Linglot

Brought to you by the same people who brought Rosetta Stone language education software, SharedTalk is a highly-interactive community where people from all nations of the world can come together and learn languages from each other. Users create an account and a profile on the site detailing their language interests and experience, and the system makes it easy for them to match up with other users who know the target language, and vice versa.

There is a text chat platform, with chat rooms for several languages, as well as a “multi-language” room for conversation in any language. In addition, when I logged into the chat system, I received several requests for one-on-one mutual learning. I got to have conversations with native speakers of Spanish (I was working on my Spanish) who wanted to learn English. It was a win-win situation.

For those who don’t care for the chat room environment, messages can be sent e-mail style on the website to other SharedTalk users. Language partners can be found with an easy-to-use search box. Searching for Spanish partners brought up an impressive list of over 8,400. So, there’s no shortage of people to interact with. You can read their profiles, where they’re from, and if you’re interested in contacting them you can do so with the on-site message system.

Also, there is a voice chat system. It’s not very popular yet, but it’s still new, and I think there is a lot of potential for it. Voice chat would be excellent for working on one’s listening comprehension and accent. I have heard of people doing this via Skype, and reporting it as essential to their language success.

SharedTalk is completely free, and is a neat community with a nicely-designed, modern website.

While I was studying Spanish (although I do still study it), I found Tomísimo to be an enormous help. Their diccionario (or dictionary) boasts an impressive 63,823 entries, and growing. I haven’t yet came across a word that the dictionary couldn’t translate, and do it accurately. There is even a mobile version for on-the-go translating via a cell phone, PDA, or other mobile device. In addition, there is also a dictionary search plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox, so you can search for definitions right from your browser. Awesome.

Another great feature of the Tomísimo community is the blog. The Tomísimo blog is filled with interesting information about the Spanish language and culture, as well as other miscellaneous cool facts. Occasionally there are neat things such as this entirely Spanish crossword puzzle that make learning the language fun and interesting.

What really makes Tomísimo cool is the forum. Here, aspiring students can gather together and share in the experience of learning Spanish and just hang out and have fun. There are also native Spanish speakers and long-time speakers of the language around that are more than willing to help out people that are trying to learn. The forum keeps growing and has become an excellent community for learning Spanish.

I’d like to see this site grow because quite frankly, it is the one of the best Spanish communities I have found on the Internet. It has a lot of potential and is designed very well. Head on over there if you’re learning Spanish, are interested in learning it, or would just like to participate in a solid community.