Learn 48 Languages for Free Online: A Big Update to Our Master List

SONY DSCRight in time for your trav­els, we’ve just com­plet­ed a big update to our rich col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons. Fea­tur­ing free audio and video lessons, this handy resource will help you learn to speak Span­ish, French, Ger­man, Eng­lish, Chi­nese, Ara­bic, Ital­ian, and Russ­ian, plus 36 oth­er lan­guages. And it’s all for free, which is a lot less than what Roset­ta Stone and oth­er ven­dors will charge you. Not bad, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that some of the lessons come from ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tions like Yale, Cam­bridge, Carnegie Mel­lon, Emory, the BBC, the US Peace Corps, the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute, and more.

The com­plete list of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons, includes the fol­low­ing lan­guages: Ara­bic, Bul­gar­i­an, Cam­bo­di­an, Cata­lan, Chi­nese (Man­darin & Can­tonese), Czech, Dan­ish, Dutch, Eng­lish, Finnish, French, Gael­ic, Ger­man, Greek, Hebrew, Hin­di, Hun­gar­i­an, Ice­landic, Indone­sian, Irish, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Lao, Latin, Lithuan­ian, Lux­em­bour­gish, Maori, Nor­we­gian, Pol­ish, Por­tuguese, Roman­ian, Russ­ian, Ser­bo-Croa­t­ian, Sign Lan­guage, Span­ish, Swahili, Taga­log, Thai, Turk­ish, Ukrain­ian, Urdu, Viet­namese, Welsh and Yid­dish.

If we’re miss­ing any great resources, please tell us in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates)

Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

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Speaking in Whistles: The Whistled Language of Oaxaca, Mexico

Whis­tled lan­guage is a rare form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that can be most­ly found in loca­tions with iso­lat­ing fea­tures such as scat­tered set­tle­ments or moun­tain­ous ter­rain. This doc­u­men­tary above shows how Dr. Mark Sicoli, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Lin­guis­tics at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty, con­ducts field stud­ies among speak­ers of a Chi­nan­tec lan­guage, who live in the moun­tain­ous region of north­ern Oax­a­ca in Mex­i­co. The Sum­mer Insti­tute of Lin­guis­tics in Mex­i­co has record­ed and tran­scribed a whis­tled con­ver­sa­tion in Sochi­a­pam Chi­nan­tec between two men in dif­fer­ent fields. The result can be seen and heard here.

The most thor­ough­ly-researched whis­tled lan­guage how­ev­er is Sil­bo Gomero, the lan­guage of the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands). In 2009, it was inscribed on the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive List of the Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage of Human­i­ty. The UNESCO web­site has a good descrip­tion of this whis­tled lan­guage with pho­tos and a video. Hav­ing almost died out, the lan­guage is now taught once more in schools.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More

Do You Speak Java Jive?: The Language of the Indie Cafes

java jive

I haven’t fre­quent­ed Star­bucks for a long time, but when I did, I could nev­er get into their lin­go. Do you want a “grande,” the “barista” asked? No, just give me a medi­um, ok? And if I ever tired of the irri­tat­ing lin­go bat­tles, I head­ed to an indie cafe where sim­ple lan­guage made sense.

Nowa­days, you appar­ent­ly can’t bank on the indies for an escape. This week­end, The New York Times has a huge spread reveal­ing the pri­vate vocab­u­lar­ies of Amer­i­ca’s indie cof­fee bars, the places where you can now order “Cap­puc­ci­gos,” “Jillys,” “Kan­skis,” and a “Franken­caf,” along with some “Bert & Ernie,” appar­ent­ly the new way of say­ing cream and sug­ar. If you care to speak Java Jive, you’ll want to spend time with this spread. It’s almost some­thing we could add to our list of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons.

And now for some more cof­fee ran­dom­ness:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

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Learn New Languages (From Arabic to Yiddish) with 150+ Free Podcasts

I spend a great deal of time vis­it­ing unfa­mil­iar cities, spend­ing days walk­ing, cycling, or rid­ing trains and bus­es through them. Some­times the peo­ple of these cities speak lan­guages I know; some­times they speak lan­guages I don’t. Either way, dur­ing all these hours in motion, my per­son­al sound­track comes from an iPod loaded with lan­guage-learn­ing pod­casts. If you’d like to engage in this delight­ful­ly men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ing prac­tice your­self — and I high­ly rec­om­mend it — you can get start­ed by brows­ing Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons avail­able online. The list cov­ers no few­er than 40 tongues, and many of the lessons come in pod­cast form. Should you find your­self in need of shows offer­ing Bul­gar­i­an sur­vival phras­es, instruc­tion in Swedish expres­sions and cul­ture, or Pol­ish in one minute a day, here is the list you want. From my efforts in study­ing Span­ish, Kore­an, and Japan­ese, I can per­son­al­ly (and strong­ly) rec­om­mend sev­er­al of its offer­ings.

Cof­fee Break Span­ish and the more advanced Show Time Span­ish, both pro­duced by the Radio Lin­gua net­work (out of Scot­land, of all places) start you off from an absolute zero of pre­sumed knowl­edge and pro­ceeds to get you up to “cruis­ing alti­tude,” which I call the point in lan­guage acqui­si­tion at which you become able to learn from real, untrans­lat­ed speech. You might then con­sid­er down­load­ing a show like Notes in Span­ish, and espe­cial­ly the con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly focused Notes in Span­ish Gold. For Japan­ese, few lan­guage pod­casts cater to a wider vari­ety of pro­fi­cien­cy lev­els at once than does JapanesePod101, which I sup­ple­ment with Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er NHK’s lessons (which also come taught in quite a few lan­guages besides Eng­lish.) And for Kore­an, the lan­guage that first cul­ti­vat­ed in me this whole intel­lec­tu­al­ly and social­ly thrilling learn­ing addic­tion, you can do no bet­ter than Hyun­woo Sun’s Talk to Me in Kore­an, quite pos­si­bly the most thor­ough, fre­quent, slick, and enter­tain­ing lan­guage-instruc­tion pod­cast of any kind. Lis­ten­ing to these shows has con­vinced me that every moment spent not acquir­ing a new lan­guage is a moment wast­ed. But even if you don’t believe any­thing that extreme, it’s still a lot of fun. And doing it through these free pod­casts, you cer­tain­ly can’t argue with the price.

Here’s our col­lec­tion once again: Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

450 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

530 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

500 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

“Learn English With Ricky Gervais,” A New Podcast Debuts (NSFW)

Bom­bas­ti­cal­ly billed as “a new land­mark in human com­pre­hen­sion,” Ricky Ger­vais’ video pod­cast, “Learn Eng­lish with Ricky Ger­vais” does, in a way, break new ped­a­gog­i­cal ground. The trail­er above pro­vides a brief glimpse of the series’ first episode, cur­rent­ly avail­able for free on iTunes. The premise of the show is that Ger­vais and his part­ner Karl Pilk­ing­ton, in a posh-look­ing study with globe and fire­place, par­o­dy video lan­guage cours­es for non-Eng­lish speak­ers. Ger­vais’ obnox­ious grandios­i­ty and the almost method­i­cal obtuse­ness of Pilk­ing­ton have become leg­endary to fans of HBO’s The Ricky Ger­vais Show. Miss­ing here is the third mem­ber of that pro­gram, co-cre­ator of the orig­i­nal British The Office, Stephen Mer­chant, but what­ev­er the rea­son for his absence, this con­cept prob­a­bly works bet­ter as a duo, with Ger­vais play­ing the over­bear­ing and some­what abu­sive teacher and Pilk­ing­ton stand­ing in for the hypo­thet­i­cal “stu­dents,” who would no doubt find this method as bewil­der­ing as he does.

The full episode includes sub­ti­tles in a lan­guage that resem­bles Welsh but most­ly seems like gib­ber­ish (cor­rect me, Welsh speak­ers, if I’m wrong), and Ger­vais and Pilkington’s exchanges are chock-full of non-sequiturs and insults, some benign, some skirt­ing the bound­aries of the uncom­fort­ably xeno­pho­bic, but that’s kind of the point, and the source of much of the humor. The char­ac­ters here are too cul­tur­al­ly insen­si­tive and dense to teach any­one any­thing. Gervais—with Mer­chant and Pilkington—uses a sim­i­lar shtick in his An Idiot Abroad series, and it works, I think, but you’ll need to decide for your­self in the case of “Learn Eng­lish,” and you’ll need to down­load iTunes (on the off chance you don’t have it) and sub­scribe to the pod­cast to view the full first episode, which debuted on August 14th. Ger­vais has said that future episodes may involve either a small fee or adver­tis­ing to cov­er costs.

In the mean­time, stop by our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, where you can down­load seri­ous lessons in 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing French, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Ara­bic, and, yes, Eng­lish and Welsh.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

French in Action: Cult Classic French Lessons from Yale (52 Episodes) Available Online

Dur­ing the 1980s, Pierre Capretz, a Yale pro­fes­sor, devel­oped French in Action, a French immer­sion pro­gram that fea­tured text­books, work­books, and a 52-episode tele­vi­sion series. Aired on PBS, the tele­vi­sion series gained a devot­ed fol­low­ing and, years lat­er, a 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion at Yale asked the ques­tion: Is it fair to say that French in Action now has a cult fol­low­ing?

You can watch French in Action for free online at the Annen­berg Learn­er web­site. (Scroll down the page to find the videos.) The pro­gram fol­lows the adven­tures of Robert Tay­lor, an Amer­i­can stu­dent, and Mireille Bel­leau, a young French woman. And each 30 minute episode pro­vides a con­text for learn­ing new words and expres­sions. (A cou­ple of episodes gen­er­at­ed a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sy, we should note.) The show is con­duct­ed entire­ly in French.

French in Action appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, which now offers primers in over 40 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, Man­darin, Ital­ian and beyond.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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What’s Your English? British v. Canadian Rap Battle

In 2010, the folks who pub­lish the Macmil­lan Dic­tio­nary launched the ‘What’s your Eng­lish?’ cam­paign. They then spent a good year trav­el­ing across the globe, vis­it­ing nations where Eng­lish is spo­ken, and ask­ing experts and every­day speak­ers to talk about their region­al dialects. The Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, Ire­land, Scot­land and Cana­da were obvi­ous stops. But the tour also swept through India, Rus­sia, Brazil, Chi­na, Mex­i­co and beyond. Now, to cap things off, Macmil­lan has post­ed a “rap bat­tle” between British and Cana­di­an Eng­lish, fea­tur­ing “Baba Brinkman” and hip hop emcee “Pro­fes­sor Ele­men­tal.” Get the lyrics/script here. H/T Metafil­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages

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Learning Languages Online with The New York Times

How can you learn for­eign lan­guages online? Last week, The New York Times out­lined a good num­ber of options for its read­ers. And, for days, the arti­cle remained one of the most wide­ly read pieces on the NYT site. Today, the paper issued a fol­lowup post, high­light­ing yet more ways to learn lan­guages dig­i­tal­ly. And hap­pi­ly our col­lec­tion, Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages, got a small men­tion there. When tak­en togeth­er, these two pieces spell out the dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties fair­ly well. Some of the sites men­tioned include LiveMocha.com, BBC lan­guages, and Man­go Lan­guages.

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