If you are looking to study a foreign language on your own, or are a student enrolled in a language class looking for materials to supplement your coursework, here are some online resources you may find helpful:

• iTunes U and iTunes Podcasts – You can enhance your study of French or Spanish, or try learning a language that isn’t offered at Duke. A search of “learn language” in iTunes turns up hundreds of podcasts, including “One Minute Irish” and “Learn Tagolog Easy”. There are podcasts for Azeri, Kazakh, Uyghur, Tajiki, Yiddish – you name it and there is probably a podcast that will teach you how to speak it.
• Google Language Tools – At http://translate.google.com/, you can enter text from any one of 41 languages (as of this writing) and have it translated into any of the others. You can also have it translate an entire webpage. Want to read this in Lithuanian?
• News from Other Countries – An excellent starting point is http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/languages/, with 34 regional sites. Read and listen to news in Kirundi or Tamil.
• Video – Sites such as YouTube offer endless choices of foreign language clips. Watch Sesame Street in Dutch or Portuguese.

These are just a few of the many free, online resources for language self-study.

Google has announced that its popular Reader product, which allows users to subscribe to feeds from news sites and blogs, will now support French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean. Users of Google Reader can now use standard features to organize, tag and share information in these languages.

A brief announcement about the new language features is available on the Google Blog; for more information about the tool itself, you can take an online tour of Reader and its features.