differences are that Learn 101 seems to have added some grammar explanations and reformatted a bit, while iLanguages seems to have added some extra phrases.

Since every one of the languages’ “lessons” has the same format, including the grammar section, you will learn how to say ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘or’, in 107 languages, but you will not learn where these types of words fit within a specific language’s sentence structure. Although there are examples of various grammatical structures, the explanations for these structures are also identical for every language, which, practically speaking, doesn’t seem plausible.

This site could be useful if you want to hear native speakers pronounce basic words in less-common languages, or if you want to look up the IPA symbols of a less-common language’s alphabet — otherwise, you’re probably better off making flashcards yourself on Anki, or trying one of the hundreds of other resources we recommend on this site.

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By Tara Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Chewa (Chichewa) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hokkien (Taiwanese) Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Korean Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Mandarin Chinese Maori Marathi Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Tajik Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

itranslate

4 

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iTranslate is a dictionary, thesaurus, and phrasebook. At first glance, it seems similar to Google Translate’s free app, but a couple of extra paid features make a big difference.

Like with Google Translate, you can take pictures of text in your surroundings, such as signs or newspapers, and receive instant translations into your native language. It differs in that you can also take pictures of objects in your surroundings and receive translations into your target language (although it’s not clear what the boundaries are on this function).

Two people who don’t speak the same language can use iTranslate Converse as a mediator between them, translating each sentence to create a transcript on their phone (with a slight delay). You can also use the iTranslate Keyboard in any texting app to receive instant translations.

To get the most out of your subscription, iTranslate includes five different apps that can support language learning and communication through text, voice, and games. Although iTranslate translates into over 100 languages, check the website to verify which languages are supported in the other apps.

iTranslate seems suitable for traveling and communication in different languages. If all you need is a dictionary to support your studies, try WordReference and Linguee, or Pleco for Chinese and SpanishDict for Spanish.

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