Best Christmas Gifts for Polyglots and Language Learners in 2024

by roadpaths@gmail.com

If you want some gift ideas for people who are learning a language, polyglots or want to get started studying a new language…this post is for you!

Even if you’re just looking for polyglot gift ideas for yourself, no one’s judging! I own most of the things on this list and know they are helpful for any level of study.

Self-Study Books

There are so many to choose from! The ones you get will greatly depend on which language you’re learning too. I’ll recommend a few specific ones and a few multi-language series.

10 Minutes a Day Series

Pricing: Varies, $20-$35

A very basic series but a great intro for the total beginner. You’ll learn how to read and pronounce words, basic phrases and the basic structure of a language.

I like that these are colorful and interactive. They have exercises and stickers you can place around the house to help you memorize words.

Available for: Hebrew, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Norwegian.

Colloquial Series

Pricing: Varies, $20-$60

These focus on everyday speech rather than stuffing your mind full of grammar rules. You’ll have the opportunity to practice with exercises and go up until an advanced beginner/lower intermediate level.

I recommend this for someone who is still early on in their learning journey but is ready to commit to studying.

Available for: A TON of languages. If I list them here it will be a nonsense wall of text. If your target language is less popular, they just might have a book on it.

Easy Step-by-Step

Pricing: Varies, $12-$20

These books really drill grammar into you and is a must-have. (If available in your target language) I personally used the one for French in addition to other material, and found it to be a perfect supplement.

It doesn’t follow traditional levels per se, but goes over “high-frequency” topics so you can be using what you learned in real life faster. This series also has some other subjects like Chemistry and Pre-calc, but I haven’t tried those myself.

Available for: Spanish, Italian, French, Advanced Spanish, English, Japanese, and German.

Other subjects they have: Math, Pre-calc, Algebra, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Writing.

Language Specific Books

Japanese from Zero Series

Pricing: Varies, $20-$36

If you’re learning Japanese, these books are a personal favorite of mine. They function as workbooks too (noticing a pattern here?) and have easy to understand explanations.

The author even has his own Youtube channel that answers a lot of frequently asked questions on Japanese.

Zero to Brazilian Portuguese

Pricing: Ebook $4.99 or Paperback $35.19

Self-plug, this is my own book. If you want to learn Brazilian Portuguese for adults, I recommend you start here.

If you are beginner to intermediate this book has short, easy to digest chapters with an exercise page at the end of each one.

It’s bite-sized learning without sacrificing quality. Cut through the bloat of other books so you can start to learn the language.

Turkish Tutor – Grammar and Vocabulary Workbook

I’m going through this book right now, and it’s perfect for an intermediate learner. It goes through the basic topics quickly and gives you exercises that really make you think.

Towards the end you get to practice upper intermediate (B2) problems. The explanations are good and are organized in a way that makes it easy to reference later on.

App Subscriptions

Apps have flooded the market but here are some recommendations that we’ve used for at least 1+ year.

Duolingo

Pricing: Free or Super is $84/year.

For the total beginner this app can be fun. I would avoid gifting this for serious learners only because the app is more game-like than educational. Some languages, such as Spanish, have much more content than others.

Mango Languages

Pricing: $7.99/month for one language, $17.99/month all languages

Mango has a wide language selection and includes obscure, less popular languages. I recommend this app for serious learners who want to gain a good starting foundation in their target language. My only complaint is that they don’t move much higher than an upper beginner level, and some languages have very little content.

Tobo

Pricing: $6.49 for 3 months (Verified for Turkish only. They offer more languages.)

This is a bare-bones app that is amazing for vocab memorization. With 1500+ words, spaced repetition exercises and several memorization mini-games this is a game changer for remembering words. You’ll have to pick your language though, which is the only downside. What we mean by this is, each language Tobo is available in has its own app versus being all contained in one. For context we used the app for Turkish. If you want a full review, check out our Lemon8 post.

Courses

If you don’t want to just get someone a book, consider a more “immersive” experience without breaking the bank. A course! If there is someone you know and like I would recommend you go with that. The following are more generic marketplaces where you can find some great content at a cheaper price.

Coursera

Pricing: Free or $59/month

You can audit most Coursera courses for free, but if you want to gift someone a subscription they can earn a certificate for their efforts. I’ll leave that up to you. At the time of writing, Coursera offers foreign language courses in Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. They also offer various courses for English, whether its Business English or getting a TESOL cert for teaching.

Udemy

Pricing: Varies $10-$70+

If you’re gifting to someone who is learning an obscure language, one of the best paid options will be here. Since the platform is open to many people, you can find language like Croatian, Yiddish and Kyrgyz. Search for your target language to see what you can find, the quality can vary here. We’ve had some good luck finding quality content from native speakers here.

Journals + Pens

Mundane yet necessary. If you need an add-on gift for a polyglot I’m sure they will use these regardless of the yawn factor.

National Parks Planner

New year, new goals. As of yet I don’t have any recommended language learner planner. I’ve mostly just seen printables online which isn’t very fun for a gift. Printer ink is expensive, etc. Barnes and Noble has cute and themed planners with high quality paper. That’s usually where we get ours.

Personally, we like the National Parks planner. Should be great to write down your monthly language goals.

Cute Notebooks from Redbubble

If you want a regular, plain notebook with a cute cover – Redbubble has some of my favorite art! We’ve never had a bad time ordering here, so I shall recommend it.

Pen Sets

If you’re learning a language pens are necessary and don’t have to be boring. Put a fancy pen set in your loved ones stocking. Amazon has quite a variety of them and I’ve linked this “diamond” pen set here because….sparkles.

Live Lesson Pack

There is no better way to practice than immersion. For most of us, gifting a trip would be too expensive. The next best thing is to gift personal lessons with a native speaker!

iTalki

Pricing: Trials start are around $10, Lessons $30-$40/hour

Speak with certified teachers and check out which languages are offered before you buy. With 150+ languages though, I don’t think you’ll run out of options.

The way it works on here is that you’ll pick the instructor who sets their own pricing. You can typically do a trial lesson at a lower cost to see if they would work. I recommend gifting a couple trial lessons so that your gift receiver can make their own decision on who to go with.

Berlitz

Pricing: Varies, contact for pricing

This is a well-known institution offering one on one lessons fully in your target language. This is as close to immersion as you can get from home.

Instead of picking an instructor, you can contact Berlitz to purchase a pack of lessons. You’ll have to contact for pricing and they offer group lessons in addition to one on one. This is a serious school so it will likely be an investment for your gift receiver, but well worth it.

To get the most out of it, I recommend the recipient to be at least intermediate. (B1+)

Cultural Snack Boxes

What better way to learn than…to eat? Maybe this isn’t quite true, but I’m certain a language learner would love to sample some tasty snacks from another country.

Snackcrate

Pricing: Mini: $16+, Original: $26+, Family: $46+

This is one of the more popular ones and offers three different sizes. Mini, Original or Premium. Their site makes it easy to gift a box with a specific “gift” section. These are subscriptions so your pricing per month will be higher or lower depending on the length you choose. You can also just get one box by selecting the “one month” option.

Universal Yums

Pricing: Yum: $15+, Yum Yum: $26+, Super Yum: $41+

If you want more than just some snacks, this box comes with a booklet containing trivia and games! Similar to Snackcrate, you can choose between three sizes and different subscription lengths. If you’re in the contiguous US, you get free shipping.

Amazon International Snack Boxes

Pricing: Varies, $15-$40

If you don’t want the hassle of a subscription, just go to Amazon to find a specific box for a one-time gift. This is usually our go-to since you can pick between a specific country or a box that contains multiple countries. The prices are a lot better than the subscription services too. For example, a 46 count box of Korean snacks is only $32.84.

Hopefully you got some good ideas to gift your multi-lingual loved one! Really, I think anyone would like the snack boxes though. If you really want to treat someone, get one item from each category. You’ll win best “Santa” of the year.

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