Hello, I am learning Hindi as a student as part of a state department program. I have had spanish instruction in school and we frequently used a resource known as spanishdict that shows the conjugations for a word and different definitions and stuff. Is there a similar resource for Hindi (online)?

Irish (Gaeilge) is a Goidelic language of the Celtic language family, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family. Irish originated in Ireland and was historically and still is spoken by Irish people throughout Ireland. Although English is the more common first language elsewhere in Ireland, Irish is spoken as a first language in substantial areas of counties Galway, Kerry, Cork and Donegal, smaller areas of Waterford, Mayo and Meath

History

The Irish language has a rich history, with documentation of it dating back to the 4th century CE in ogham stones. These writings have been found throughout Ireland and the west coast of Great Britain. Primitive Irish transitioned into Old Irish through the 5th century. Old Irish, dating from the 6th century, used the Latin alphabet and is attested primarily in marginalia to Latin manuscripts. During this time, the Irish language absorbed some Latin words, some via Old Welsh, including ecclesiastical terms.
By the 10th century, Old Irish had evolved into Middle Irish, which was spoken throughout Ireland and in Scotland and the Isle of Man. It is the language of a large corpus of literature, including the Ulster Cycle. From the 12th century, Middle Irish began to evolve into modern Irish in Ireland, into Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, and into the Manx language in the Isle of Man.
Early Modern Irish, dating from the 13th century, was the basis of the literary language of both Ireland and Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Modern Irish, as attested in the work of such writers as Geoffrey Keating, may be said to date from the 17th century, and was the medium of popular literature from that time on.
Since then, however, the usage of Irish has been fast diminishing, thanks to the prevalence of English as well as actions take to keep the Irish from speaking Irish and make them switch to English. However, up until the time of the Great Potato Famine, Irish was still considered an urban and rural language; since then, it has been drastically on the decline, with the areas where Irish has been spoken have been consistently on the decline, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the efforts of the Gaelic Revival (which often wanted to keep these areas pre-industrial, something which has hurt them in modern times).
There is a growing rise of "urban Irish" or "Gaelscoilis" speakers, but vast differences have been noted between their language and that of native speakers in the unbroken tradition which still stands on the west coats and in a few other parts of the country. In some cases, there isn't even mutual ineligibility. Often, urban speakers directly important English sounds and idioms onto the language, which makes it difficult for natives to understand them (and vice-versa).

Linguistics

Irish is an Indo-European language, of the Celtic branch. It's closest living relatives are thus Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh and Breton. It's more distantly related to other languages like Ancient Hittie, Latin and even Hindi!
Classification
Indo-European> Celtic > Insular Celtic > Goidelic > Irish Morphophonemics
Irish has three main dialect areas (with various subdialects) each with their own differing phonetic schema. This details discussed here should only be taken at a broad level, leaving plenty of room for individual variation at the dialectal level.
Irish has, roughly speaking, between 9 and 11 vowel phonemes (again, the numbers vary depending on dialects), including a short/long phonemic contrast. There are around 5 diphthongs as well in the language.
In terms of consonants, Irish has roughly 33 consonant phonemes. Irish distinguishes between palatalized and velarized consonants, called 'slender' and 'broad' respectively in the language. This distinction is highly important, often distinguishing between singular and plurals nouns, as well as the various cases of nouns. In other words, this broad-slender distinction has a grammatical function.
Another phonetic process which has a grammatical function in Irish is the use of 'lenition' and 'eclipsing' ('nasalization'). In this case, the initial consonant of a word undergoes a 'mutation' based on certain phonological/grammatical categories. Originally, these were all phonological, but became grammaticalized with the loss of certain word-final vowels and through analogies. The initial mutations are one of the things the Goidelc and Brythonic Celtic languages share.
Morphology and Syntax The default word order of Irish is Verb-Subject-Object, though this can change in a process known as 'fronting', which allows certain parts of the sentence to be stressed.
Irish nouns are declined for number and case, with three main cases still extant in Irish: nominative, genitive and vocative; the dative is stronger in some locations, but in other locations it is weak and is only marked by the initial mutations with no change to the form of the word. The genitive, as well, is dying out among native speakers, with the genitive plural being mostly dead in all except fossilized phrases and some more conservative dialects. Nouns are classified into one of two genders -- masculine or feminine, with the neuter gender present in Old Irish having been lost. Feminine nouns undergo lenition following the definite article an, and cause lenition on attributive adjectives following them: an bhean bheag - the small woman, where bean - a woman and beag - small. As shown in that example, Irish adjectives can undergo declension as well, to agree with case, number and gender of the proceeding noun.
Irish verbs conjugate for person and number, though only the first person singular and plural have a distinct form in the standard (other forms exist in the various dialects). By convention, it's often said that Irish only has 11 irregular verbs, though there are other "semi-irregular" verbs in the language as well. Irish maintains a distinction between two types of copula. Verbs in Irish conjugate for 5 distinct tenses/moods, though others can be expressed periphrastically (i.e. using helping verbs). Irish also has what is known as the saorbhriathar, which is often taught as a passive though it is really an impersonal form of an active verb (think 'they use the Euro in Ireland', where it's an unspecified 'they'). Verbs are further divided into two conjugation classes, excluding the irregular and semi-irregular verbs. The difference between the standard form of the verb rith and the synthetic forms, used in the dialects of Munster (though not often taught to learners, even when they learn 'Munster Irish') can be seen in the table below. The forms are for the Irish as used in the Corca Dhuibhne area of Kerry (note Connacht and Donegal dialects use 'rith muid' instead of 'ritheamar').

Person	Standard	Synthetic
1st person singular	rith mé	ritheas
2nd pereson singular	rith tú	rithis
3rd person singular	rith sé/sí	rith sé/sí
1st person plural	ritheamar	ritheamair
2nd person plural	rith sibh	ritheabhair
3rd person plural	rith siad	ritheadar

Irish has twenty-one personal pronouns, distinguishing each person and in the third person singular for gender, in three series (conjuctive, disjunctive and emphatic). It's interesting to note that the first person plural pronoun has one of two forms, often depending on dialect, where an o;der form sinn has been replaced with a newer form, muid. Irish has no T-V distinction, with one possible except of using the plural second person pronoun sibh when speaking to a priest, under the assumption they could be carrying the Eucharist with them, thus you would also be addressing God.
A last, interesting feature, about Irish is the use of 'prepositional pronouns', or prepositions that are inflected for person. Thus, instead of using two words for 'at me', Irish only has one word for it, with the pronoun itself being inflected to convey the meaning. The inflections of ag ('at') can be seen in the table below:

Person	Singular	Plural
1	agam	againn
2	agat	agaibh
3	aige/aici	acu

The forms of these prepositions and, indeed, even the number of them is highly variable between dialects. For instance, Connemara is famous for using 'am, 'ad, aige, aici, 'ainn, agaí, acub instead of the standard forms.
Orthography
Modern Irish traditionally used the Latin alphabet without the letters j, k, q, w, x, y and z. However, some Gaelicised words use those letters: for instance, "jeep" is written as "jíp" (the letter v has been naturalised into the language, although it is not part of the traditional alphabet, and has the same pronunciation as "bh"). One diacritic sign, the acute accent (á é í ó ú), known in Irish as the síneadh fada ("long mark"; plural: sínte fada), is used in the alphabet. In idiomatic English usage, this diacritic is frequently referred to simply as the fada, where the adjective is used as a noun. The fada serves to lengthen the sound of the vowels and in some cases also changes their quality. For example, in Munster Irish (Kerry), a is /a/ or /ɑ/ and á is /ɑː/ in "father", but in Ulster Irish (Donegal), á tends to be /æː/.
Traditional orthography had an additional diacritic – a dot over some consonants to indicate lenition. In modern Irish, the letter h suffixed to a consonant indicates that the consonant is lenited. Thus, for example, 'Gaelaċ' has become 'Gaelach'. This dot-above diacritic, called a ponc séimhithe or sí buailte (often shortened to buailte), derives from the punctum delens used in medieval manuscripts to indicate deletion, similar to crossing out unwanted words in handwriting today. From this usage it was used to indicate the lenition of s (from /s/ to /h/) and f (from /f/ to zero) in Old Irish texts. Lenition of c, p, and t was indicated by placing the letter h after the affected consonant; lenition of b, d, g, or m was left unmarked. Later, both buailte and postposed h were extended to be indicators of lenition of any sound except l, n, and r, which could not be lenited. Eventually, use of the buailte predominated when texts were written using Gaelic letters, while the h predominated when writing using Roman letters.
Today, Gaelic type and the buailte are rarely used except where a "traditional" style is required, e.g. the motto on the University College Dublin coat of arms or the symbol of the Irish Defence Forces, the Irish Defence Forces cap badge (Óglaiġ na h-Éireann). Postposed h has predominated due to its convenience and the lack of a character set containing the overdot before Unicode, although extending the latter method to Roman letters would theoretically have the advantage of making Irish texts significantly shorter, particularly as a large portion of the h-containing digraphs in a typical Irish text are silent (ex. the above Lughbhaidh, the old spelling of Louth, which would become Luġḃaiḋ).

Dialects and Sociolinguistics

Irish has three main dialectal areas, each which can be fairly divergent from the standard in terms of grammar (there is no standard phonology). These dialect areas are 'Munster', in the South, 'Connacht' in the west (and Meath, where farmers were transplanted from Connemara in the 1920s) and Ulster, which is, sadly, only extant in Donegal (Irish having died out in Tyrone and Antrim during the last century). The last dialect of Leinster Irish, Oriel Irish, was actually more accurately classified as a dialect of Ulster Irish.
There is a shift towards using Irish more in cities, though with major issues. For one, there is no standard dialect in the cities, and they often are a hodge-podge of mistakes that just coalesce together. Likewise, pronunciation of Irish is extremely different from English, unless you're in these cities. Here, pronunciation is often just directly imported from one language to the other (as is grammar, though they make a point to say 'Irish words', i.e. to avoid loanwords). This can make it difficult for native speakers to understand the learners from these areas, and vice-versa. There have been several articles written about this, such as this one, this one, and a list of studies here. It's also worth watching this Youtube video. I can't stress enough how different this form of the language is to that actually spoken by natives, again to the point where natives even struggle to understand it.
Written sample
Bhí fear in a chomhnuidhe ar an bhaile s'againne a dtugadh siad Micheál Ruadh air. Bhí teach beag cheann-tuigheadh aige ar fhód an bhealaigh mhóir agus bhí an donas air le séideadh anuas agus le deora anuas. Lá amháin da rabh Micheál ar an aonach, casadh duine de a chuid daoine muinteardha air nach bhfaca sé le tamall fada roimhe sin. "A Mhicheáil a chroidhe," arsa a dhuine muinteardha leis, "caidé mar tá an saoghal ag éirghe leat mar seo?" "Ó, go díreach go leath-mheasardha," arsa Micheál, "tá mé briste brúighte, tuirseach cráidhte, i n-amanna plúchta agus i n-amanna báidhte." (a Donegal dialectal text. audio can be found here; a whole set of stories can be found here
Spoken samples
https://www.dias.ie/celt/celt-publications-2/glor-audio-archive/glor-cork/ (native audio collected in County Cork)
https://www.doegen.ie/ (Collections of audio recordings from the early 20th century of native speakers from lots of areas, including areas where Irish is no longer spoken)
Sources & Further reading
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.

Previous LotWs

The language of the fictional country of Arendelle is depicted as English in the Frozen films, but given the fact that it was inspired by the real country of Norway, one could make a reasonable argument that it is Norwegian. However, as a conlanger, I find settling with existing languages for fictional places quite boring. Therefore, I created Arendellic, a unique language for Arendelle that takes into consideration the North Germanic elements proposed by the "Norwegianists", with plenty of influence from Finnish, to give it a multi-family charm, much like what Gujarati has, as it is a hybrid of Hindi, Persian, and Arabic roots. Unfortunately for anyone who believes that English is somehow the language of Arendelle, the closest connection Arendellic has to English is that they both have Germanic origins. So without further ado, I proudly present Arendellic!
Phonological Notes:
G: /g/, but /j/ before e, i, or y. Silent after i & e, and before j. Also silent before e.
J: /j/
R: / if doubled. (Always doubled before e, i, or y.)
Kj: /hj/
k: /hj/ before e, i, or y. /ʃ/ if doubled. (Always doubled after e, i, or y.
Sj: /ʃ/
Skj: /ʃ/, but double the length, as also can be done with consonants in Italian.
Sk: /ʃ/ before e, i, or y.
D: Silent after r, l, n, or o.
H: Silent before h & v.
T: Silent after e.
V: Silent after l.
Double consonants are pronounced longer, as is also done in Italian.
Syllables that contain a long consonant have all vowels shortened, as can be done with a consonant.
Syllables that contain a short consonant have all their vowels lengthened, as can be done with a consonant.
O becomes when lengthened, it is usually /o/.
I becomes /i/ when lengthened, it is usually /I/.
E becomes /a/ when lengthened, it is usually /ɛ/.
Y: /i/ with rounded lips.
U: Sound between and /Y/.
Ø: /ɛ/ with rounded lips.
æ: /a/, /ɛ/ when not adjacent to r.
Å: /ɔ/
Stress is on the first syllable.
Grammar Notes:
SVO word order.
Auxiliary verbs have to be used before past participle.
Auxiliary verbs & their adjacent verbs are both conjugated to agree with the subject.
Adverbs go between the auxiliary verb and the adjacent verb to which it applies. Can eliminate "and" in this scenario, but not other connectives!
Verbs are conjugated the same, regardless of person or number.
"R" added at the end for present indicative.
"T" added before the infinitive suffix "-e" for the simple past.
"Sia" is the future particle. It itself is not a verb, but it comes before the verb in the future tense.
There is no grammatical gender! 😃 Even in personal pronouns.
There are no definite, indefinite, or partitive articles.
To form the plural of nouns, add "r" to the end if it ends in a vowel, or "e" if it ends in a consonant.
There is one way to determine if a noun is definite or indefinite, and that's if there is an adjective present. Adjectives, however, do not need to be present, so ultimately it boils down to context. Adjectives come before indefinite nouns, and after definite nouns, and when they do, and the noun is plural, they must have an "r" added to the end if they end in a vowel, and an "e" added to the end if they end in a consonant. There is no easy way to determine if a noun is partitive, only context can help in that scenario.
Adverb forms of adjectives are formed by making the adjective in the plural form.
The formal forms of pronouns are formed by adding "j" at the beginning.
Arendellic employs emphatic negation, in which the negation word has "j" added to the end. (Only for "not".)
"Any" is a suffix: -ko.
The only exception to the formal "j" rule is that "i" is added to the end of "they" to make it formal.
"Het-" is used to make adjectives into nouns.
"Else-" turns a verb into a noun.
Postpositions are used instead of prepositions.
"N" is added to the end of a noun to indicate the accusative case.
"Kö" added to the end of verb(s) if available, to indicate a question. Otherwise, it's just before the rest of the question as a word.
"N" is added to the end of a verb for the future, as well as "sia" coming before as a word.
Instead of "to have", "there to be (thing had) to haver" is used.
The negation word "ikke" is a suffix for verbs, and when used as a suffix, "-j" cannot be used as the intensifier.
Sample: "Some Things Never Change, Anna and Olaf's first part" from Disney's Frozen 2 in Arendellic.
Ja, tind blåser lähähet ler kal,
ja me ki bliler ler gamha,
ja pile färlater forda høskbril he,
Petergrrepikkaa ba blilte gandøln,
ja blad min oler lähähet leiseg ler ja ler kiikk,
at oler his jeg liller arn at ikke endrer,
ja, ar jøke aidoi endrrer,
kom følhet hånd dei ala min i,
ar jøke oppher kom samamelse,
kom hid me oler venär,
kom gamha kisegg at sia aidoi fadle,
ar jøke oler aila ekkter,
ar jøke aidoi endrrer,
kom hid jeg hiler di ala sirakar meg kad.

Bulgarian (Български език) is a Southern Slavic language with about 12 million speakers mainly in Bulgaria, but also in Ukraine, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Canada, USA, Australia, Germany and Spain. Bulgarian is mutually intelligible with Macedonian, and is fairly closely related to Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian.
Along with the Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund. The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages: changes include the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article and the lack of a verb infinitive, but it retains and has further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system. One such major development is the innovation of evidential verb forms to encode for the source of information: witnessed, inferred, or reported.
Bulgarian was the first Slavic language to be written: it start to appear in writing during the 9th century in the Glagolitic alphabet, which was gradually replaced by an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet over the following centuries.

History

The history of Bulgarian language can be divided into three periods:
9th–11th centuries: Old Bulgarian is only attested as Old Church Slavonic, a highly inflected literary language employed to translate religious texts from Greek, in the First Kingdom of Bulgaria.
12th–15th centuries: Middle Bulgarian experienced radical phonological and morphological changes (e.g. loss of noun declension). It is attested in many literary works.
15th c.-present: Modern Bulgarian. From the early 15th century until 1878, Bulgaria was under Turk Ottoman domination when the language was neglected. Afterwards, it experienced a revival when it was purged from many Old Church Slavonic, Russian, and other foreign words.
Bulgarian emerged more than a millennium ago when the Slavs, who had arrived in the middle of the 1st millennium AD to the eastern Balkan Peninsula, were conquered by the Bulgars. The newcomers established the First Bulgarian Kingdom (681-1018) and, even if they were ethnically Turkic, adopted the language of their Slavic subjects. The geographical and political isolation from other Slavs led these Southern Slavs to develop their own dialects.
Bulgarian was first attested in the late 9th century as a literary language, known as Old Church Slavonic, developed by the monks Cyril and Methodius to translate religious texts from Greek. It was based on different local dialects and, hence, had two varieties: the Eastern one is considered to be Old Bulgarian while the western one is considered to be Old Macedonian. In the Medieval period, from the 12th to 15th centuries, the language experienced radical changes, particularly the loss of noun declension, which paved the way to Modern Bulgarian.
The modern language is very close to Macedonian, both have (almost completely) lost all case declensions, and both have been influenced by Balkan non-Slavic languages, like Greek, Albanian and Romanian, as shown by certain features found in them but not in other Slavic languages. For example, Bulgarian, like Romanian and Albanian, has a schwa-like central vowel in stressed syllables, a postposed definite article, and lacks an infinitive which is replaced by a subordinate clause (this also happens in Modern Greek).

Phonology

Vowels

Bulgarian vowels may be grouped in three pairs according to their backness: the front vowels е (/ɛ/) and и (/i/), the central vowels а (/a/) and ъ (/ɤ/) and the back vowels о (/ɔ/) and у ().

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ	ɤ	ɔ
Low		a

In stressed syllables, six vowels are phonemic. Unstressed vowels tend to be shorter and weaker compared to their stressed counterparts, and the corresponding pairs of open and closed vowels approach each other with a tendency to merge, above all as low (open and open-mid) vowels are raised and shift towards the high (close and close-mid) ones. However, the coalescence is not always complete. The vowels are often distinguished in emphatic or deliberately distinct pronunciation, and reduction is strongest in colloquial speech. Besides that, some linguists distinguish two degrees of reduction, as they have found that a clearer distinction tends to be maintained in the syllable immediately preceding the stressed one. The complete merger of the pair /a/ – /ɤ/ is regarded as most common, while the status of /ɔ/ vs is less clear. The coalescence of /ɛ/ and /i/ is not allowed in formal speech and is regarded as a provincial (East Bulgarian) dialectal feature; instead, unstressed /ɛ/ is both raised and centralized, approaching [ɤ]. The /ɤ/ vowel itself does not exist as a phoneme in other Slavic languages, though a similar reduced vowel transcribed as [ə] does occur.

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Stop	voiceless	p pʲ	t tʲ		k kʲ
Stop	voiced	b bʲ	d dʲ		ɡ ɡʲ
Affricate	voiceless		ts tsʲ	tʃ
Affricate	voiced			dʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f fʲ	s sʲ	ʃ	x
Fricative	voiced	v vʲ	z zʲ	ʒ
Nasal		m mʲ	n nʲ
Trill			r rʲ
Lateral			l lʲ
Glide				j

Bulgarian has a total of 36 consonant phonemes (see table above). Three additional phonemes can also be found ([xʲ], [dz], and [dzʲ]), but only in foreign proper names such as Хюстън /xʲustɤn/ ('Houston'), Дзержински /dzɛrʒinski/ ('Dzerzhinsky'), and Ядзя /jadzʲa/, ('Jadzia'). They are, however, normally not considered part of the phonemic inventory of the Bulgarian language. The Bulgarian obstruent consonants are divided into 12 pairs of voiced and voiceless consonants. The only obstruent without a counterpart is the voiceless velar fricative /x/. The voicing contrast is neutralized in word-final position, where all obstruents are voiceless, at least with regard to the official orthoepy of the contemporary Bulgarian spoken language (word-final devoicing is a common feature in Slavic languages); this neutralization is, however, not reflected in the spelling.

Grammar

Bulgarian shares several grammatical innovations with Balkan languages that set it apart from most other Slavic languages, even other South Slavic languages. Among these are a sharp reduction in noun inflections—Bulgarian has lost the noun cases but has developed a definite article, which is suffixed at the end of words. In its verbal system, Bulgarian is set apart from most Slavic languages by the loss of the infinitive, the preservation of most of the complexities of the older conjugation system (including the opposition between aorist and imperfect) and the development of a complex evidential system to distinguish between witnessed and several kinds of non-witnessed information.

Nouns

Bulgarian nouns have the categories grammatical gender, number, case (only vocative) and definiteness. A noun has one of three specific grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular and plural). The plural is formed by adding to or replacing the singular ending.
With cardinal numbers and some adverbs, masculine nouns use a separate numerical plural form бройна множествена форма. It is a remnant of the grammatical dual number, which disappeared from the language in the Middle Ages. The numerical form is used in the masculine whenever there is a precise amount of something, regardless of the actual number.
Definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun.

Case system

Old Bulgarian had a system of seven cases, but only three remain intact: the accusative, dative, and nominative; and only in personal and some other pronouns.

• the accusative and the dative have mostly merged as an oblique case. The distinction between the two cases is preserved.
• the genitive had become involved in restructuring already in late Proto-Slavic, where it replaced the accusative of animate masculine singulars. This form, in -а, was not adopted in Standard Bulgarian. However, the grammarians who standardised the language in the 19th century specified an identical form as the incomplete definite article suffix (непълен член), contrasting with the complete definite article in -ът; this distinction was artificially invented and did not occur in any Bulgarian dialect of the time. The incomplete definite article is used with definite masculine singular nouns which are not the subject of a sentence, including as objects of verbs and prepositions. Adnominal uses of the genitive have been lost.

Adjectives

A Bulgarian adjective agrees in gender, number and definiteness with the noun it is appended to and is put usually before it. The comparative and the superlative form are formed analytically.

Pronouns

Bulgarian pronouns vary in gender, number, definiteness and case. The distinguishable types of pronouns include personal, possessive, interrogative, demonstrative, reflexive, summative, negative, indefinite and relative.

Verbs

Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar. They are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect (perfective and imperfective), voice, nine tenses, five moods and six non-finite verbal forms. Bulgarian verbs are divided into three conjugations.

Voice

The voice in Bulgarian verbs is presented by the ending on the past participle; the auxiliary remains съм ("to be"):

• Active - ударил съм... - I have hit...
• Passive - ударен съм - I have been hit

Mood

Mood in Bulgarian is expressed not through verb endings, but through the auxiliary particles че and да (which both translate as the relative pronoun that). The verbs remain unchanged. Thus:

• Indicative - че -
  • e.g. знам, че си тук - I know that you are here;
• Subjunctive - да -
  • e.g. искам да си тук - I want that you are here, I want you to be here

The inferential is formed in exactly the same way as the perfect, but with the omission of the auxiliary:

• Perfect - той е бил - he has been
• Inferential - той бил - he (reportedly) was

The imperative has its own conjugation - usually by adding -и or -ай to the root of the verb:

• e.g. sit - сядам → сядай (imperfective), or седна → седни (perfective).
  • Negative instructions - either не сядай or недей да сядаш - "don't sit down".

Word order

Although Bulgarian has almost no noun cases its word order is rather free. It is even freer than the word order of some languages that have cases, for example German. This is due to the agreement between the subject and the verb of a sentence.

Orthography

In 886 AD, the Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script, developed around the Preslav Literary School, Bulgaria in the 9th century.
At the end of the 18th century the Russian version of Cyrillic or the "civil script" of Peter the Great (1672-1725) was adapated to write Bulgarian as a result of the influence of printed books from Russia. During the 19th century a number of versions of this alphabet containing between 28 and 44 letters were used. In the 1870s a version of the alphabet with 32 letters proposed by Marin Drinov became widely used. This version remained in use until the orthographic reform of 1945 when the letters yat (Ѣ ѣ), and yus (Ѫ ѫ) were removed from the alphabet.
With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek scripts.

Text sample

(The Lord's Prayer in Bulgarian)

Отче наш
Отче наш, Който си на небесата!
Да се свети Твоето име,
да дойде Твоето Царство,
да бъде Твоята воля,
както на небето, тъй и на земята;
насъщния ни хляб дай ни днес,
и прости нам дълговете ни,
както и ние прощаваме на нашите длъжници,
и не въведи нас в изкушение,
но избави ни от лукавия;
защото Твое е царството,
и силата, и славата вовеки.
Амин.

Video of a news segment

Sources & Further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_phonology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_grammar
https://omniglot.com/writing/bulgarian.htm
https://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Bulgarian_language.html

Previous LotWs

German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay | Finnish | French | Nepali | Czech | Dutch | Tamil | Spanish | Turkish | Polish | Frisian | Navajo | Basque | Zenen| Kazakh | Hungarian | Greek | Mongolian | Japanese | Maltese | Welsh | Persian/Farsi | ASL | Anything | Guaraní | Catalan | Urdu | Danish | Sami | Indonesian | Hawaiian | Manx | Latin | Hindi | Estonian | Xhosa | Tagalog | Serbian | Māori | Mayan | Uyghur | Lithuanian | Afrikaans | Georgian | Norwegian | Scots Gaelic | Marathi | Cantonese | Ancient Greek | American | Mi'kmaq | Burmese | Galician | Faroese | Tibetan | Ukrainian | Somali | Chechen | Albanian | Yiddish | Vietnamese | Esperanto | Italian | Iñupiaq | Khoisan | Breton | Pashto | Pirahã | Thai | Ainu | Mohawk | Armenian | Uzbek| Nahuatl | Ewe | Romanian | Kurdish | Quechua | Cherokee |Kannada | Adyghe | Hmong | Inuktitut | Punjabi | Slovenian | Guaraní II | Hausa | Basque II| Georgian II| Sami II | Kyrgyz | Samoan | Latvian | Central Alaskan Yup'ik | Cape Verdean Creole | Irish II | Amharic | Cebuano | Akkadian | Bengali | Rohingya | Okinawan | Ojibwe | Assyrian Neo-Aramaic | Tahitian | Greenlandic | Kalmyk | Coptic | Tsez | Warlpiri | Carib | Hopi | Gothic | Ugaritic | Jarawa | German II | Bilua | Scots | Hokkien | Icelandic II | Sranan Tongo | Punjabi II | Burushaski | Dzongkha | Russian II | Hebrew II |Tundra Nenets | Korean II | Oneida | Arabic II | Telugu | Swahili II | Aymara | Standard Chinese | Cheyenne | European Portuguese | Kalaw Lagaw Ya | Swedish II | Pali | Zulu II| Paiwan | Malay II | Finnish II | French II | Nepali II | Lepcha | English | Czech II | Central Atlas Tamazight | Dutch II | Alabama | Tamil II | Chukchi | Turkish II | Sign Language Special | Spanish II | Tuvan | Polish II | Yakkha | Frisian II | Moloko | Navajo II | Palula | Kazakh II | Chakali | Hungarian II | Greek II | Mongolian II | Japanese II | Maltese II | Mende | Welsh II | Tulu | Gibberish | Persian II | Anything II | Konkani | Azerbaijani | Mam | Catalan II | Barry Olsen, interpreter, AMA | Ket | Urdu II | Danish II | Indonesian II | Hawaiian II | Slovak | Manx II | Latin II | Hindi II | Estonian II | Xhosa II | Tagalog II | Terêna | Serbian II | Sylheti

The site talkie is one of the biggest names out there for practicing your language skills online with native speakers. Designed for language learners to find native speaking teachers and exchange partners via Skype, the free version of their service includes some great benefits, including access to their learner community. This access allows you to connect with other learners and arrange informal language exchanges via Skype or email.

Websites for Finding Free Language Courses

When most of us think about taking a language course, we’re picturing a classroom full of wobbly desks and chalkboard dust, plus a three- or four-digit tuition fee. For those who are looking for all the structure and formality of a traditional course but aren’t sure about stepping back into the classroom or forking over those fees, check out some of these free online language courses, available in nearly as many languages as there are learners.

1. Live Lingua

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Heading off the list is Live Lingua, the Internet’s largest collection of free public domain language learning materials, according to the site itself. It’s not hard to believe. There are thousands of free e-books, audio recordings and foreign language video materials available in over 130 different languages.
It’s also one of the most user-friendly websites hosting the US Foreign Service Institute’s public domain language courses, which were developed by the US Department of State for expert language learning and are now freely available on various sites across the Web.

2.Learn language .com

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Learn language.com is a website with links to extensive resources on and in 19 different languages. You can learn over 1400 words in your target language for free with their vocabulary lists and verb conjugation charts, and there’s plenty more free learning to be done in the nine languages in which Learn language.com maintains its own Web-based courses.

3. Open Culture

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Open Culture is an e-learning website that hosts “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” and when it comes to languages, they’re not bluffing. Open Culture maintains a list of free courses in 48 languages across the Web, from Amharic to Yiddish. With these collected resources from governments, universities and respected private institutions across the world, you’re sure to find free, high-quality lessons in 48 languages that are learned far and wide.

4. Surface Languages

Surface Languages maintains an extensive database of free online learning resources, as well as its own beginner audio courses in Italian, Portuguese, French and Polish. Additionally, there’s a handy section with audio and flashcards in Afrikaans and Romanian, and a “recently added” sidebar that shows you the latest additions to their ever-growing language learning library.

5. Internet Polyglot

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Internet Polyglot offers many of the same kinds of resources as the sites listed above, with the awesome added advantage of its “quick start menu,” which allows you to choose not only what language you’re learning but also what language you’re learning it in. Do you already speak Spanish and want to get started on Portuguese? Just select “Spanish” for the language you speak, and get started with a composite mental exercise to strengthen one language while building another.

6. Headstart2 Defense Language Institute

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The Defense Language Institute (DELI), like the Foreign Service Institute, is a government service that makes high-quality language learning programs available for free. Headstart2 is one of the best and most easily navigable services hosting complete DELI courses. After quickly registering for an account, you’ll be launched straight into interactive lessons with maps, images, sound, cultural notes and more.

Websites with Video-based Language Learning Content

The science shows that switching on the TV is great for language learning. If you want your brain to soak up the sights and sounds of what actual everyday speech sounds like and how it’s used in your target language, tune in and kick back for some quality input-based learning with these websites.

7. Streetcar

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For the tube-loving language learners out there, Streetlamps hard to beat. Although it’s not necessarily designed as a language learning tool, it offers free TV streaming from over 100 countries around the world in nearly as many languages.
This is an especially exciting resource if you’re learning a less commonly studied language with less widely available video material. Tuning into your favorite Albanian or Nepali TV station can easily make up for the lack of other learning materials in your language.

8. Fluent U

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Fluent U is a totally different world of language learning.
If you’re into learning with video, TV and movies (which you definitely should be), you’ve got to at least grab your free 15-day trial and spend a couple weeks binge-learning here with our video and audio libraries, which feature many of the same things native speakers of your target language are watching in their sweatpants while eating potato chips at home.
Two main features set Fluent U apart from the others on this list. The first is the sheer range of available content: movies, news, documentaries, cartoons, music videos, funny YouTube videos or whatever else you like to watch, it’s there.
The second is that it uses real-world video. Instead of contriving some slowly-spoken and articulately-pronounced (and usually terribly boring) videos for learners, Fluent U directs you to authentic video content appropriate to your level with built-in learning tools that ensure you can keep up.
Starting out with the free trial will give you a priceless learning boost, and if you subscribe after the trial period you’ll be paying less monthly for unlimited video content than you’d be shoveling out hourly for lessons with even the most affordable tutors.
Here’s just a brief taste of the content you’ll find on Fluent U:
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Fluent U App Browse Screen.
Fluent U has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.
Didn’t catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.
​
Interactive transcript for Carlos Beaut song.
You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with Effluents “learn mode.” Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
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Fluent U Has Quizzes for Every Video
And Fluent U always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.
Start using Fluent U on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the Fluent U app from the iTunes store or Google Play store.

9. Innovative Language

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Since its inception in 2005, Innovative Language has striven to become one of the leading language lesson providers.
Innovative Language is a massive system of free video and audio lessons in 34 languages. It’s updated with new lessons every week, with material geared towards absolute beginners all the way up to advanced learners nearing fluency. You may recognize it from its podcast sites (for example, Portuguesepod101) These are the language-specific sites you’ll be directed to once you enter your email and pick a language. Here’s just a sampling of the many popular foreign languages they currently offer:

• Spanishpod101
• Frenchpod101
• Germanpod101
• Chineseclass101
• Russianpod101

It focuses on featuring audio and video material made by professional teachers, and it’s one of the most prolific and consistent language sites in the game. They teach grammar, vocabulary, everyday conversations, real-life situations and culture. So, basically, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Although they have a paid version of the service, thousands of professionally produced audios and videos are given absolutely free.
You can benefit from this flood of language content regardless of your state of fluency—they’ve got something for absolute beginners as well as advanced learners.

10. YouTube TV Channels

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Did you know that YouTube has an insane number of TV shows available from around the world? Just go to the International TV section and scroll through the shows sorted by language.
This one is particularly helpful for learners of Indian languages, as it includes Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and others widely spoken through the Indian subcontinent, but other options like Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Danish and more are available as well.

Massively Open Online Courses (Moo Cs) for Free Language Learning

Did we mention that we think technology is awesome? A lot of the world’s best universities agree with us. That’s why so many of them are making lesson materials and entire university courses available online for free. Here are some of the best massively open online courses for learning a language.

11. MIT Open Courseware

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MIT was one of the university hipsters making their course content available online before it was cool. Under the amazing Global Studies and Languages section of their Open Course ware website, you’ll find courses ranging from Chinese II to Contemporary French Politics, all designed to help you engage not only with the language you’re studying but also with its greater cultural context.

12. Ed X

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Ed X is one of the biggest MOOC (massive open online course) websites out there. You can find a lot of college-level courses here, created and taught by actual professors from top universities. As a language learner, you can consider taking a dedicated language class, or if you’re more advanced, taking a course in your target language. For example, right now you can sign up to take an algebra class entirely in French!
You can actually earn college credits on Ed X, through Arizona State University. Some of the courses have certificates you can get for completing them. In general, it costs money to get a verified certificate for completing a course (so make sure you check the details before you sign up), but many of the courses themselves are still free.

13. Coursers Language Learning

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The courses offered on Coursers are run by professors from world-renowned institutions, and it’s even possible to earn a certificate from many of the courses.
Coursers, another big name in online education, also maintains a Language Learning section under its online catalogue. Many of the courses will be geared toward beginners, like First Step Korean, and others will engage more generally with language learning, like the Miracles of Human Language course from Leiden University. Still other classes are taught on other topics in foreign languages, so you can learn about writing, math, engineering or literature in the foreign language you’re learning—though this approach is recommended for higher-level learners.
On Coursers, there are currently 122 classes taught in Chinese, the second most common language after English, and a long list of other languages trail after. Spanish has 79 classes. French has 41 classes. You get the idea. There are a ton of classes out there for you to try. You can even learn about entrepreneurship in Khmer!
Whatever you find here, it’s coming from a respected university or educational institute, and if it’s not on offer now, sign up to get an alert when it is!

14. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

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The OIL at Carnegie Mellon isn’t specifically made for language courses, but there are several excellent ones on offer. From elementary Spanish and French to “Arabic for Global Exchange,” you’ll find frequent courses available in the world’s biggest and most commonly learned languages.

15. Alison

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Each of the eight languages offered on Alison’s language learning platform include at least an introductory course, and others include more advanced and detailed courses in popular languages like French. Best of all, if you complete all modules and score at least 80% on all your course assignments, you’ll be rewarded with a fancy (and free) certificate!

16. The Mega List of MOOC from Web Techno and Translation

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The blog Web Techno and Translation smartly and helpfully recommends taking an MOOC given in the foreign language you’re studying, and gives you a decent list to get started on doing so. Once you’ve broken through the intermediate level and are ready to start doing more with your language skills, why not try taking a course conducted in that language? Whether you want to study Croatian history in Croatian or systems administration in Spanish, the goal is the same: by focusing on learning about a topic instead of the language itself, you’ll learn more naturally.

Free Websites for Connecting with Native Speakers of Your Language

The biggest secret to effective language learning isn’t really a secret at all: You’ve gotta talk! And who better to talk with than a native speaker?
It’s okay if you can’t hop on a plane this weekend—instead, just click over to one of these websites, where you can connect with native speakers of your target language for free.

17. talkie

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The site italki is one of the biggest names out there for practicing your language skills online with native speakers. Designed for language learners to find native speaking teachers and exchange partners via Skype, the free version of their service includes some great benefits, including access to their learner community. This access allows you to connect with other learners and arrange informal language exchanges via Skype or email. If you're looking to invest a little more to have a private tutor or teacher at some point, you can do that on talkie too.

18. The Polyglot Club

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The Polyglot Club is an awesome all-purpose language learning website with tons of free features for connecting you with native speakers of your target language. You can find language exchange partners, submit written texts for correction, hang out in chat rooms, browse through target language videos and even attend their language events and meetups for connecting with even more learners!

19. Hi Native

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Hi Native is an innovative app that takes a nontraditional approach. Rather than giving you flashcards and courses or even facilitating Skype sessions, Hi Native allows you to ask questions to native speakers of the language you’re learning. Whether it’s about the difference between two confusing words, getting a pronunciation check or figuring out how and when to use the subjunctive, just send a text and wait for a response.

20. Word2Word

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Word2Word is all about connecting the world, and they aim to do so by providing you with an insane amount of free online language learning resources. Not only are there chat rooms and meetups, but the site hosts resources on everything from typing characters in other alphabets and scripts to a Dictionary of Period Russian Names. If you’re looking for language exchange and don’t mind falling down the rabbit hole of linguistic Gerry, this is definitely the place to get started.

21. Lang-8

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For many of us, speaking comes easily, but when it comes time to put pen to paper and communicate in writing, all of a sudden we feel like we don’t speak a word of the language. Lang-8 is a community of native speakers of various world languages who work together to improve each other’s writing in languages they’re learning by offering revisions and tips on the posts made in their languages—just don’t forget to pay it forward by helping others out with your native language too!

Free Vocabulary Games and Flashcards

There are boring flashcards, and then there are the kind that turn language learning into a game and wake up the competitor in all of us. To build your vocabulary while having some fun, these sites offer some fantastic flashcard exercises and other language learning games.

22. Duo lingo

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How could we even make a list without mentioning everyone’s favorite pushy little green bird? Duo lingo user-friendly vocabulary games made language learning cool again by unlocking the power of gaming for language learning.
They use the gaming strategy to make sure you retain more of what you learn than you would from your standard, flipping-through-printed-flashcards approach. The truly dedicated will be rewarded by being asked to translate sentences of increasingly comical ridiculousness as they work up through the levels of their language.

23. Mesmerism

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Mesmerism gives you a more hands-on option for flashcard learning with its “memes.” You can use the cards provided by Mesmerism and other users, or you can create your own mnemonic devices by composing and finding images for your own cards. Somehow, repetition doesn’t seem so repetitive when you can turn all your flashcards into irreverent memes and personal in-jokes tailored to you and your own brain.

24. Digital Dialects

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For beginners and those suffering from 90s nostalgia, Digital Dialects is a techno-retro online game site with animated and interactive lessons in a couple dozen languages. Listen to the voice as it names fruits, then click them and drag them into a basket, or match English phrases to the ones being spoken in your target language. It’s a simple platform free of distraction, and it offers that j NE said quo for the Nintendo kids who still have a knack for learning in 16-bit.

General Language and Language Learning Resources

For those of us with a deep and passionate love for language and languages, we want to know everything about them. Not just how to get from the airport to your hotel or how to make small talk during your coffee break, but the details.
Who speaks the language we’re learning, and where do they speak it? What’s its history, and what can it teach us about the cultures that created it and that are created by it? These websites include the kind of encyclopedic information necessary for thorough, holistic learning, as well as free courses and learning resources.

25. Omnipotent

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If you’re learning one language or find yourself in a poly amorous love affair with all languages, Omnipotent should live on your browser’s bookmarks bar. This online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages is like the Wikipedia of all things languages and linguistics.
Not only does it provide linguistic and cultural information on hundreds of world languages, but it also offers some of its own free video lessons. Under its “courses” page, Omnipotent maintains an impressive list of links to learning resources for specific languages, most of which are free.

26. BBC Languages

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Another goldmine for the language and linguistics geeks in the room, BBC Languages offers free information and learner resources for 40 world languages. While some are more thorough than others, the seven languages listed on their main Languages homepage include extensive links to target language media (like TV streaming services, online newspapers and magazines in French, Chinese and Greek). The kinds of resources offered vary from language to language, but most include overviews and phrasebooks, as well as BBC’s own introductory lessons, on-site courses and links to help you find classes in your area.

27. Thought Co.

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Thought Co. provides a long list of language learning resources like many others on this list, but also has its own sites dedicated to several of the languages on its list. About French, for example, includes educational videos, blog posts on French learning topics and guides to language essentials. About German offers much of the same. Explore multiple languages and find links to extensive resources across the Web.

28. Wiki travel Phrasebooks

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You don’t have to be planning a vacation to take advantage of Wiki travel! The user-maintained wiki has a compilation of travel phrasebooks, ranging from well-known world languages like Arabic and Portuguese to less popular choices like Kannada and Parliament.
Even some of the most skeleton-like articles on languages like Zulu include guides to pronunciation, basic phrases, numbers, time, transportation, eating, shopping and common problem-solving vocabulary, making it an incredible resource for practically-inclined learners who just want to get out and use their language.

Free Language Learning Websites for Specific Languages

Some of the best free sites out there are the ones that focus on a single language, building an entire website packed with information, lessons and more for learners who know what language they want and know they don’t want to break the bank learning it. Here are some of our favorite websites for learning that one language.
French
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29. The French Experiment — Free French lessons, stories, reviews and cats!
30. London Speaks French — Vocabulary and grammar lessons with a helpful pronunciation tool to compare your voice to natives’ voices.
For dedicated Francophile looking to max out their online learning time, browse through some of these best websites to learn French.
German
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31. Deutschmark.com — With 10 beginner lessons and 24 advanced grammar lessons, this free resource is a great starting point for beginning learners and those intimidated by the infamously frustrating German grammar.
32. Deutschmark — This greeter Online-Deutschmarks has helpful audio clips and interactive lessons, as well as links to in-person courses in Berlin and other parts of Central Europe.
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33. Deutschmark Welles — The German international broadcast’s online Deutschmark offers free courses by level, from beginner to advanced.
For video-loving learners, don’t forget about all the great YouTube videos for German learners out there!
Spanish
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34. Study Spanish.com — Don’t be fooled by the simple name. With exhaustive information and lessons on all aspects of the language, it’s a Spanish linguistic powerhouse and a goldmine for learners.
35. Spanish Games — Learn Spanish with fun, interactive vocabulary games.
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36. 123 Teach Me — A mega-resource for all things Spanish, including free online games, courses, word of the day and a handy verb conjugation.
If you like thinking outside the box when it comes to language learning, you can also try out some nontraditional websites for learning Spanish.
Chinese
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37. CCTV — Chinese public television, as well as a BBC-like array of written media and resources for Chinese language learners.
38. Chinese-Tools.com — A 40-lesson online course with a learner forum and Chinese dictionary.
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39. Zhengzhou Red — In-context vocabulary and culture lessons in a conversation-like format.
More of a bookworm? Try getting started with some free and cheap Chinese e-books!
Japanese
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40. Japanese Online — A simple beginner’s resource with four units on the basics, topic modifiers, sentence structures and Japanese traditions.
41. Easy Japanese — Flashcards and games geared toward writing and speaking the language.
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42. NH World — This Japanese public broadcaster maintains its own online magazine, including language lessons, audio clips and video resources for learners.
Is it grammar that’s got you down? Check out these websites for mastering your Japanese grammar.
Arabic
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43. Arabic Online — This website from the European Union aims to help beginners familiarize themselves with the Arabic language, and offers several paid courses beyond the beginner level.
44. Arabic Keyboard — Aside from helping you with tricky Arabic script and the grammar that goes along with it, this site includes super helpful, practical information about the Arabic language, its dialects and where and how to use them.
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45. Arabic Reading Course — For absolute beginners, this letter-by-letter course is the perfect jump-start to get you reading and writing in Arabic.
Portuguese
46. Learn Portuguese with Rafa — Beyond introductory lessons on things like counting and ordering food, Rafa maintains a sidebar full of links on everything from traditional recipes to doing business in Portuguese.
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47. Tod Munro Pod — An exciting So Paulo-based podcast with basic tips in English and the rest in beautiful Brazilian Portuguese.
48. Practice Portuguese — For those looking to learn Iberian (European) Portuguese, get started with the free Practice Portuguese Podcast.
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49. Really Learn Portuguese — Podcasts and flashcards for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, all brought to you by two friendly Brazilians.
These 49 websites prove it: Money is no object for determined language learners.
The first step is just clicking one of the links above.
Haven’t started learning any one language yet? Choose your language and head over to Omnipotent or BBC Languages to read up on it. Build up your basic vocab with a flashcard app or your favorite language game, immerse your brain in quality video content and connect with natives around the world via Skype or your social network of choice.
With money concerns firmly out of the picture, now all you need to do is make the time for language learning, and you’re all set to start heading towards fluency!

Websites for Finding Free Language Courses
When most of us think about taking a language course, we’re picturing a classroom full of wobbly desks and chalkboard dust, plus a three- or four-digit tuition fee. For those who are looking for all the structure and formality of a traditional course but aren’t sure about stepping back into the classroom or forking over those fees, check out some of these free online language courses, available in nearly as many languages as there are learners.
1. Live Lingua
Heading off the list is Live Lingua, the Internet’s largest collection of free public domain language learning materials, according to the site itself. It’s not hard to believe. There are thousands of free e-books, audio recordings and foreign language video materials available in over 130 different languages.
It’s also one of the most user-friendly websites hosting the US Foreign Service Institute’s public domain language courses, which were developed by the US Department of State for expert language learning and are now freely available on various sites across the Web.
2.Learn language .com
Learn language.com is a website with links to extensive resources on and in 19 different languages. You can learn over 1400 words in your target language for free with their vocabulary lists and verb conjugation charts, and there’s plenty more free learning to be done in the nine languages in which Learn language.com maintains its own Web-based courses.
3. Open Culture
Open Culture is an e-learning website that hosts “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” and when it comes to languages, they’re not bluffing. Open Culture maintains a list of free courses in 48 languages across the Web, from Amharic to Yiddish. With these collected resources from governments, universities and respected private institutions across the world, you’re sure to find free, high-quality lessons in 48 languages that are learned far and wide.
4. Surface Languages
Surface Languages maintains an extensive database of free online learning resources, as well as its own beginner audio courses in Italian, Portuguese, French and Polish. Additionally, there’s a handy section with audio and flashcards in Afrikaans and Romanian, and a “recently added” sidebar that shows you the latest additions to their ever-growing language learning library.
5. Internet Polyglot
Internet Polyglot offers many of the same kinds of resources as the sites listed above, with the awesome added advantage of its “quick start menu,” which allows you to choose not only what language you’re learning but also what language you’re learning it in. Do you already speak Spanish and want to get started on Portuguese? Just select “Spanish” for the language you speak, and get started with a composite mental exercise to strengthen one language while building another.
6. Headstart2 Defense Language Institute
The Defense Language Institute (DELI), like the Foreign Service Institute, is a government service that makes high-quality language learning programs available for free. Headstart2 is one of the best and most easily navigable services hosting complete DELI courses. After quickly registering for an account, you’ll be launched straight into interactive lessons with maps, images, sound, cultural notes and more.
Websites with Video-based Language Learning Content
The science shows that switching on the TV is great for language learning. If you want your brain to soak up the sights and sounds of what actual everyday speech sounds like and how it’s used in your target language, tune in and kick back for some quality input-based learning with these websites.
7. Streetcar
For the tube-loving language learners out there, Streetlamps hard to beat. Although it’s not necessarily designed as a language learning tool, it offers free TV streaming from over 100 countries around the world in nearly as many languages.
This is an especially exciting resource if you’re learning a less commonly studied language with less widely available video material. Tuning into your favorite Albanian or Nepali TV station can easily make up for the lack of other learning materials in your language.
8. Fluent U
Fluent U is a totally different world of language learning.
If you’re into learning with video, TV and movies (which you definitely should be), you’ve got to at least grab your free 15-day trial and spend a couple weeks binge-learning here with our video and audio libraries, which feature many of the same things native speakers of your target language are watching in their sweatpants while eating potato chips at home.
Two main features set Fluent U apart from the others on this list. The first is the sheer range of available content: movies, news, documentaries, cartoons, music videos, funny YouTube videos or whatever else you like to watch, it’s there.
The second is that it uses real-world video. Instead of contriving some slowly-spoken and articulately-pronounced (and usually terribly boring) videos for learners, Fluent U directs you to authentic video content appropriate to your level with built-in learning tools that ensure you can keep up.
Starting out with the free trial will give you a priceless learning boost, and if you subscribe after the trial period you’ll be paying less monthly for unlimited video content than you’d be shoveling out hourly for lessons with even the most affordable tutors.
Here’s just a brief taste of the content you’ll find on Fluent U:
Fluent U App Browse Screen.
Fluent U has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.
Didn’t catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.
Interactive transcript for Carlos Beaut song.
You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with Effluents “learn mode.” Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
Fluent U Has Quizzes for Every Video
And Fluent U always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.
Start using Fluent U on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the Fluent U app from the iTunes store or Google Play store.
9. Innovative Language
Since its inception in 2005, Innovative Language has striven to become one of the leading language lesson providers.
Innovative Language is a massive system of free video and audio lessons in 34 languages. It’s updated with new lessons every week, with material geared towards absolute beginners all the way up to advanced learners nearing fluency. You may recognize it from its podcast sites (for example, Portuguesepod101) These are the language-specific sites you’ll be directed to once you enter your email and pick a language. Here’s just a sampling of the many popular foreign languages they currently offer:

• Spanishpod101
• Frenchpod101
• Germanpod101
• Chineseclass101
• Russianpod101

It focuses on featuring audio and video material made by professional teachers, and it’s one of the most prolific and consistent language sites in the game. They teach grammar, vocabulary, everyday conversations, real-life situations and culture. So, basically, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Although they have a paid version of the service, thousands of professionally produced audios and videos are given absolutely free.
You can benefit from this flood of language content regardless of your state of fluency—they’ve got something for absolute beginners as well as advanced learners.
10. YouTube TV Channels
Did you know that YouTube has an insane number of TV shows available from around the world? Just go to the International TV section and scroll through the shows sorted by language.
This one is particularly helpful for learners of Indian languages, as it includes Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and others widely spoken through the Indian subcontinent, but other options like Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Danish and more are available as well.
Massively Open Online Courses (Moo Cs) for Free Language Learning
Did we mention that we think technology is awesome? A lot of the world’s best universities agree with us. That’s why so many of them are making lesson materials and entire university courses available online for free. Here are some of the best massively open online courses for learning a language.
11. MIT Open Courseware
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MIT was one of the university hipsters making their course content available online before it was cool. Under the amazing Global Studies and Languages section of their Open Course ware website, you’ll find courses ranging from Chinese II to Contemporary French Politics, all designed to help you engage not only with the language you’re studying but also with its greater cultural context.

1. Ed X

📷
Ed X is one of the biggest MOOC (massive open online course) websites out there. You can find a lot of college-level courses here, created and taught by actual professors from top universities. As a language learner, you can consider taking a dedicated language class, or if you’re more advanced, taking a course in your target language. For example, right now you can sign up to take an algebra class entirely in French!
You can actually earn college credits on Ed X, through Arizona State University. Some of the courses have certificates you can get for completing them. In general, it costs money to get a verified certificate for completing a course (so make sure you check the details before you sign up), but many of the courses themselves are still free.
13. Coursers Language Learning
📷
The courses offered on Coursers are run by professors from world-renowned institutions, and it’s even possible to earn a certificate from many of the courses.
Coursers, another big name in online education, also maintains a Language Learning section under its online catalogue. Many of the courses will be geared toward beginners, like First Step Korean, and others will engage more generally with language learning, like the Miracles of Human Language course from Leiden University. Still other classes are taught on other topics in foreign languages, so you can learn about writing, math, engineering or literature in the foreign language you’re learning—though this approach is recommended for higher-level learners.
On Coursers, there are currently 122 classes taught in Chinese, the second most common language after English, and a long list of other languages trail after. Spanish has 79 classes. French has 41 classes. You get the idea. There are a ton of classes out there for you to try. You can even learn about entrepreneurship in Khmer!
Whatever you find here, it’s coming from a respected university or educational institute, and if it’s not on offer now, sign up to get an alert when it is!
14. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
📷
The OIL at Carnegie Mellon isn’t specifically made for language courses, but there are several excellent ones on offer. From elementary Spanish and French to “Arabic for Global Exchange,” you’ll find frequent courses available in the world’s biggest and most commonly learned languages.
15. Alison
📷
Each of the eight languages offered on Alison’s language learning platform include at least an introductory course, and others include more advanced and detailed courses in popular languages like French. Best of all, if you complete all modules and score at least 80% on all your course assignments, you’ll be rewarded with a fancy (and free) certificate!
16. The Mega List of MOOC from Web Techno and Translation
📷
The blog Web Techno and Translation smartly and helpfully recommends taking an MOOC given in the foreign language you’re studying, and gives you a decent list to get started on doing so. Once you’ve broken through the intermediate level and are ready to start doing more with your language skills, why not try taking a course conducted in that language? Whether you want to study Croatian history in Croatian or systems administration in Spanish, the goal is the same: by focusing on learning about a topic instead of the language itself, you’ll learn more naturally.
Free Websites for Connecting with Native Speakers of Your Language
The biggest secret to effective language learning isn’t really a secret at all: You’ve gotta talk! And who better to talk with than a native speaker?
It’s okay if you can’t hop on a plane this weekend—instead, just click over to one of these websites, where you can connect with native speakers of your target language for free.
17. talkie
📷
The site italki is one of the biggest names out there for practicing your language skills online with native speakers. Designed for language learners to find native speaking teachers and exchange partners via Skype, the free version of their service includes some great benefits, including access to their learner community. This access allows you to connect with other learners and arrange informal language exchanges via Skype or email. If you're looking to invest a little more to have a private tutor or teacher at some point, you can do that on talkie too.
18. The Polyglot Club
📷
The Polyglot Club is an awesome all-purpose language learning website with tons of free features for connecting you with native speakers of your target language. You can find language exchange partners, submit written texts for correction, hang out in chat rooms, browse through target language videos and even attend their language events and meetups for connecting with even more learners!
19. Hi Native
📷
Hi Native is an innovative app that takes a nontraditional approach. Rather than giving you flashcards and courses or even facilitating Skype sessions, Hi Native allows you to ask questions to native speakers of the language you’re learning. Whether it’s about the difference between two confusing words, getting a pronunciation check or figuring out how and when to use the subjunctive, just send a text and wait for a response.
20. Word2Word
Word2Word is all about connecting the world, and they aim to do so by providing you with an insane amount of free online language learning resources. Not only are there chat rooms and meetups, but the site hosts resources on everything from typing characters in other alphabets and scripts to a Dictionary of Period Russian Names. If you’re looking for language exchange and don’t mind falling down the rabbit hole of linguistic Gerry, this is definitely the place to get started.
21. Lang-8
For many of us, speaking comes easily, but when it comes time to put pen to paper and communicate in writing, all of a sudden we feel like we don’t speak a word of the language. Lang-8 is a community of native speakers of various world languages who work together to improve each other’s writing in languages they’re learning by offering revisions and tips on the posts made in their languages—just don’t forget to pay it forward by helping others out with your native language too!
Free Vocabulary Games and Flashcards
There are boring flashcards, and then there are the kind that turn language learning into a game and wake up the competitor in all of us. To build your vocabulary while having some fun, these sites offer some fantastic flashcard exercises and other language learning games.
22. Duo lingo
How could we even make a list without mentioning everyone’s favorite pushy little green bird? Duo lingo user-friendly vocabulary games made language learning cool again by unlocking the power of gaming for language learning.
They use the gaming strategy to make sure you retain more of what you learn than you would from your standard, flipping-through-printed-flashcards approach. The truly dedicated will be rewarded by being asked to translate sentences of increasingly comical ridiculousness as they work up through the levels of their language.
23. Mesmerism
Mesmerism gives you a more hands-on option for flashcard learning with its “memes.” You can use the cards provided by Mesmerism and other users, or you can create your own mnemonic devices by composing and finding images for your own cards. Somehow, repetition doesn’t seem so repetitive when you can turn all your flashcards into irreverent memes and personal in-jokes tailored to you and your own brain.
24. Digital Dialects
For beginners and those suffering from 90s nostalgia, Digital Dialects is a techno-retro online game site with animated and interactive lessons in a couple dozen languages. Listen to the voice as it names fruits, then click them and drag them into a basket, or match English phrases to the ones being spoken in your target language. It’s a simple platform free of distraction, and it offers that j NE said quo for the Nintendo kids who still have a knack for learning in 16-bit.
General Language and Language Learning Resources
For those of us with a deep and passionate love for language and languages, we want to know everything about them. Not just how to get from the airport to your hotel or how to make small talk during your coffee break, but the details.
Who speaks the language we’re learning, and where do they speak it? What’s its history, and what can it teach us about the cultures that created it and that are created by it? These websites include the kind of encyclopedic information necessary for thorough, holistic learning, as well as free courses and learning resources.
25. Omnipotent
If you’re learning one language or find yourself in a poly amorous love affair with all languages, Omnipotent should live on your browser’s bookmarks bar. This online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages is like the Wikipedia of all things languages and linguistics.
Not only does it provide linguistic and cultural information on hundreds of world languages, but it also offers some of its own free video lessons. Under its “courses” page, Omnipotent maintains an impressive list of links to learning resources for specific languages, most of which are free.
26. BBC Languages
Another goldmine for the language and linguistics geeks in the room, BBC Languages offers free information and learner resources for 40 world languages. While some are more thorough than others, the seven languages listed on their main Languages homepage include extensive links to target language media (like TV streaming services, online newspapers and magazines in French, Chinese and Greek). The kinds of resources offered vary from language to language, but most include overviews and phrasebooks, as well as BBC’s own introductory lessons, on-site courses and links to help you find classes in your area.
27. Thought Co.
Thought Co. provides a long list of language learning resources like many others on this list, but also has its own sites dedicated to several of the languages on its list. About French, for example, includes educational videos, blog posts on French learning topics and guides to language essentials. About German offers much of the same. Explore multiple languages and find links to extensive resources across the Web.
28. Wiki travel Phrasebooks
You don’t have to be planning a vacation to take advantage of Wiki travel! The user-maintained wiki has a compilation of travel phrasebooks, ranging from well-known world languages like Arabic and Portuguese to less popular choices like Kannada and Parliament.
Even some of the most skeleton-like articles on languages like Zulu include guides to pronunciation, basic phrases, numbers, time, transportation, eating, shopping and common problem-solving vocabulary, making it an incredible resource for practically-inclined learners who just want to get out and use their language.
Free Language Learning Websites for Specific Languages
Some of the best free sites out there are the ones that focus on a single language, building an entire website packed with information, lessons and more for learners who know what language they want and know they don’t want to break the bank learning it. Here are some of our favorite websites for learning that one language.
French
29. The French Experiment — Free French lessons, stories, reviews and cats!
30. London Speaks French — Vocabulary and grammar lessons with a helpful pronunciation tool to compare your voice to natives’ voices.
For dedicated Francophile looking to max out their online learning time, browse through some of these best websites to learn French.
German
31. Deutschmark.com — With 10 beginner lessons and 24 advanced grammar lessons, this free resource is a great starting point for beginning learners and those intimidated by the infamously frustrating German grammar.
32. Deutschmark — This greeter Online-Deutschmarks has helpful audio clips and interactive lessons, as well as links to in-person courses in Berlin and other parts of Central Europe.
33. Deutschmark Welles — The German international broadcast’s online Deutschmark offers free courses by level, from beginner to advanced.
For video-loving learners, don’t forget about all the great YouTube videos for German learners out there!
Spanish
34. Study Spanish.com — Don’t be fooled by the simple name. With exhaustive information and lessons on all aspects of the language, it’s a Spanish linguistic powerhouse and a goldmine for learners.
35. Spanish Games — Learn Spanish with fun, interactive vocabulary games.
36. 123 Teach Me — A mega-resource for all things Spanish, including free online games, courses, word of the day and a handy verb conjugation.
If you like thinking outside the box when it comes to language learning, you can also try out some nontraditional websites for learning Spanish.
Chinese
37. CCTV — Chinese public television, as well as a BBC-like array of written media and resources for Chinese language learners.
38. Chinese-Tools.com — A 40-lesson online course with a learner forum and Chinese dictionary.
39. Zhengzhou Red — In-context vocabulary and culture lessons in a conversation-like format.
More of a bookworm? Try getting started with some free and cheap Chinese e-books!
Japanese
40. Japanese Online — A simple beginner’s resource with four units on the basics, topic modifiers, sentence structures and Japanese traditions.
41. Easy Japanese — Flashcards and games geared toward writing and speaking the language.
42. NH World — This Japanese public broadcaster maintains its own online magazine, including language lessons, audio clips and video resources for learners.
Is it grammar that’s got you down? Check out these websites for mastering your Japanese grammar.
Arabic
43. Arabic Online — This website from the European Union aims to help beginners familiarize themselves with the Arabic language, and offers several paid courses beyond the beginner level.
44. Arabic Keyboard — Aside from helping you with tricky Arabic script and the grammar that goes along with it, this site includes super helpful, practical information about the Arabic language, its dialects and where and how to use them.
45. Arabic Reading Course — For absolute beginners, this letter-by-letter course is the perfect jump-start to get you reading and writing in Arabic.
Portuguese
46. Learn Portuguese with Rafa — Beyond introductory lessons on things like counting and ordering food, Rafa maintains a sidebar full of links on everything from traditional recipes to doing business in Portuguese.
47. Tod Munro Pod — An exciting So Paulo-based podcast with basic tips in English and the rest in beautiful Brazilian Portuguese.
48. Practice Portuguese — For those looking to learn Iberian (European) Portuguese, get started with the free Practice Portuguese Podcast.
49. Really Learn Portuguese — Podcasts and flashcards for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, all brought to you by two friendly Brazilians.
These 49 websites prove it: Money is no object for determined language learners.
The first step is just clicking one of the links above.
Haven’t started learning any one language yet? Choose your language and head over to Omnipotent or BBC Languages to read up on it. Build up your basic vocab with a flashcard app or your favorite language game, immerse your brain in quality video content and connect with natives around the world via Skype or your social network of choice.
With money concerns firmly out of the picture, now all you need to do is make the time for language learning, and you’re all set to start heading towards fluency!

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Websites for Finding Free Language Courses
When most of us think about taking a language course, we’re picturing a classroom full of wobbly desks and chalkboard dust, plus a three- or four-digit tuition fee. For those who are looking for all the structure and formality of a traditional course but aren’t sure about stepping back into the classroom or forking over those fees, check out some of these free online language courses, available in nearly as many languages as there are learners.
1. Live Lingua
Heading off the list is Live Lingua, the Internet’s largest collection of free public domain language learning materials, according to the site itself. It’s not hard to believe. There are thousands of free e-books, audio recordings and foreign language video materials available in over 130 different languages.
It’s also one of the most user-friendly websites hosting the US Foreign Service Institute’s public domain language courses, which were developed by the US Department of State for expert language learning and are now freely available on various sites across the Web.
2.Learn language .com
Learn language.com is a website with links to extensive resources on and in 19 different languages. You can learn over 1400 words in your target language for free with their vocabulary lists and verb conjugation charts, and there’s plenty more free learning to be done in the nine languages in which Learn language.com maintains its own Web-based courses.
3. Open Culture
Open Culture is an e-learning website that hosts “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” and when it comes to languages, they’re not bluffing. Open Culture maintains a list of free courses in 48 languages across the Web, from Amharic to Yiddish. With these collected resources from governments, universities and respected private institutions across the world, you’re sure to find free, high-quality lessons in 48 languages that are learned far and wide.
4. Surface Languages
Surface Languages maintains an extensive database of free online learning resources, as well as its own beginner audio courses in Italian, Portuguese, French and Polish. Additionally, there’s a handy section with audio and flashcards in Afrikaans and Romanian, and a “recently added” sidebar that shows you the latest additions to their ever-growing language learning library.
5. Internet Polyglot
Internet Polyglot offers many of the same kinds of resources as the sites listed above, with the awesome added advantage of its “quick start menu,” which allows you to choose not only what language you’re learning but also what language you’re learning it in. Do you already speak Spanish and want to get started on Portuguese? Just select “Spanish” for the language you speak, and get started with a composite mental exercise to strengthen one language while building another.
6. Headstart2 Defense Language Institute
The Defense Language Institute (DELI), like the Foreign Service Institute, is a government service that makes high-quality language learning programs available for free. Headstart2 is one of the best and most easily navigable services hosting complete DELI courses. After quickly registering for an account, you’ll be launched straight into interactive lessons with maps, images, sound, cultural notes and more.
Websites with Video-based Language Learning Content
The science shows that switching on the TV is great for language learning. If you want your brain to soak up the sights and sounds of what actual everyday speech sounds like and how it’s used in your target language, tune in and kick back for some quality input-based learning with these websites.
7. Streetcar
For the tube-loving language learners out there, Streetlamps hard to beat. Although it’s not necessarily designed as a language learning tool, it offers free TV streaming from over 100 countries around the world in nearly as many languages.
This is an especially exciting resource if you’re learning a less commonly studied language with less widely available video material. Tuning into your favorite Albanian or Nepali TV station can easily make up for the lack of other learning materials in your language.
8. Fluent U
Fluent U is a totally different world of language learning.
If you’re into learning with video, TV and movies (which you definitely should be), you’ve got to at least grab your free 15-day trial and spend a couple weeks binge-learning here with our video and audio libraries, which feature many of the same things native speakers of your target language are watching in their sweatpants while eating potato chips at home.
Two main features set Fluent U apart from the others on this list. The first is the sheer range of available content: movies, news, documentaries, cartoons, music videos, funny YouTube videos or whatever else you like to watch, it’s there.
The second is that it uses real-world video. Instead of contriving some slowly-spoken and articulately-pronounced (and usually terribly boring) videos for learners, Fluent U directs you to authentic video content appropriate to your level with built-in learning tools that ensure you can keep up.
Starting out with the free trial will give you a priceless learning boost, and if you subscribe after the trial period you’ll be paying less monthly for unlimited video content than you’d be shoveling out hourly for lessons with even the most affordable tutors.
Here’s just a brief taste of the content you’ll find on Fluent U:
Fluent U App Browse Screen.
Fluent U has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.
Didn’t catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.
Interactive transcript for Carlos Beaut song.
You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with Effluents “learn mode.” Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
Fluent U Has Quizzes for Every Video
And Fluent U always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.
Start using Fluent U on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the Fluent U app from the iTunes store or Google Play store.
9. Innovative Language
Since its inception in 2005, Innovative Language has striven to become one of the leading language lesson providers.
Innovative Language is a massive system of free video and audio lessons in 34 languages. It’s updated with new lessons every week, with material geared towards absolute beginners all the way up to advanced learners nearing fluency. You may recognize it from its podcast sites (for example, Portuguesepod101) These are the language-specific sites you’ll be directed to once you enter your email and pick a language. Here’s just a sampling of the many popular foreign languages they currently offer:

• Spanishpod101
• Frenchpod101
• Germanpod101
• Chineseclass101
• Russianpod101

It focuses on featuring audio and video material made by professional teachers, and it’s one of the most prolific and consistent language sites in the game. They teach grammar, vocabulary, everyday conversations, real-life situations and culture. So, basically, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Although they have a paid version of the service, thousands of professionally produced audios and videos are given absolutely free.
You can benefit from this flood of language content regardless of your state of fluency—they’ve got something for absolute beginners as well as advanced learners.
10. YouTube TV Channels
Did you know that YouTube has an insane number of TV shows available from around the world? Just go to the International TV section and scroll through the shows sorted by language.
This one is particularly helpful for learners of Indian languages, as it includes Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and others widely spoken through the Indian subcontinent, but other options like Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Danish and more are available as well.
Massively Open Online Courses (Moo Cs) for Free Language Learning
Did we mention that we think technology is awesome? A lot of the world’s best universities agree with us. That’s why so many of them are making lesson materials and entire university courses available online for free. Here are some of the best massively open online courses for learning a language.
11. MIT Open Courseware
📷
MIT was one of the university hipsters making their course content available online before it was cool. Under the amazing Global Studies and Languages section of their Open Course ware website, you’ll find courses ranging from Chinese II to Contemporary French Politics, all designed to help you engage not only with the language you’re studying but also with its greater cultural context.

1. Ed X

📷
Ed X is one of the biggest MOOC (massive open online course) websites out there. You can find a lot of college-level courses here, created and taught by actual professors from top universities. As a language learner, you can consider taking a dedicated language class, or if you’re more advanced, taking a course in your target language. For example, right now you can sign up to take an algebra class entirely in French!
You can actually earn college credits on Ed X, through Arizona State University. Some of the courses have certificates you can get for completing them. In general, it costs money to get a verified certificate for completing a course (so make sure you check the details before you sign up), but many of the courses themselves are still free.
13. Coursers Language Learning
📷
The courses offered on Coursers are run by professors from world-renowned institutions, and it’s even possible to earn a certificate from many of the courses.
Coursers, another big name in online education, also maintains a Language Learning section under its online catalogue. Many of the courses will be geared toward beginners, like First Step Korean, and others will engage more generally with language learning, like the Miracles of Human Language course from Leiden University. Still other classes are taught on other topics in foreign languages, so you can learn about writing, math, engineering or literature in the foreign language you’re learning—though this approach is recommended for higher-level learners.
On Coursers, there are currently 122 classes taught in Chinese, the second most common language after English, and a long list of other languages trail after. Spanish has 79 classes. French has 41 classes. You get the idea. There are a ton of classes out there for you to try. You can even learn about entrepreneurship in Khmer!
Whatever you find here, it’s coming from a respected university or educational institute, and if it’s not on offer now, sign up to get an alert when it is!
14. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
📷
The OIL at Carnegie Mellon isn’t specifically made for language courses, but there are several excellent ones on offer. From elementary Spanish and French to “Arabic for Global Exchange,” you’ll find frequent courses available in the world’s biggest and most commonly learned languages.
15. Alison
📷
Each of the eight languages offered on Alison’s language learning platform include at least an introductory course, and others include more advanced and detailed courses in popular languages like French. Best of all, if you complete all modules and score at least 80% on all your course assignments, you’ll be rewarded with a fancy (and free) certificate!
16. The Mega List of MOOC from Web Techno and Translation
📷
The blog Web Techno and Translation smartly and helpfully recommends taking an MOOC given in the foreign language you’re studying, and gives you a decent list to get started on doing so. Once you’ve broken through the intermediate level and are ready to start doing more with your language skills, why not try taking a course conducted in that language? Whether you want to study Croatian history in Croatian or systems administration in Spanish, the goal is the same: by focusing on learning about a topic instead of the language itself, you’ll learn more naturally.
Free Websites for Connecting with Native Speakers of Your Language
The biggest secret to effective language learning isn’t really a secret at all: You’ve gotta talk! And who better to talk with than a native speaker?
It’s okay if you can’t hop on a plane this weekend—instead, just click over to one of these websites, where you can connect with native speakers of your target language for free.
17. talkie
📷
The site italki is one of the biggest names out there for practicing your language skills online with native speakers. Designed for language learners to find native speaking teachers and exchange partners via Skype, the free version of their service includes some great benefits, including access to their learner community. This access allows you to connect with other learners and arrange informal language exchanges via Skype or email. If you're looking to invest a little more to have a private tutor or teacher at some point, you can do that on talkie too.
18. The Polyglot Club
📷
The Polyglot Club is an awesome all-purpose language learning website with tons of free features for connecting you with native speakers of your target language. You can find language exchange partners, submit written texts for correction, hang out in chat rooms, browse through target language videos and even attend their language events and meetups for connecting with even more learners!
19. Hi Native
📷
Hi Native is an innovative app that takes a nontraditional approach. Rather than giving you flashcards and courses or even facilitating Skype sessions, Hi Native allows you to ask questions to native speakers of the language you’re learning. Whether it’s about the difference between two confusing words, getting a pronunciation check or figuring out how and when to use the subjunctive, just send a text and wait for a response.
20. Word2Word
Word2Word is all about connecting the world, and they aim to do so by providing you with an insane amount of free online language learning resources. Not only are there chat rooms and meetups, but the site hosts resources on everything from typing characters in other alphabets and scripts to a Dictionary of Period Russian Names. If you’re looking for language exchange and don’t mind falling down the rabbit hole of linguistic Gerry, this is definitely the place to get started.
21. Lang-8
For many of us, speaking comes easily, but when it comes time to put pen to paper and communicate in writing, all of a sudden we feel like we don’t speak a word of the language. Lang-8 is a community of native speakers of various world languages who work together to improve each other’s writing in languages they’re learning by offering revisions and tips on the posts made in their languages—just don’t forget to pay it forward by helping others out with your native language too!
Free Vocabulary Games and Flashcards
There are boring flashcards, and then there are the kind that turn language learning into a game and wake up the competitor in all of us. To build your vocabulary while having some fun, these sites offer some fantastic flashcard exercises and other language learning games.
22. Duo lingo
How could we even make a list without mentioning everyone’s favorite pushy little green bird? Duo lingo user-friendly vocabulary games made language learning cool again by unlocking the power of gaming for language learning.
They use the gaming strategy to make sure you retain more of what you learn than you would from your standard, flipping-through-printed-flashcards approach. The truly dedicated will be rewarded by being asked to translate sentences of increasingly comical ridiculousness as they work up through the levels of their language.
23. Mesmerism
Mesmerism gives you a more hands-on option for flashcard learning with its “memes.” You can use the cards provided by Mesmerism and other users, or you can create your own mnemonic devices by composing and finding images for your own cards. Somehow, repetition doesn’t seem so repetitive when you can turn all your flashcards into irreverent memes and personal in-jokes tailored to you and your own brain.
24. Digital Dialects
For beginners and those suffering from 90s nostalgia, Digital Dialects is a techno-retro online game site with animated and interactive lessons in a couple dozen languages. Listen to the voice as it names fruits, then click them and drag them into a basket, or match English phrases to the ones being spoken in your target language. It’s a simple platform free of distraction, and it offers that j NE said quo for the Nintendo kids who still have a knack for learning in 16-bit.
General Language and Language Learning Resources
For those of us with a deep and passionate love for language and languages, we want to know everything about them. Not just how to get from the airport to your hotel or how to make small talk during your coffee break, but the details.
Who speaks the language we’re learning, and where do they speak it? What’s its history, and what can it teach us about the cultures that created it and that are created by it? These websites include the kind of encyclopedic information necessary for thorough, holistic learning, as well as free courses and learning resources.
25. Omnipotent
If you’re learning one language or find yourself in a poly amorous love affair with all languages, Omnipotent should live on your browser’s bookmarks bar. This online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages is like the Wikipedia of all things languages and linguistics.
Not only does it provide linguistic and cultural information on hundreds of world languages, but it also offers some of its own free video lessons. Under its “courses” page, Omnipotent maintains an impressive list of links to learning resources for specific languages, most of which are free.
26. BBC Languages
Another goldmine for the language and linguistics geeks in the room, BBC Languages offers free information and learner resources for 40 world languages. While some are more thorough than others, the seven languages listed on their main Languages homepage include extensive links to target language media (like TV streaming services, online newspapers and magazines in French, Chinese and Greek). The kinds of resources offered vary from language to language, but most include overviews and phrasebooks, as well as BBC’s own introductory lessons, on-site courses and links to help you find classes in your area.
27. Thought Co.
Thought Co. provides a long list of language learning resources like many others on this list, but also has its own sites dedicated to several of the languages on its list. About French, for example, includes educational videos, blog posts on French learning topics and guides to language essentials. About German offers much of the same. Explore multiple languages and find links to extensive resources across the Web.
28. Wiki travel Phrasebooks
You don’t have to be planning a vacation to take advantage of Wiki travel! The user-maintained wiki has a compilation of travel phrasebooks, ranging from well-known world languages like Arabic and Portuguese to less popular choices like Kannada and Parliament.
Even some of the most skeleton-like articles on languages like Zulu include guides to pronunciation, basic phrases, numbers, time, transportation, eating, shopping and common problem-solving vocabulary, making it an incredible resource for practically-inclined learners who just want to get out and use their language.
Free Language Learning Websites for Specific Languages
Some of the best free sites out there are the ones that focus on a single language, building an entire website packed with information, lessons and more for learners who know what language they want and know they don’t want to break the bank learning it. Here are some of our favorite websites for learning that one language.
French
29. The French Experiment — Free French lessons, stories, reviews and cats!
30. London Speaks French — Vocabulary and grammar lessons with a helpful pronunciation tool to compare your voice to natives’ voices.
For dedicated Francophile looking to max out their online learning time, browse through some of these best websites to learn French.
German
31. Deutschmark.com — With 10 beginner lessons and 24 advanced grammar lessons, this free resource is a great starting point for beginning learners and those intimidated by the infamously frustrating German grammar.
32. Deutschmark — This greeter Online-Deutschmarks has helpful audio clips and interactive lessons, as well as links to in-person courses in Berlin and other parts of Central Europe.
33. Deutschmark Welles — The German international broadcast’s online Deutschmark offers free courses by level, from beginner to advanced.
For video-loving learners, don’t forget about all the great YouTube videos for German learners out there!
Spanish
34. Study Spanish.com — Don’t be fooled by the simple name. With exhaustive information and lessons on all aspects of the language, it’s a Spanish linguistic powerhouse and a goldmine for learners.
35. Spanish Games — Learn Spanish with fun, interactive vocabulary games.
36. 123 Teach Me — A mega-resource for all things Spanish, including free online games, courses, word of the day and a handy verb conjugation.
If you like thinking outside the box when it comes to language learning, you can also try out some nontraditional websites for learning Spanish.
Chinese
37. CCTV — Chinese public television, as well as a BBC-like array of written media and resources for Chinese language learners.
38. Chinese-Tools.com — A 40-lesson online course with a learner forum and Chinese dictionary.
39. Zhengzhou Red — In-context vocabulary and culture lessons in a conversation-like format.
More of a bookworm? Try getting started with some free and cheap Chinese e-books!
Japanese
40. Japanese Online — A simple beginner’s resource with four units on the basics, topic modifiers, sentence structures and Japanese traditions.
41. Easy Japanese — Flashcards and games geared toward writing and speaking the language.
42. NH World — This Japanese public broadcaster maintains its own online magazine, including language lessons, audio clips and video resources for learners.
Is it grammar that’s got you down? Check out these websites for mastering your Japanese grammar.
Arabic
43. Arabic Online — This website from the European Union aims to help beginners familiarize themselves with the Arabic language, and offers several paid courses beyond the beginner level.
44. Arabic Keyboard — Aside from helping you with tricky Arabic script and the grammar that goes along with it, this site includes super helpful, practical information about the Arabic language, its dialects and where and how to use them.
45. Arabic Reading Course — For absolute beginners, this letter-by-letter course is the perfect jump-start to get you reading and writing in Arabic.
Portuguese
46. Learn Portuguese with Rafa — Beyond introductory lessons on things like counting and ordering food, Rafa maintains a sidebar full of links on everything from traditional recipes to doing business in Portuguese.
47. Tod Munro Pod — An exciting So Paulo-based podcast with basic tips in English and the rest in beautiful Brazilian Portuguese.
48. Practice Portuguese — For those looking to learn Iberian (European) Portuguese, get started with the free Practice Portuguese Podcast.
49. Really Learn Portuguese — Podcasts and flashcards for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, all brought to you by two friendly Brazilians.
These 49 websites prove it: Money is no object for determined language learners.
The first step is just clicking one of the links above.
Haven’t started learning any one language yet? Choose your language and head over to Omnipotent or BBC Languages to read up on it. Build up your basic vocab with a flashcard app or your favorite language game, immerse your brain in quality video content and connect with natives around the world via Skype or your social network of choice.
With money concerns firmly out of the picture, now all you need to do is make the time for language learning, and you’re all set to start heading towards fluency!

Websites for Finding Free Language Courses
When most of us think about taking a language course, we’re picturing a classroom full of wobbly desks and chalkboard dust, plus a three- or four-digit tuition fee. For those who are looking for all the structure and formality of a traditional course but aren’t sure about stepping back into the classroom or forking over those fees, check out some of these free online language courses, available in nearly as many languages as there are learners.
1. Live Lingua
Heading off the list is Live Lingua, the Internet’s largest collection of free public domain language learning materials, according to the site itself. It’s not hard to believe. There are thousands of free e-books, audio recordings and foreign language video materials available in over 130 different languages.
It’s also one of the most user-friendly websites hosting the US Foreign Service Institute’s public domain language courses, which were developed by the US Department of State for expert language learning and are now freely available on various sites across the Web.
2.Learn language .com
Learn language.com is a website with links to extensive resources on and in 19 different languages. You can learn over 1400 words in your target language for free with their vocabulary lists and verb conjugation charts, and there’s plenty more free learning to be done in the nine languages in which Learn language.com maintains its own Web-based courses.
3. Open Culture
Open Culture is an e-learning website that hosts “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” and when it comes to languages, they’re not bluffing. Open Culture maintains a list of free courses in 48 languages across the Web, from Amharic to Yiddish. With these collected resources from governments, universities and respected private institutions across the world, you’re sure to find free, high-quality lessons in 48 languages that are learned far and wide.
4. Surface Languages
Surface Languages maintains an extensive database of free online learning resources, as well as its own beginner audio courses in Italian, Portuguese, French and Polish. Additionally, there’s a handy section with audio and flashcards in Afrikaans and Romanian, and a “recently added” sidebar that shows you the latest additions to their ever-growing language learning library.
5. Internet Polyglot
Internet Polyglot offers many of the same kinds of resources as the sites listed above, with the awesome added advantage of its “quick start menu,” which allows you to choose not only what language you’re learning but also what language you’re learning it in. Do you already speak Spanish and want to get started on Portuguese? Just select “Spanish” for the language you speak, and get started with a composite mental exercise to strengthen one language while building another.
6. Headstart2 Defense Language Institute
The Defense Language Institute (DELI), like the Foreign Service Institute, is a government service that makes high-quality language learning programs available for free. Headstart2 is one of the best and most easily navigable services hosting complete DELI courses. After quickly registering for an account, you’ll be launched straight into interactive lessons with maps, images, sound, cultural notes and more.
Websites with Video-based Language Learning Content
The science shows that switching on the TV is great for language learning. If you want your brain to soak up the sights and sounds of what actual everyday speech sounds like and how it’s used in your target language, tune in and kick back for some quality input-based learning with these websites.
7. Streetcar
For the tube-loving language learners out there, Streetlamps hard to beat. Although it’s not necessarily designed as a language learning tool, it offers free TV streaming from over 100 countries around the world in nearly as many languages.
This is an especially exciting resource if you’re learning a less commonly studied language with less widely available video material. Tuning into your favorite Albanian or Nepali TV station can easily make up for the lack of other learning materials in your language.
8. Fluent U
Fluent U is a totally different world of language learning.
If you’re into learning with video, TV and movies (which you definitely should be), you’ve got to at least grab your free 15-day trialand spend a couple weeks binge-learning here with our video and audio libraries, which feature many of the same things native speakers of your target language are watching in their sweatpants while eating potato chips at home.
Two main features set Fluent U apart from the others on this list. The first is the sheer range of available content: movies, news, documentaries, cartoons, music videos, funny YouTube videos or whatever else you like to watch, it’s there.
The second is that it uses real-world video. Instead of contriving some slowly-spoken and articulately-pronounced (and usually terribly boring) videos for learners, Fluent U directs you to authentic video content appropriate to your level with built-in learning tools that ensure you can keep up.
Starting out with the free trial will give you a priceless learning boost, and if you subscribe after the trial period you’ll be paying less monthly for unlimited video content than you’d be shoveling out hourly for lessons with even the most affordable tutors.
Here’s just a brief taste of the content you’ll find on Fluent U:
Fluent U App Browse Screen.
Fluent U has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is within reach with interactive transcripts.
Didn’t catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.
Interactive transcript for Carlos Beaut song.
You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with Effluents “learn mode.” Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
Fluent U Has Quizzes for Every Video
And Fluent U always keeps track of vocabulary that you’re learning. It uses that vocab to give you a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.
Start using Fluent U on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the Fluent U app from the iTunes store or Google Play store.
9. Innovative Language
Since its inception in 2005, Innovative Language has striven to become one of the leading language lesson providers.
Innovative Language is a massive system of free video and audio lessons in 34 languages. It’s updated with new lessons every week, with material geared towards absolute beginners all the way up to advanced learners nearing fluency. You may recognize it from its podcast sites (for example, Portuguesepod101) These are the language-specific sites you’ll be directed to once you enter your email and pick a language. Here’s just a sampling of the many popular foreign languages they currently offer:

• Spanishpod101
• Frenchpod101
• Germanpod101
• Chineseclass101
• Russianpod101

It focuses on featuring audio and video material made by professional teachers, and it’s one of the most prolific and consistent language sites in the game. They teach grammar, vocabulary, everyday conversations, real-life situations and culture. So, basically, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Although they have a paid version of the service, thousands of professionally produced audios and videos are given absolutely free.
You can benefit from this flood of language content regardless of your state of fluency—they’ve got something for absolute beginners as well as advanced learners.
10. YouTube TV Channels
Did you know that YouTube has an insane number of TV shows available from around the world? Just go to the International TV section and scroll through the shows sorted by language.
This one is particularly helpful for learners of Indian languages, as it includes Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and others widely spoken through the Indian subcontinent, but other options like Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Greek, Danish and more are available as well.
Massively Open Online Courses (Moo Cs) for Free Language Learning
Did we mention that we think technology is awesome? A lot of the world’s best universities agree with us. That’s why so many of them are making lesson materials and entire university courses available online for free. Here are some of the best massively open online courses for learning a language.
11. MIT Open Courseware
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MIT was one of the university hipsters making their course content available online before it was cool. Under the amazing Global Studies and Languages section of their Open Course ware website, you’ll find courses ranging from Chinese II to Contemporary French Politics, all designed to help you engage not only with the language you’re studying but also with its greater cultural context.

1. Ed X

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Ed X is one of the biggest MOOC (massive open online course) websites out there. You can find a lot of college-level courses here, created and taught by actual professors from top universities. As a language learner, you can consider taking a dedicated language class, or if you’re more advanced, taking a course in your target language. For example, right now you can sign up to take an algebra class entirely in French!
You can actually earn college credits on Ed X, through Arizona State University. Some of the courses have certificates you can get for completing them. In general, it costs money to get a verified certificate for completing a course (so make sure you check the details before you sign up), but many of the courses themselves are still free.
13. Coursers Language Learning
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The courses offered on Coursers are run by professors from world-renowned institutions, and it’s even possible to earn a certificate from many of the courses.
Coursers, another big name in online education, also maintains a Language Learning section under its online catalogue. Many of the courses will be geared toward beginners, like First Step Korean, and others will engage more generally with language learning, like the Miracles of Human Language course from Leiden University. Still other classes are taught on other topics in foreign languages, so you can learn about writing, math, engineering or literature in the foreign language you’re learning—though this approach is recommended for higher-level learners.
On Coursers, there are currently 122 classes taught in Chinese, the second most common language after English, and a long list of other languages trail after. Spanish has 79 classes. French has 41 classes. You get the idea. There are a ton of classes out there for you to try. You can even learn about entrepreneurship in Khmer!
Whatever you find here, it’s coming from a respected university or educational institute, and if it’s not on offer now, sign up to get an alert when it is!
14. Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
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The OIL at Carnegie Mellon isn’t specifically made for language courses, but there are several excellent ones on offer. From elementary Spanish and French to “Arabic for Global Exchange,” you’ll find frequent courses available in the world’s biggest and most commonly learned languages.
15. Alison
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Each of the eight languages offered on Alison’s language learning platform include at least an introductory course, and others include more advanced and detailed courses in popular languages like French. Best of all, if you complete all modules and score at least 80% on all your course assignments, you’ll be rewarded with a fancy (and free) certificate!
16. The Mega List of MOOC from Web Techno and Translation
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The blog Web Techno and Translation smartly and helpfully recommends taking an MOOC given in the foreign language you’re studying, and gives you a decent list to get started on doing so. Once you’ve broken through the intermediate leveland are ready to start doing more with your language skills, why not try taking a course conducted in that language? Whether you want to study Croatian history in Croatian or systems administration in Spanish, the goal is the same: by focusing on learning about a topic instead of the language itself, you’ll learn more naturally.
Free Websites for Connecting with Native Speakers of Your Language
The biggest secret to effective language learning isn’t really a secret at all: You’ve gotta talk! And who better to talk with than a native speaker?
It’s okay if you can’t hop on a plane this weekend—instead, just click over to one of these websites, where you can connect with native speakers of your target language for free.
17. talkie
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The site italki is one of the biggest names out there for practicing your language skills online with native speakers. Designed for language learners to find native speaking teachers and exchange partners via Skype, the free version of their service includes some great benefits, including access to their learner community. This access allows you to connect with other learners and arrange informal language exchanges via Skype or email. If you're looking to invest a little more to have a private tutor or teacher at some point, you can do that on talkie too.
18. The Polyglot Club
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The Polyglot Club is an awesome all-purpose language learning website with tons of free features for connecting you with native speakers of your target language. You can find language exchange partners, submit written texts for correction, hang out in chat rooms, browse through target language videos and even attend their language events and meetups for connecting with even more learners!
19. Hi Native
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Hi Native is an innovative app that takes a nontraditional approach. Rather than giving you flashcards and courses or even facilitating Skype sessions, Hi Native allows you to ask questions to native speakers of the language you’re learning. Whether it’s about the difference between two confusing words, getting a pronunciation check or figuring out how and when to use the subjunctive, just send a text and wait for a response.
20. Word2Word
Word2Word is all about connecting the world, and they aim to do so by providing you with an insane amount of free online language learning resources. Not only are there chat rooms and meetups, but the site hosts resources on everything from typing characters in other alphabets and scripts to a Dictionary of Period Russian Names. If you’re looking for language exchange and don’t mind falling down the rabbit hole of linguistic Gerry, this is definitely the place to get started.
21. Lang-8
For many of us, speaking comes easily, but when it comes time to put pen to paper and communicate in writing, all of a sudden we feel like we don’t speak a word of the language. Lang-8 is a community of native speakers of various world languages who work together to improve each other’s writing in languages they’re learning by offering revisions and tips on the posts made in their languages—just don’t forget to pay it forward by helping others out with your native language too!
Free Vocabulary Games and Flashcards
There are boring flashcards, and then there are the kind that turn language learning into a game and wake up the competitor in all of us. To build your vocabulary while having some fun, these sites offer some fantastic flashcard exercises and other language learning games.
22. Duo lingo
How could we even make a list without mentioning everyone’s favorite pushy little green bird? Duo lingo user-friendly vocabulary games made language learning cool again by unlocking the power of gaming for language learning.
They use the gaming strategy to make sure you retain more of what you learn than you would from your standard, flipping-through-printed-flashcards approach. The truly dedicated will be rewarded by being asked to translate sentences of increasingly comical ridiculousness as they work up through the levels of their language.
23. Mesmerism
Mesmerism gives you a more hands-on option for flashcard learning with its “memes.” You can use the cards provided by Mesmerism and other users, or you can create your own mnemonic devices by composing and finding images for your own cards. Somehow, repetition doesn’t seem so repetitive when you can turn all your flashcards into irreverent memes and personal in-jokes tailored to you and your own brain.
24. Digital Dialects
For beginners and those suffering from 90s nostalgia, Digital Dialects is a techno-retro online game site with animated and interactive lessons in a couple dozen languages. Listen to the voice as it names fruits, then click them and drag them into a basket, or match English phrases to the ones being spoken in your target language. It’s a simple platform free of distraction, and it offers that j NE said quo for the Nintendo kids who still have a knack for learning in 16-bit.
General Language and Language Learning Resources
For those of us with a deep and passionate love for language and languages, we want to know everything about them. Not just how to get from the airport to your hotel or how to make small talk during your coffee break, but the details.
Who speaks the language we’re learning, and where do they speak it? What’s its history, and what can it teach us about the cultures that created it and that are created by it? These websites include the kind of encyclopedic information necessary for thorough, holistic learning, as well as free courses and learning resources.
25. Omnipotent
If you’re learning one language or find yourself in a poly amorous love affair with all languages, Omnipotent should live on your browser’s bookmarks bar. This online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages is like the Wikipedia of all things languages and linguistics.
Not only does it provide linguistic and cultural information on hundreds of world languages, but it also offers some of its own free video lessons. Under its “courses” page, Omnipotent maintains an impressive list of links to learning resources for specific languages, most of which are free.
26. BBC Languages
Another goldmine for the language and linguistics geeks in the room, BBC Languages offers free information and learner resources for 40 world languages. While some are more thorough than others, the seven languages listed on their main Languages homepage include extensive links to target language media (like TV streaming services, online newspapers and magazines in French, Chinese and Greek). The kinds of resources offered vary from language to language, but most include overviews and phrasebooks, as well as BBC’s own introductory lessons, on-site courses and links to help you find classes in your area.
27. Thought Co.
Thought Co. provides a long list of language learning resources like many others on this list, but also has its own sites dedicated to several of the languages on its list. About French, for example, includes educational videos, blog posts on French learning topics and guides to language essentials. About German offers much of the same. Explore multiple languages and find links to extensive resources across the Web.
28. Wiki travel Phrasebooks
You don’t have to be planning a vacation to take advantage of Wiki travel! The user-maintained wiki has a compilation of travel phrasebooks, ranging from well-known world languages like Arabic and Portuguese to less popular choices like Kannada and Parliament.
Even some of the most skeleton-like articles on languages like Zulu include guides to pronunciation, basic phrases, numbers, time, transportation, eating, shopping and common problem-solving vocabulary, making it an incredible resource for practically-inclined learners who just want to get out and use their language.
Free Language Learning Websites for Specific Languages
Some of the best free sites out there are the ones that focus on a single language, building an entire website packed with information, lessons and more for learners who know what language they want and know they don’t want to break the bank learning it. Here are some of our favorite websites for learning that one language.
French
29. The French Experiment — Free French lessons, stories, reviews and cats!
30. London Speaks French — Vocabulary and grammar lessons with a helpful pronunciation tool to compare your voice to natives’ voices.
For dedicated Francophile looking to max out their online learning time, browse through some of these best websites to learn French.
German
31. Deutschmark.com — With 10 beginner lessons and 24 advanced grammar lessons, this free resource is a great starting point for beginning learners and those intimidated by the infamously frustrating German grammar.
32. Deutschmark — This greeter Online-Deutschmarks has helpful audio clips and interactive lessons, as well as links to in-person courses in Berlin and other parts of Central Europe.
33. Deutschmark Welles — The German international broadcast’s online Deutschmark offers free courses by level, from beginner to advanced.
For video-loving learners, don’t forget about all the great YouTube videos for German learners out there!
Spanish
34. Study Spanish.com— Don’t be fooled by the simple name. With exhaustive information and lessons on all aspects of the language, it’s a Spanish linguistic powerhouse and a goldmine for learners.
35. Spanish Games — Learn Spanish with fun, interactive vocabulary games.
36. 123 Teach Me — A mega-resource for all things Spanish, including free online games, courses, word of the day and a handy verb conjugation.
If you like thinking outside the box when it comes to language learning, you can also try out some nontraditional websites for learning Spanish.
Chinese
37. CCTV — Chinese public television, as well as a BBC-like array of written media and resources for Chinese language learners.
38. Chinese-Tools.com — A 40-lesson online course with a learner forum and Chinese dictionary.
39. Zhengzhou Red — In-context vocabulary and culture lessons in a conversation-like format.
More of a bookworm? Try getting started with some free and cheap Chinese e-books!
Japanese
40. Japanese Online — A simple beginner’s resource with four units on the basics, topic modifiers, sentence structures and Japanese traditions.
41. Easy Japanese — Flashcards and games geared toward writing and speaking the language.
42. NH World — This Japanese public broadcaster maintains its own online magazine, including language lessons, audio clips and video resources for learners.
Is it grammar that’s got you down? Check out these websites for mastering your Japanese grammar.
Arabic
43. Arabic Online — This website from the European Union aims to help beginners familiarize themselves with the Arabic language, and offers several paid courses beyond the beginner level.
44. Arabic Keyboard — Aside from helping you with tricky Arabic script and the grammar that goes along with it, this site includes super helpful, practical information about the Arabic language, its dialects and where and how to use them.
45. Arabic Reading Course — For absolute beginners, this letter-by-letter course is the perfect jump-start to get you reading and writing in Arabic.
Portuguese
46. Learn Portuguese with Rafa — Beyond introductory lessons on things like counting and ordering food, Rafa maintains a sidebar full of links on everything from traditional recipes to doing business in Portuguese.
47. Tod Munro Pod — An exciting So Paulo-based podcast with basic tips in English and the rest in beautiful Brazilian Portuguese.
48. Practice Portuguese — For those looking to learn Iberian (European) Portuguese, get started with the free Practice Portuguese Podcast.
49. Really Learn Portuguese — Podcasts and flashcards for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, all brought to you by two friendly Brazilians.
These 49 websites prove it: Money is no object for determined language learners.
The first step is just clicking one of the links above.
Haven’t started learning any one language yet? Choose your language and head over to Omnipotent or BBC Languages to read up on it. Build up your basic vocab with a flashcard app or your favorite language game, immerse your brain in quality video content and connect with natives around the world via Skype or your social network of choice.
With money concerns firmly out of the picture, now all you need to do is make the time for language learning, and you’re all set to start heading towards fluency!