Free Language Learning Software?

An anonymous reader asks: "Just curious with all the news in the recent years of MIT having courseware online and such.. Has anyone run across any quality free software/courseware for learning new languages (not programming languages, rather, the verbal ones)? This seems like an integral part to the free flow of information on the WWW."

Comments

Esperanto

[InfiniteVoid]

There's Kurso de Esperanto (A Windows program with multimedia files to help with pronunciation.)

You can also find free online courses (with a tutor via e-mail).

Re:Esperanto

[nathanm]

Right, if you want to learn a useless language that's hardly spoken by anyone, anywhere. At least studying an ancient, dead language is useful for studying manuscripts or artifacts.

Nuku

[lexarius]

http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=885 6&db=mac Good GPL'd kana tutor for Mac.

Re:Nuku

[lexarius]

Er... slight error in url.
Nuku

sanskrit

[solferino]

anyone got links to a course in sanskrit,
or to begin with just a good sanskrit pronunciation guide?

Re:sanskrit

[solferino]

answering my own question after 10 minutes spent googling...

this appears to be a good online course in sanskrit hosted at the IIT in madras

from the intro page :

The series of twelve lessons is aimed at giving the student a reasonably good introduction to the language. The student will be able to frame sentences relating to daily activities in life and thus will gain enough confidence to converse in Sanskrit though with a smaller vocabulary to begin with. The structure of the lessons is quite different from that of lessons found in conventional Sanskrit primers. It is hoped that the twelve lessons would provide enough details for the student to understand the basic grammar of Sanskrit and sentence formation rules.

i am still interested in hearing from ppl with actual experience in the language as to what they think are good resources - google is great but humans are still the best heuristic :)

(of passing interest : browsing some of the pronunciation guides on the net,
i just discovered that guru is correctly pronounced
with a very short first u - like the u in put or full;
the second u is a full u)

Re:sanskrit

[xueexueg]

I work for these people: the Digital South Asia Library. We have tons of free stuff -- dictionaries and pedagogical stuff being particular focuses. I could try to pitch it, but just check it out. I'd actually be interested to hear what others have to say.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

It doesn't matter how badly you want to learn another language, if you don't have a member of the opposite sex handy who speaks the language you're interested in, you simply won't have the necessary motivation. Software can't help w/ that.

Re:zerg

[stevey]

Oh how very true - getting a nice Swedish girlfriend was the only thing that inspired me to learn the language...

Frustrating how I couldn't even cheat and use the babelfish to read her emails - it doesn't do Swedish!

Re:zerg

[hitzroth]

A member of the opposite sex, particularly an attractive one, is certainly incentive to learn a language.

However, ploping down in a place where you'd need to learn the lanugage just to get along in daily life would probably give a bit more of a boost in your desire to learn a language.

In learning a language there's no substitute for experience.

Same sex learning....

[AtariDatacenter]

I thought we were beyond such distinctions? A member of the same sex can help certain types of other geeks learn the language, too.

Re:Same sex learning....

[hitzroth]

When generalizing, we usually speak of the majority. No, it doesn't cover all the cases. That's why it's called generalization.

In any case, you're better off talking to as many people as you can who speak the language you're trying to learn rather than just one person.

Re:Same sex learning....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Lesbian learning rocks.

There is NO WAY a computer can help you here...

[Dunkalis]

I'm taking German courses, and there is no way you could ever learn the ins and outs of a language that way. There are exceptions that exist in standard German (Hochdeutsch) that are confusing. I only learned them by using them conversationally.

Re:There is NO WAY a computer can help you here...

[rock_climbing_guy]

If you want something funny from Babelfish, try translating some Japanese web pages. The translations are so bad, I've given up on them having any practical use.

The Geek Way (tm) of doing it.

[The Cydonian]

Wrong approach to learning languages. You don't need no learning software to learn new languages, simply use this wonderful site! Get corresponding keywords, try different keyword combinations, plot the new language's BNF tree, use your knowledge to write new sentences and see if they translate properly, and finally, try to read an online newspaper in the language you're learning.

Piece of cake. ;-)

Re:The Geek Way (tm) of doing it.

[Quixote]

Can't even put down a URL , and calls himself a geek...

Which Language?

[hether]

It would help if you mentioned which language(s) you want to learn. I've ran across sites that are very helpful for a particular language, but don't want to hunt them all down right now. If we knew what exactly you were looking for, we could make suggestions.

Non-free Language Learning Stuff

[sien]

The Rosetta Stone courses are meant to be good. They are reasonably expensive, but I've only heard and read good things about them. Anyone have other experiences ?

You can pick them up on Ebay cheaper than retail on a pretty regular basis.

To produce really good language learning content integrated with audio and video is an expensive and pretty repetitive thing to do. Making it free is like making free games, it's one of those areas where the open source free way of doing things falls down.

Suggestions

[StJefferson]

Here's a good link to answer the original question. Diffferent students will learn in radically different ways. Where one person could sit down with a good text and come away with a working knowledge of a language, another person will achieve the same only with a full immersion program.

That said, the closer you can come to complete immersion, the better off you'll be. I'd suggest (just for fun) setting your computer's localization to the language you want to learn. You'll quickly learn a few bits of vocabulary from the translated menus, etc. Of course, if your target language has a radically different alphabet, you'll probably want to Google up a guide to sounding it out. (Arabic and Thai still stop me dead here...)

Next, I'd go looking for some newspapers in your target language published online. You'll doubtless find plenty of cognates (words with similar sounds and meanings across two languages) to words you know, and you'll have an opportunity to start getting an idea of grammar.

You'll probably want to Google for a dictionary for your target language, too -- there are good ones available for every language I've ever tried.

Good luck -- this is a great project!

Have you considered ASL?

[Paul Burney]

There is a free online ASL (American Sign Language) course at lifeprint.com

Even if you aren't deaf, it can be a great skill to communicate with others at a distance.

Great software for Chinese+Japanese characters

[FeatureBug]

Hanzim - Score: Excellent

• a really superb Chinese ideograph tutor (also quite good for learning the Japanese kanji which are mostly identical to Chinese) with bilingual English-Chinese translations based on radicals.

Kanatest - Score: Very Good

• a handy (Japanese) katakana and hiragana tester - the calligraphy is very good too.

Online audio

[Anonymous Coward]

What I think would be very helpful are sound files of native speakers... they do not have to be in a language course as such. For English, there are many good ones on the audio section of http://www.salon.com.