If at sometime, you are surfing the internet, stop on any university homepage and click on the Humanities link. Many universities in North America have access to a Humanities Computing Centre, which features language labs. A language lab, sometimes called CALL(computer aided language learning), is a computer program that allows someone to have the chance to study a particular language. Some of these programs are drill oriented. Some are question and answer oriented and some actually let you hear the pronunciation of words in a different language. These labs are offered in several languages, including French, Italian, Spanish and German. Here are some CALL links:

University of Sussex-Virtual CALL Library

Ohio University CALL Lab

Many language labs, other than CALL, are designed specifically for one language, like Tecla and Listening Comprehension Exercise Network (LCEN)

Another source of help for languages is with computer dictionaries. These dictionaries can be in the form of English to language X or from language X to English, and some just come like a normal dictionary but, of course, are provided in many languages. Some dictionary links are:

English to Italian Hypertext Dictionary

Small Urdu Dictionary

The Kamusi Project: The Internet Living Swahili Dictionary

Slovene-English Dictionary

Estonian/English Dictionary

McMaster University also provides their own language tutorials called McBookMaster and McDrillMaster. These tutorials can be used in the Humanities Computing Lab on the second floor of Togo Salmon Hall, McMaster University. Some of these tutorials, though, must be bought. Some of the Russian, French and Italian courses require the student to purchase tutorial disks, as their completion counts as a percentage of the student's mark. McMaster also provides tutorials for some of the linguistics classes offered at the university.

By far, the most comprehensive language related web pages out there are:

The Human Language Page

Foreign Language Resources On The Web

The Human Language Page provides web sites for all types of languages, whether familiar to us or not. It contains some uncommon languages (uncommon around here at least) such as Zulu, Rasta/Patois, Swahili and Klingon (yes, klingon). Most of these sites contain tutorial and dictionary links as well as many other cultural resources.

The Foreign Language Resources web site includes language labs and many cultural links for each language. There are also links here to museums and overseas magazines and newspapers.

These labs, dictionaries and cultural links can all be used for a variety of reasons. A student can use them to learn the language. A businessman can use them to learn basic travelling idioms. A foreigner can use the dictionary to find out the meanings of unknown english words. Someone who knows the language well can use and read the newspapers and magazines to keep updated with the going-ons in his/her country of interest. Whatever the reason is for using these particular web sites and tutorials, these resources always provide knowledge of the speaking, understanding and culture of the language studied.