Language Tools

Since I'm a geek, I'm always interested in exploring and finding new ways that technology can be applied to solve problems and make life a bit easier. Learning a new language is naturally my current focus so I've been doing a bit of personal research on how technology can help me with that. I wanted to share some of things I've found for any other aspiring language learners out there.

The first thing I want to share is this interesting program called 200 Words-a-Day. Their whole focus is making it easier to learn a language by helping you associate vocabulary words with imagery, thus making the strange words easier to remember. I downloaded the demo and it looks quite good. From my past reading about the mind and how memory works this seems like exactly the right approach. I don't know how well this product does with other rather important factors in language learning like the formation of sentences, but at least they've got vocabulary building down pat. If I had known about it before reaching Venezuela I probably would have ordered myself a copy. Unfortunately, I think if bought it now, it'd take too long for the CD to reach me.

Some other tools that I have been using are more easily accessible and free. They include some of the many language add-ons for the Firefox web browser. In particular, I've taken a liking to the Babel Fish Instant Translation add-on which allows me to instantly translate a word I don't know in Spanish by double clicking it. It displays the English translation in a tooltip next to the Spanish word without disturbing my reading. This is another great way to pick up new vocabulary. I've been reading a lot of online Spanish news articles this way.

More cool tools I've been using include stuff for my iPod touch. There is a free dictionary application called weDict. I've downloaded an English-Spanish and Spanish-English dictionary for it. It certainly makes the process of looking up words a lot quicker than riffling through a book. There is another cool app called iStudy which essentially works just like flashcards, but without the paper. The app could use a bit of polishing, but it's a good start and you can't beat the price.

That's it for now. Let me know if you have any other great tools or ideas.