A language learners’ forum

Hashimi wrote:I never used Skype or Google Hangouts, but I want to ask: how do you find partners for language exchange?

Normally I use:

https://www.conversationexchange.com/
https://www.language-exchanges.org/

I've found lots of people to talk to.

embici wrote:

rdearman wrote:

embici wrote:I've used Jitsi a few times and found it worked quite well.

Did the other person use Jitsi? Is it pretty common?

If memory serves, it sufficed to send them a link and the other party used it through the web. Firefox or Chrome only. That is to say, they didn't need to have heard of it, or have anything special installed on their computer for it to work fine.

They only need a specific app client if they are using a phone. With this client you won't be able to share links or docs well.

Skype has a web client: https://web.skype.com/. I've only used it for text chat though, and only on Chrome on Windows, so can't vouch for whether and how well calls work or how well it works on other browsers and OSes.

rdearman wrote:Google Hangouts has the disadvantage of forcing me to use Chromium (Chrome for Linux) which I don't mind, but I don't get messages like I do for Skype. Also it forces me to give out my gmail email address which I don't want to give to every Tom, Dick and hHarry on the Internet.

Have you considered creating a dedicated gmail account for the purpose of using it with G Hangouts and nothing else? I don't use gmail myself since they data harvest from emails, but I do have some "dummy" gmail accounts specifically for situations where one is required (YT) that is never used for anything else.

StringerBell wrote:

rdearman wrote:Google Hangouts has the disadvantage of forcing me to use Chromium (Chrome for Linux) which I don't mind, but I don't get messages like I do for Skype. Also it forces me to give out my gmail email address which I don't want to give to every Tom, Dick and hHarry on the Internet.

Have you considered creating a dedicated gmail account for the purpose of using it with G Hangouts and nothing else? I don't use gmail myself since they data harvest from emails, but I do have some "dummy" gmail accounts specifically for situations where one is required (YT) that is never used for anything else. This way you wouldn't have to worry about giving it out to new people.