Learn Spoken Languages for Free

Learn a language and you have acquired the key to understand a different culture. Do you aspire to learn a new language ? Perhaps you have set your sights on learning French, German or Spanish. Learning a language is always a good thing. It broadens your outlook towards people and you get to learn a lot about other cultures by reading about them. Here are a couple of sites which allow you to learn the language of your choice, all for free.

1. BBC Languages – This is a site managed by the world famous BBC. It contains resources to learn numerous foreign languages such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and so on. The courses comprise of audio, video and text. There are learning games, grammar and dictionary on each language that is offered. All in all an excellent resource to learn a new language.
2. MIT Open Courseware – The department of foreign languages and literature at MIT have uploaded their entire study material to be used freely by one and all. It contains classes on Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and many other languages. A worth visit website.
3. Internet Polyglot – This site is dedicated to helping people learn foreign languages by providing them a way to memorize words and their meanings. This helps your memory to grasp more information and retain it for longer time. They provide free access to all the pages but you have to register at their website first. There are 23 languages to choose from.
4. Free online language courses – Word2word.com has a list of bookmarks which provide a humongous list of links to sites that provide language courses for free.
5. LiveMocha – It is the first-of-its-kind online language-learning community. It blends self-paced lessons, a vibrant community, and interactive tools to help you talk to the world.  It is the social way to learn a language. Its fun and interactive lessons move at the right pace for you. They track your progress and reach your goals with Livemocha tools. At present the following languages are supported by LiveMocha. They are English, Spanish, French, Hindi, German and Mandarin Chinese. At LiveMocha, you can boost your grammar and vocabulary with fun and immersive self-study lessons. Lessons develop reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills. The community keeps the content fresh with members collaborating and leaving tips in the lessons. And the best thing is that it is all free.
6. Babbel.com – This is a wonderful site which provides lessons in small bytes to learn your favourite foreign language. The languages offered are English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Using the internal messaging service, you can contact other users and learn with them, learn from them or just have a good time. You can also invite friends to Babbel using the button on the home page.
7. italki.com – On this site you can find everything you need to learn a language. italki is a social network and an online resource for learning foreign languages.
8. Language Guides.org offers free sound integrated resources for learning languages. These resources are developed collaboratively with the help of volunteers. It is sponsored by Language Guide, a registered non-profit organization. The advantage this site offers you is that you can learn a foreign language in your own native language.
9. How to learn any language – This is not exactly a site which teaches a foreign language. But it provides invaluable tips on how to choose a language, a hands on guide  to teaching yourself, books about language learning and even a chart featuring comparisons between the most popular languages on Earth.
10. StudySpanish.com – This site helps you learn Spanish language for free.
11. Busuu.com – This is a free online community where native speakers from all over the world can come together, exchange their language knowledge and improve their language skills. Busuu is a project of UNESCO’s year of languages. If you are wondering what this funny sounding word really mean, this is what the founders of this site has to say – “Busuu is a language spoken in Cameroon. Based on an ethnological study conducted in the 80’s, apparently only eight people are able to speak this language”.
12. Free Foreign Language Lessons – A great way to learn 37 languages for free. Spanish, French, English, Mandarin, Russian and much more. Why pay for Rosetta Stone when you can learn a new language for free.

I am a great fan of learning new spoken languages. Do you know of any other sites which teach a  language for free ? Then enter its address as a comment below and the language site will be appended to the above list.

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