We are almost a month away from Christmas and polyglots, like everyone else, love to receive Christmas presents, but in a more nerdy way. Check out some tips to give a present to a polyglot friend, son, partner or even yourself.
Assimil is one of my favorite methods; you can check my review of the French course . The course focus on dialogues with few grammatical explanations. All dialogs are translated in the other side of the page. Each course has its own dialogues. For Francophones, there are over 70 languages courses available, so it is probably the reason that Assimil is the most popular course in France. For English speakers, there are only 12 languages courses available, for Spanish speakers there are 13 courses and for Portuguese speakers there are only 5 courses.
The courses are more similar to traditional courses. In addition to dialogues with audio, Teach Yourself also has grammar explanations and some exercises. There are several Teach Yourself courses and they have one of the most complete catalogs of languages that exist. For the series “” there are courses available in more than 50 languages, including ancient languages such as and . As for the more advanced courses, there are only 3 languages courses. Another option is to do the online courses also available in more than 50 languages.
The series of books is very similar to the Teach Yourself courses, including the large number of languages available. Besides that, some languages have a second level, more advanced.
The is an audio-focused method. Each course has 30 audio of abou 30 minutes each. There is only one small reading booklet accompanied with audio to aid pronunciation. The dialogues of different languages are virtually identical. The course is available in 50 languages for English speakers; for Spanish-speakers and Portuguese-speaker the program is available in English only.
An interesting option is to give lessons. You can buy a gift card , there are gift cards of 20, 50 or 100 dollars.
This book, available only in English, Russian, Arabic and Korean, and soon in French and Chinese, is my favorite about language learning. The book does not teach the secret of how to learn languages, but the journalist and writer Michael Erard makes a profound investigation about hyperpolyglots from today’s and yesterday’s, including the famous Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti.
I have done a , they are great for learning languages and gaining culture at the same time, from classics to modern authors, there are several options available.
If you are already at a more advanced level, you can read your favorite books in other languages, how about reading or in French, in Spanish, or the trilogy in Swedish or the trilogy in German?
The company has a huge group of fun magnets that help creativity. The kits have several themes, but obviously, we are interested in magnets of others languages, that are available in seven different languages: , , , , , and . And, of course, several kits in .
Michael Thomas was a linguist and language professor that created an audio-based method. In this method, an instructor teaches two students. I.e., you will heard the students’ right and wrong answers, additionally, they doubts are also solved and you evolve with them.