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UniLang Language Chat

Introduction

The UniLang Chat is a place where you can come in contact with people from all over the world who share a passion for languages. The chat is especially useful for practising languages, and in addition to a multilingual main channel, we have several channels dedicated to a specific language. So no matter whether you are interested in a language in particular, languages and linguistics in general, or you just want to make international friends, the UniLang chat may be the place you are looking for!

Our chat is an IRC-based chat, which implies you can connect to it from a multitude of programs. We make use of the unicode (UTF-8) standard to allow people to write in any script they like. You can thus practise your Russian in Cyrillic, your Chinese in Hanzi and your Hindi in Devanagari! It is however not required to download any software, because we offer a web chat that allows you to connect directly from this page.

Note that by entering the chat you agree to abide by the rules of conduct set forth in our chat policy, which are meant to guarantee that the chat remains a friendly and pleasant place for everybody

Connecting through your webbrowser

To connect directly to the UniLang chatbox without downloading additional software, simply enter your desired nickname below (or login) and press the appropriate button.

Note that by entering the chat you agree to abide by the rules of conduct set forth in our chat policy, which are meant to guarantee that the chat remains a friendly and pleasant place for everybody

Software to connect to the chat

You can download any of the following software, so-called IRC clients, to connect to the UniLang Chat. These applications are much faster than the webchat service offered above, and allow a great deal of customization. What is important to consider however is that the software used to chat has to support unicode, which enables you to read and write other non-latin scripts. Note that older versions of the popular Windows program mIRC are for example not suitable for use with the UniLang chat! For your convenience we have compiled a list of suitable and recommended software. All software listed is free and with the sole exception of Opera and Nettalk, also open-source.

General Instructions:
  1. Make sure to enable unicode-support to be able to read and write various scripts. This is usually found in the preferences dialog and can in some cases also be activated by simply typing /charset utf-8 in the standard input field
  2. The UniLang Chat server's address is irc.unilang.org. Add this to the server list (it won't be in there yet), or issue the connect command manually by typing /server irc.unilang.org in the standard input field
  3. Once you are connected to the server, you will need to connect to one of our channels. Our main channel is #unilang, which you can always enter by typing /join #unilang in the standard input field. We also have a channel #help for those who require further assistance.
NameDescription & InstructionsDownload
ChatZilla This full-fledged unicode-supporting IRC-client is a plugin for the Firefox browser
XChat 2 This is a popular and powerful IRC client with a somewhat sober interface but great unicode support
  • Download Windows versionDownload Linux version Download
    • Ubuntu/Debian: $ sudo apt-get install xchat
Colloquy This is a popular and famous application for Mac OS X and iPhone, with good unicode support.
XChat Aqua This is a Mac OS X spin-off of the application mentioned before, with a more elegant user interface
Opera The Opera browser comes with a built-in IRC client by default and is available for many platforms
Nettalk This is a powerful IRC-client for Windows only with an appealing and colourful user-interface
KVirc A colourful IRC-client
Pidgin Pidgin is an instant messenger, but also has support for IRC
  • Download Windows versionDownload Linux version Download
    • Ubuntu/Debian: $ sudo apt-get install pidgin
Kopete Kopete is an instant messenger that comes with KDE, and includes support for IRC
savirc A small and simple IRC-client written in Tcl/Tk
irssi For those rare UNIX users amongst us that prefer to chat from console or terminal, this one does the trick as long as you make sure to run it in a unicode console/terminal

Any of the above software that is designated to run on Linux will in almost all cases also run on FreeBSD, Solaris, and other UNIX-derivates

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