A podcast for learning Italian.

July 15, 2006 2:58 AM

learnitalianpod - a thoroughly archived podcast that can teach you to speak Italian. RSS
posted by nthdegx (26 comments total)

Here's one for learning Thai, in case anyone is interested.
posted by willmize at 3:49 AM on July 15, 2006 [1 favorite]

"a vostra sorella è un mignotta".

Go on, head butt me.
posted by teppic at 3:53 AM on July 15, 2006

But seriously... this is pretty cool too.
posted by teppic at 3:56 AM on July 15, 2006

*waits for someone to post a link to Japanese or Mandarin*
posted by a. at 4:05 AM on July 15, 2006

waits for someone to post a link to a good Spanish one...."
posted by bluefin at 4:47 AM on July 15, 2006

My girlfriend was using this until I, to my shame, chortled too much at the the clunking repetition for her to continue.
I wish she'd start again.
posted by NinjaTadpole at 4:59 AM on July 15, 2006

I understand why using blogger makes it easy on the publisher, and for people who've followed along since the beginning, but how hard would it be to put a link to Lesson #1 somewhere on the page? On the Italian one, at least, you have to click on 7 or 8 "< Previous Entries" just to get started. With most blogs, you usually want the most recent entries first, but in this case, displaying entries in reverse chronological order should at least be an option.
posted by crunchland at 5:13 AM on July 15, 2006

And while I'm in the griping mood, how about links to download , oh, 10 chapters at a time?
posted by crunchland at 5:17 AM on July 15, 2006

and sorry for being such a grouch, considering that they're doing this for free, and all... sorry.
posted by crunchland at 5:22 AM on July 15, 2006

Japanese. There's a lot of videos that I can't see as well as the audio in this one.
posted by greasepig at 6:27 AM on July 15, 2006

Più non sono infettato. Andiamo di nuovo al mio appartamento - bouncy bouncy!
posted by loquacious at 6:45 AM on July 15, 2006

My girlfriend is Italian, and my learning the language 'by osmosis' hasn't quite made me fluent. I had recently been thinking I was going to have to swallow my linguistic pride and seek professional help, but this could be just the sort of help I need. Thanks
posted by Flashman at 6:49 AM on July 15, 2006

well flashman, that's because italian isn't made of water.
posted by wumpus at 6:57 AM on July 15, 2006

I'm a premium member at the site who started the craze: ChinesePod.com.

Would never have even ATTEMPTED to tackle Mandarin a scant few years ago, but these new resources are too good to pass up.
posted by RavinDave at 7:06 AM on July 15, 2006

Oh, and greasepig ... your Japanese site is nice, but it's mostly culture and color. A more methodic approach to the language is at JapanesePod101.com.

Of course, no one says you can't use both.
posted by RavinDave at 7:18 AM on July 15, 2006

This is pretty awesome, there should be a repository of these courses somewhere.
posted by wumpus at 7:21 AM on July 15, 2006

wumpus: BabelPod.com tries to trackem, but they are proliferating like mad.

A guy named Sabastien has a nice French series at: FrenchPodClass.com. Not quite as polished as others, but very nice and well worth a visit.
posted by RavinDave at 7:26 AM on July 15, 2006

RavinDave - thanks. That one is definitely superior.
posted by greasepig at 7:49 AM on July 15, 2006

"On the Italian one, at least, you have to click on 7 or 8 "< previous entries just to get started/i>.

I don't disagree that there could be a nice "first lesson" link, but you can click directly on the November 2005 archive link on the front page. Being the oldest date, it takes you to the first lesson.
posted by nthdegx at 8:29 AM on July 15, 2006

UW-Madison list of German-language learning
Let's Speak German podcast
My German Class a video podcast (blog)
More podcasts in German
posted by imposster at 8:37 AM on July 15, 2006 [2 favorites]

ctrl+f "Farsi" not found
posted by eustatic at 8:55 AM on July 15, 2006

[this is completely fucking kickass]
posted by deadmessenger at 9:16 AM on July 15, 2006

Great! But it is annoying to have to track down all the mp3s. Get them all at once with:

wget -rH -Dlearnitalianpod.com,libsyn.com -nd -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off http://www.learnitalianpod.com/
posted by nicwolff at 10:15 AM on July 15, 2006 [2 favorites]

Laura Speaks Dutch and the unintentionally(?) funny Maximillian Ward trying to learn Dutch.
posted by ceri richard at 11:36 AM on July 15, 2006

Might as well round out the thread with a few other handy online language resources you may (or may not) already know about:

A nice list of online courses from word2word.com. Looks like an early attempt to keep tabs on developments, but it's missing some of the best sites. Nonetheless, they have a pretty large and nifty list ranging from Abenaki to Xhosa.

Also, MITOPENCOURSEWEAR is a resource I've always been meaning to explore.
posted by RavinDave at 2:26 AM on July 16, 2006

(waiting for a Hungarian one that includes plenty of nasty words so I can figure out what the future MIL is saying about me...)
posted by bitter-girl.com at 7:37 AM on July 17, 2006