Learn Malayalam Alphabets Audio Mini Review: Not Worth It

Learn Malayalam Alphabets Audio

Rating 1.0

★★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

The Learn Malayalam Alphabets Audio app from BigKnol is free and contains clear audio recordings. However, it’s not much use for learners. When you open the app, you’ll be able to access “vowels” and “consonants.” Each option takes you to a list of Malayalam symbols. Press the audio button to hear a recording of one. Alternatively, you can press the lightbulb button to see a picture of a word that is written with that symbol – sometimes. At other times, it will tell you “Ho! No Example!”. You don’t get to practice writing or even speaking the Malayalam script with this app, and there is no quiz or test, meaning that learning the symbols is up to you. In short, we just don’t see the point in using this app. There are far better alternatives available, such as Malayalam Aksharamala or Malayalam Alphabets.

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Lexilogos Mini-Review: A Resource Bank For Dictionaries and Books

lexilogos

Rating 3.5

★★★

★

★★

Price:

Free

Summary

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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Learn Indian Languages Quickly With Alter Gyan: Mini Review

Alter Gyan/Learn X Quickly

Rating 3.2

★★★

★

★★

Price:

Free; watch an ad or pay to unlock some themes

Summary

Alter Gyan’s apps set out to teach you essential words and phrases in 13 different Indian languages. The series include Learn Hindi Quickly, Learn Punjabi Quickly, and Learn Bengali Quickly. What makes it even better is the fact that you can learn from other common Indian, East Asian, and European languages – not just English. Although Alter Gyan (also called Altergyan) has also made apps for European and East Asian languages, we can’t recommend them. Our score is solely for the apps for the Indian languages. This is because the biggest selling point of these apps is the variety of languages for which, frankly, there aren’t always many resources. When you open the app, you can view word lists for over 30 themes. You can drill them with flash cards, take multiple-choice quizzes, and even record yourself speaking and listen back. If you can find your language on something like uTalk (review), Ling (review), Simply Learn Languages (review), or Vocly (review), we would recommend studying with those apps instead. We find them more effective, engaging, and comprehensive. However, if these apps aren’t an option, or if you want to learn from Tamil or Telugu, Alter Gyan’s Learn Quickly apps could help you memorize basic words and phrases for essential situations.

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Speak Malayalam 360 Mini Review: Overpromises, Underdelivers

Speak Malayalam 360

Rating 1.7

★

★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

The Speak Malayalam 360 app promises “a natural language learning pattern that helps to speak and write the Malayalam language easily.” What it delivers is a list of words and phrases for you to memorize, with some poorly thought out tests. It’s a shame, because it is well designed and has lots of potential. When you open the app, you’re presented with 12 different options, from “talk” to “practice” to “share.” Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that very few of these labels are accurate. Most of them give way to a short word or phrase list, and not all of them have audio recordings (not even Conjunct consonants I–IV or Vowel Diacritics). What’s more, it’s not entirely clear why some of these words were chosen or grouped together. We were left wondering: Why are three variations of “Are you sleeping?” mixed with asking directions? And for that matter, why does “Numbers I” start from 11? The Skill Test section is a good addition, but unfortunately it doesn’t test you on the different sections. You need to memorize everything in the app before trying this out. The Write section is also a nice idea, but it’s underdeveloped. It allows you to draw Malayalam symbols, and then it will tell you what it thinks you’ve drawn, how to pronounce it, and a word that begins with it. Bear in mind that this is no indication that you’ve drawn it well: even if you just scribble on the screen, the app will interpret it as a symbol. And there is no way to see or trace symbols before you draw them.

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Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks: Textbook Mini Review

Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks

Rating 3.0

★★★★★

Price:

$10, or around $6 for a second-hand one via Amazon

Summary

Looking for a Malayalam textbook? Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks: With Daily Worksheets & Answer Key is the best out of a bad bunch. The authors, Lissy J Kunnathu and John D Kunnathu, have also written Speak Malayalam In 10 Weeks for after you’ve finished Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks and Malayalam Alphabet: Practice Workbook. You can do the workbook alongside the first textbook. Learn Basic Malayalam In Six Weeks contains 42 lessons, which in theory is one per day. The authors recommend studying each one for 30 minutes. Realistically speaking, you’re likely to spend more than six weeks on this, due to days off and time spent reviewing prior material. The book is structured into four parts: sounds, words, phrases, and sentences. Depending on your learning style, you may find this slightly demotivating. Despite the strong focus on grammar, it’s not until lesson 33 that you finally learn “The Basic Sentence Structure.” That said, this book is popular among learners and for good reason: it’s hard to find decent Malayalam learning resources, and this textbook is a clear, structured, and easy-to-understand text for beginners. We would pair it with Mango Languages or Ling for a more engaging and interactive introduction to studying the language.

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Malayalam Mission Mini Review: Lessons for Children

Malayalam Mission

Rating 3.0

★★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

Malayalam Mission is an online course designed for children aged 9–16, although it will accept children aged 6+. It teaches reading, writing, and listening, and there’s an accompanying app (Google Play, App Store). The website is entirely in Malayalam, which can make registering for the course tricky. Go to this webpage, click the green button, and fill out the form. The course tells the story of a girl of Indian heritage visiting her grandparents in Kerala. She doesn’t have Malayalam as a native language, which allows students to learn alongside her as she navigates life in Kerala. The lessons have been designed by volunteer teachers. We haven’t been able to try out the course, as it requires you to be a child. However, we have used the app, which contains the textbooks as well as some supplementary reading and listening activities. We were impressed by the amount of free Malayalam material available and the child-friendly design and activities. That said, we would recommend studying it with the help of a parent or teacher, especially if you or your child is a complete beginner. Bear in mind that it assumes existing knowledge of the Malayalam script, and does not use any English.

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iLoveLanguages Mini-Review: Another Phrasebook SIte

ilovelanguages.org

Rating 1.6

★

★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

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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Master Any Language Mini-Review: No Words To Describe the Nope

Master Any Language

Rating 0.2

★

★★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

Master Any Language has a counterintuitive interface with activities that are frustrating to navigate. Its only perk is that it supports less-studied languages, but even if you do find yourself lacking resources in your target language, this website will probably detract from your learning. You will jump through hoops trying to find the audio recordings by native speakers, so you may want to try ilovelanguages or Learn101 instead; they have low ratings, but they won’t make you lose your motivation to learn altogether. Most of the activities on Master Any Language are matching games that require you to click on two identical characters, words, or letters: the purpose of this is unclear because it tests neither recall nor recognition. Another activity asks you to form or match nonsensical sequences of words (Ex. Find the sentence identical to “el el el el tchèque tchèque tchèque el el tchèque tchèque”….). Ultimately, you would probably be better off trying to decipher a page of text with absolutely no guidance than to even attempt to wrap your head around MAL’s activities.

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Tatoeba Mini-Review: A Community Writing Sentences in Context

Tatoeba

Rating 3.3

★★★

★

★★

Price:

Free

Summary

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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iLanguages Mini-Review: Almost Identical to Learn 101

ilanguages

Rating 1.3

★

★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

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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