Whether you learned Spanish on Sesame Street or studied French at the best school, your skills may have rusted a bit over the years. Either you work in an industry where it’s useful to understand Arabic, Korean, or Finnish, or you need to be informed of some Italian to help you study your ancestors. Whatever the reason, if you need to learn a new language, there are plenty of free online courses and resources to help you get started. Here’s one that offers courses in 49 languages.
OpenCulture. com is a remarkable repository of free online resources, ranging from open-access movies and audiobooks to public domain art, as well as countless educational courses. The site maintains a page with an up-to-date list of free online language courses.
Currently, free online courses are available covering 49 other languages:
Amharic
Ancient Greece
Arabic
american sign language
Bambara
Bulgarian
Cambodian
Cantonese
Catalan
Chinese (standard)
Czech
Danish
dutch
English
Farsi/Persian
Finnish
French
Frisian
German
greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
irishwoman
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Lao
Latin
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
mandarin
Māori
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbo-Croatian
Spanish
Swahili
swede
Thai
turk
Twi
Vietnamese
Welsh
There is a description of each language course, as well as the type of material available, such as MP3 files, PDFs, streaming videos and interactive modules. While many courses are introductions to languages, others are more specialized, such as Medicine. Spanish for healthcare providers, Arabic in Jordan, French basics for global communication, and travel-friendly Japanese. There are also general courses that provide equipment for anyone who needs to improve their foreign language skills.
For more information, you can find the full list of languages, courses, and resources on OpenCulture. com. And for more language learning tools, check out Lifehacker’s previous articles on how to learn a new language while browsing the internet and how to examine a language to really perceive it.
Dr. Elizabeth Yuko is a bioethicist and assistant professor of ethics at Fordham University. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, CNN and Playboy.