Useful Language Information and Translation Websites
General Translation Sites
www.omniglot.com – a very useful site to start from. Contains a catalogue of useful phrases in many languages about many subjects. You can also access their catalogue of phrases for individual languages.
http://unilang.org/main/index2.php - Go to ‘Language Resources’ and then you have access to numerous vocabulary lists in a multitude of different languages
www.travlang.com worth trying for a variety of languages and links. Features 80+ world languages with vocabulary lists under the following headings – Basic Words, Numbers, Shopping, Directions, Places, Time and Dates.
www.speak . . . .co.uk – A good interactive site Type in language required into the web address e.g. ‘www.speakdutch.co.uk’
www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/index.htm a catalogue of words and phrases in hundreds of different languages. These include lots from many different African languages.
www.languageguide.org - has extensive vocabulary lists and phrases in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. They also come with sound.
www.freelang.net/dictionary Has free dictionary programmes to download (approx 70 languages) plus instant translation for 24 languages
www.tranexp.com:2000/Translate/result.shtml Will do immediate word and phrase translations for 28 languages, including, Bulgarian, Finnish, Polish and Tagalog.
www.101languages.net contains useful words
lists and phrases in the following languages: Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
Specific Languages
www.languageguide.org - has extensive vocabulary lists and phrases in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. They also come with sound.
Bengali
www.virtualbangladesh.com –information and photos and links to basic vocabulary lists printed phonetically. (www.travlang.com )
Bulgarian
http://www.mybulgaria.info Bulgarian
Chinese
www.mandarintools.com – will translate words into Chinese, simple Chinese and Pinyin
www.betterchinese.com – free stories – interactive in Chinese. (One called ‘The Fox and the Goat’ could be used in Literacy)
www.childbook.com – not a brilliant site, but does have some examples of Chinese characters, also information on some games and crafts.
Estonian
www.speakestonian.co.uk . E.g. For Estonian. Other languages are: French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Italian.
Finnish
http://efe.scape.net
French
www.icanlearnenglish.com
Ga
http://home.triad.rr.com Ga words and phrases
Hungarian
http://impulzus.sch.bme.hu/info/hungary.shtml Takes you to a home page where you can access information about the country, people, culture, maps, and the Hungarian language. It has vocabulary lists under headings like ‘Important Words and Phrases’, Numbers, days of the week etc.
Lithuanian
http://neris.mii.lt Lithuanian - with information about the country and culture.
www.debeselis.net Lithuanian – for vocabulary lists, words, phrases etc
Polish
www.poltran.com
www.icanlearnenglish.com Polish – useful for vocabulary lists (with sound for pronunciation of English and Polish words) also has a similar page for French
Shona
http://www14.brinkster.com
South African Languages
www.cyberserv.co.za/users includes the 11 official languages, including Afrikaans, IsiXhosa and IsiZulu plus others like Northern Ndebele
Tagalog
www.seasite.niu.edu – A good site for South East Asian countries. E.g. Tagalog – Excellent pages suitable for children/schools. I’ve also looked at the Cambodia pages (Khmer) which looked reasonable. For some of the other countries you would need to download fonts.
Thai
www.ipl.org/div/kidspace - Follow the link to ‘Say Hello’ and you will find pages for nearly 30 languages. Some, like the Thai page have a few useful phrases.
www.thai-language.com – Thai - Information, photos, language lessons with sound, vocabulary lists etc.
WORLD
LANGUAGES
ON THE INTERNET
Compiled by Chris Green
September 2007
Chris Green, September 2007