General Resources

Ecolinguist, 230+ vids. Norbert Wierzbicki's channel. Language comparisons, second to none

Langfocus with Paul. 180+ vids. Introductions to all aspects of a particular language, and more

JuLingo with Julie. 30+ videos. Introductions to specific languages.

Days and Words, 180+ vids, "A quest to make the best language related videos in the world."

Richard Simcott, 380+ vids. "I set up the Polyglot Conference, where I bring together people to talk about language-related topics."

Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve. 1850+ vids. "I have learned 20 languages and in my videos I share the techniques and resources I use"

NativLang, 200+ vids. Animated stories about people living on a planet full of languages and cultures.

Guided Meditation

Make yourself comfortable... take a deep breath in... and out... you're in a safe place... where you can relax... Guided meditations are a perfect tool for acquiring languages. Here are ten reasons why:

1. There are tons of free meditation audios online (in this depressing age, one might add).
2. You can easily find them by searching for "guided meditation" in the language you want.*
3. They come in all major and some minor languages.
4. The general topic is clear and predictable.
5. The audios come in different time formats: 10 minutes, one hour etc.
6. The meditation is per definition relaxing, with musical elements.
7. The text is spoken slowly and has pauses between short units.
8. The voice (of your choosing) is pleasant and well-articulated.
9. The recording is of studio quality.
10. It is easy to convert it from YouTube to mp3 format and stick it on your mobile.

* Copy & paste for example: begeleide meditatie (nl) begleitete Meditation (dt) vägledd meditation (sv) guidet meditation (da) guidet meditasjon (no) méditation guidée (fr) meditazione guidata (it) meditación guiada (sp) meditação guiada (pt) meditație ghidată (rum) καθοδηγούμενος διαλογισμός (gr) медитация (ru) керована медитація (uk) medytacja z przewodnikiem (pl) مدیتیشن (fa) ohjattu meditaatio (fi) rehberli meditasyon (tk) التأمل الإرشادي (ar) 导引冥想 (ch) 誘導瞑想 (ja) 가이드 명상 (ko) meditasi yang dipandu (in)

TED Talks, a Language Resource

(2019) TED talks, Technology, Entertainment, Design. This popular nonprofit global thinktank with millions of views and millions of translations in subtitles is a fine resource. TED talks are live monologues of about a quarter of an hour (8-20 mins). Most talks have subtitles at least in the language in which they are presented. There are few talks that are boring. Also, there are immediate reactions from the audience. This is not to be underestimated, as you, the learner, want to be among this happy crowd of understanders every time the audience laughs or applauds. Can you find all languages in TED? No. Actually, it is not so obvious which languages are available because you cannot filter talks in specific languages. On this page you can see all the languages, some of which have more than 3000 contributions.
Below there are two samples of how texts like TED talks can be organized for studying. There is this "x²" function in Word next to the functions bold, italics, font size etc. Note the dry humor and the dry way it was presented in the finale of the sentence: "Según parece, el consumo de droga en el ejército americano en Vietnam alcanzaba unos niveles tan astronómicos que formaba parte de la vida y de la cultura de allídort, igual que el rock and roll o disparar a la gente pobre". Talks in Farsi can also be analyzed this way, despite the fact that there often are formatting problems with Farsi and Arabic texts because of the writing direction. But once this is solved, the handling is quite easy.