photo credit: woodleywonderworks

In part one of “Learning a Language on a Budget” I talked a bit about the things you can do to get prepared to learn a language. A number of you offered comments and provided additional information about some resources that are available. Much appreciated!

In this second post in the series I’m going to focus on some of the Internet resources that are available for the study of Spanish and, to some extent, other languages. There are an amazingly large number of resources available to language learners on the Internet.  Many resources are free (or near free) and, with proper dedication, can go a good distance toward your goal of learning another language without spending any (or much) money!  So let’s take a little time and examine a few of these resources.

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photo credit: woodleywonderworks

For a few weeks now, Judie has been writing about her experiences learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone system.  It’s a wonderful language learning system used by diplomats and business leaders the world over.  But it has one big drawback – it’s really, really expensive!

In these times especially, many of us are living on a budget and need more cost-effective options.  So, I decided to pull-together some things I had already been working on and go on a mission to learn Spanish as well, but I’m going to try to do it on a more modest budget.  Along the way, I’m going to look at some moderate and even low-cost options for helping you learn a new language.  I’m going to focus on using the computer, the Internet, and even my mobile devices to get the job done.  Who knows?  We may even uncover some valuable tools and resources you may not know about!  I’ll also be reviewing some the products I’m using along the way!

This week, I want to start by looking at a really basic tool you should probably have, no matter what language you want to learn, or how much you plan to spend – your bi-lingual dictionary.

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photo credit: woodleywonderworks

So far, I’ve talked about dictionaries and dictionary sites, and other language-learning resources on the Internet.   There is, however, one Internet service that many of us will come across, even if we aren’t in the process of learning a language – online translation tools. Arguably, the biggest sites today for these services are translate.google.com, and babelfish.yahoo.com. This week, I want to talk a little bit about the differences in these sites and how they approach language translation and some things you can do to make your translation more effective and accurate.

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photo credit: woodleywonderworks

So you’re learning a new language.  We’ve mostly focused on free or nearly-free resources that you can use to assist you in this process.   So now you find you are willing to spend a little money, but not a lot, or you need a little more assistance or you just need a little different approach than the free resources have available for you.  What kinds of things are available to you?

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