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Free Foreign Language Courses Print
Tuesday, 28th November 2006 (by J.D.)This article is about Odds and Ends, Self-Improvement
Dumb Little Man points to a source of free foreign language courses online:
FSI Language Courses [is] the home for language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain. This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. It is an independent effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages.
The site contains a discussion forum and access to study materials for many languages, including:
- Cantonese
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Greek
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Serbo-Croatian
In addition to its own library of information, FSI Language Courses links to other useful tools such as various “learn a foreign language podcasts” and this website about teaching yourself languages.
I know a smattering of German and Spanish (and recently I tried to teach myself Latin). I regret that I’ve never had the time or the inclination to learn more — foreign languages can be immensely rewarding.
[via Dumb Little Man]
November 28th, 2006 at 6:32 am
Another good source here:
http://www.learner.org/resources/browse.html?discipline=3
They sell DVD versions of these courses for $500, but you can watch them online for free! The French one is really good; I haven’t tried the others.
November 28th, 2006 at 8:19 am
I’d like to second this recommendation; I’ve been a member of this site for a bit (they just redid the entire site) and the support, the resources, the people who volunteer their time and effort to bring it to life and those who participate in the forums are great.
November 28th, 2006 at 9:51 am
I have been using http://www.chinesepod.com to learn mandarin. Somewhere on that site is a torrent for the first hundred eps, which is what you want if you are just starting out.
There are a few others in the podcast dir in Itunes that are good too.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:53 am
This is great info, I wonder how these products compare to the Pimsleur tapes? These were some language tapes made famous about 15 years ago - I probably could have learned Russian if I stuck with it. These days I’d be interested in learning Romanian, for business purposes.
More from Wikipedia (including the stuff about Pimsleur): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_education
November 28th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I took Latin in college and promptly forgot most of it.
As a U.S. government employee, I get free use of Rosetta Stone software for a wide variety of languages. I’m currently trying to re-teach myself Latin. We’ll see how that goes.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:54 am
I took Latin for three years in high school. It was immensely helpful in improving my spelling, helping me to understand English syntax, and building my vocabulary, but I was really bad at memorising tables of declensions and conjugations, so after struggling through three years, I gave up. I can still translate a sentence if I spend a few minutes with tables of endings and a dictionary, but the main benefit seems to be that I can look at a sentence in Italian or Spanish for a few minutes, and get the gist of it.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Free Materials for Learning Foreign Languages…
A rather strange place to find something like this, but I found on the Get Rich Slowly site links to…
November 29th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I love learning new languages. I’ll try out this website.
I’ve used Pimsleur before and thought it was decent. Ultimately the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in that country and be forced to use it.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Free foreign language courses!…
Free foreign language courses!…
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I have been using http://www.activechinese.com to learn Mandarin. They have fresh flash animations talking about hot issues and culture in Chinese. It’s really of fun. I like it. The most important thing is that it’s quite useful.
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:37 pm
If you want to learn modern and ancient Greek language with podcasts, you can try http://www.hitgreece.com
June 5th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
There’s also a great site for Chinese learning http://www.ChineseSavvy.com.
They have podcasts, plus a couple dictionaries, and forums.
March 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I have been using http://www.arabicpod.net for learning Arabic. It’s really good because as well as podcasts they have videos, games and many other things
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:24 am
Link to FSI website is broken, it lacks the dashes - the URL is really http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/