Many beginners as well as expert users of Twitter ignore its huge educational power. You often seem (or pretend) having no time to read long blog posts, but you can afford reading 140 characters even if you’re a very busy person!
Twitter allows you to learn new languages and practice them a little bit. Of course, it’s impossible to really teach a language at a tweet pace, but the speed and the conciseness of the medium can really make the difference in expanding your vocabulary with little effort and keeping your interest always alive.
Here a compilation of some “linguistic twitterers”:
French – Learn how to pronounce “Les jeux sont faits” and much more.
Spanish – Learn Spanish words and useful expressions.
Dutch – Helpful twitterfeed for Dutch learners.
Japanese – Learn a new word everyday.
Korean – You will learn that 음식이 형편없었어요 means “The food was terrible”.
Wordnik – Learn “difficult” English words everyday.
Urban – Learn urban English (are you “Santaclaustrophobic”?).
Na’vi – If you’re a real language geek, this can help you learn Na’vi, the invented language from the movie Avatar.
Happy language learning on Twitter!
@Linguick
Hi folks, I can provide you other links on language learning if your language is not on the list…
Happy TwentyTen!
@websiteweekend
It never occurred to me… but I can see instantly it’s a stupendously great idea.
Wish I had thought of it!
@spanishblog
Here are some other great folks to follow to learn Spanish: @spanishlanguage @spanishlsource @ReVerbSpanish
That’s all I can think of right now.
@capscave
But I thought we want to keep the language at a 3rd grade level for english readers because it’s short and who has time to look up a sophisticated word they don’t know what it means these days.
@julieshort
Chinese Mandarin would be good
@JanineLibbey
I was about to retweet this when I decided to look at the Spanish source you have posted here. @Spanish hasn’t posted a new word since June 2009! I suggest your readers follow @spanishblog’s suggestions because they update more frequently.
@langalot
Anything for German?
@berget
At first it seems like an excellent idea, but on the other hand, it seems that it would take a lot of time to learn bits and pieces of a language this way, and you don’t get to chose what to learn.
But I agree, it’s a very interesting complement to using books and audio.
@Linguick
German: http://twitter.com/learngerman
Chinese: http://twitter.com/chinese_voice
@langalot
Daniele, thanks for the German link!
@seospain
Well I live in Spain but am unfortunately too busy to do Spanish lessons so picking up bits and pieces via twitter may just work for me. Am following both @spanish and @spanishblog in order to learn more.
@christiandane
Is there an Arabic one?
@Linguick
Hi Christian, you can have a look at http://twitter.com/EtonInstitute and http://twitter.com/arabicpod101
@AdamoGiovane
Thanks for writing this Daniele. What origin is your surname?
Am a learner of Italian and receive the Learn10 E-Mails. They have daily tweets also. Ten words in most languages.
http://www.twitter.com/Learn10Italian
http://www.twitter.com/Learn10Japanese
http://www.twitter.com/Learn10Chinese
http://www.twitter.com/Learn10German
etc and so on. Czech, Dutch, Latin (think it’s blank tho’ oh well), Portuguese also.
And if you’re so inclined: Tagalog, Esperanto (isn’t that ‘universal’ Spanish-like language dead?), Afrikaans, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Turkish, Arabic, Swedish, Welsh.
Only ones I haven’t seen Learn10 tweet are Gaelic (Irish Celtic) and Icelandic, both very difficult. Indian and Asian languages like Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Burmese, Vietnamese, Nepalese are other notable exceptions since they cover other obscure ones.
Hmm almost a long enough comment to be a post. Perhaps I can make this a post on Twitip ;-D
Note: Some of the Learn10 accounts may be inactive, however they are still useful as an archive as they have over 800 tweets or so. Can copy and paste into text editor to then merge into a flash card (cue cards) page to print double sided. There are some free open source electronic memory card programs to learn new words on computer also. Tweet me if you’re interested and I’ll reply with 3 of the best for you.
http://www.twitter.com/AdamoGiovane
http://www.twitter.com/Learn10
@Linguick i think im going to learn Na’ vi to spicen things up, thanks for the tip.
@AdamoGiovane thank you for the links, this will definitely help widen my vocabulary by a mile. .
Good article it is always good to be able to communicate in other languages with people. it can help sales.
@DoubleTranslate
Twitter is a great way to keep your language ticking over. We operate a twitter account for German which has daily words, twitter games and help with learning German. We also try to initiate conversations in German and correct mistakes where possible (not always easy with 140 characters haha!)
http://www.twitter.com/DoubleTranslate
We will be introducing other languages in the near future too but look around, there are some good ones out there. We also have a Facebook group, just search for “Learn German with Native Germans” in Facebook and you should find us.