Learn a foreign language

Posted on 30 Jul 2010 at 13:49

Darien Graham-Smith reveals the best online resources for learning a new language

If you’re planning a holiday abroad, you can brush up your linguistic skills from the comfort of your desktop. As a first port of call we recommend the BBC languages site, which offers exercises and tips on vocabulary and grammar in all the major European languages, and includes audio and video clips. There are also phrases, quick guides and fun facts for the more exotic languages: if you’re visiting the Balkans, for example, you might want to learn the phrase “Žao mi je, ne govorim hrvatski” (“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Croatian”).

Those who feel more adventurous should stop by freelanguage.org, a huge directory of free language-learning resources from all around the world. The sites and exercises on offer are a bit of a jumble; MP3s nestle alongside dictionaries and forums, and finding a truly helpful link can require persistence.

Wikibooks is a similarly mixed bag: here you’ll find articles, word lists and grammar for a wide range of languages, but there’s no guarantee they’re reliable, or even complete.

If you particularly want to improve your language comprehension, check out the many language-learning podcasts on iTunes, which will help train your ear. To help recognise words on sight, subscribe to a free “word of the day” service, which delivers a bite-sized morsel of your chosen language into your inbox each morning. Transparent Language offers one such service, although there are plenty of others. You can also get your fix by following Twitter feeds such as @frenchmot or @DailyGermanword.

These approaches are all good for a refresher course, but if you want to learn a language from scratch and achieve a reasonable degree of fluency, specialist software is called for. The popular Rosetta Stone offers more than 30 languages, but in each case the approach is the same: through hundreds of easy exercises, you match up foreign phrases and sentences with the appropriate sounds and pictures, until the vocabulary and grammar become second nature.

We’ve tried it and it works, but it isn’t cheap – the beginner’s Spanish module, for example, will set you back £179. It takes dedication too: even if you conscientiously put in an hour’s practice every day, it will be weeks at the very least before you can hold your own in a conversation.