When you travel around the world one thing that can really prevent you from experiencing the culture of a place is not knowing the language and being unable to communicate with the locals. But if your anything like me, the idea of learning a new language by going to weekly classes and having a teacher lecture you, question you and quiz you is not so appealing. I personally have a difficult time with languages to begin with (in high school I took Spanish 1 for three years and failed it every time…except the third year which I finally passed because I talked my teacher into feeling bad enough for me to give me a D-. Thank goodness in Norway almost all Norwegians speak English, or I’d be in trouble!).

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
~Martin Buber

One thing I have found that helps me out a little more than studying in a classroom with books and teachers is listening to language lessons on my ipod or reading stuff online. If this form of language learning can help you out at all, then check out these 10 free resources for learning languages online.

1. Word2Word is a great free online resource to get you started or assist you in learning a new language. They have many languages to choose from but warn that the quality and amount of materials vary from language to language.
2. I tunes podcasts offer a large variety of free language podcasts. There are also audio books for sale, but I would check out the selection of free podcasts first. There are many great ones to choose from.
3. 101languages.net is another site that offers materials for a variety of languages. I like the layout of this site and the ease of use. It is very practical to introduce you to a number of languages.
4. BBC Languages has a bunch of great free resources for learning a new language. They have games, grammar, videos and tons of material to help you learn many different languages.
5. BabelNation is a site which I think describes themselves very well, so I will let them tell you who they are…they say that they are, “the outstanding new online-service, which offers online language courses in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese completely free of charges. Whether you want to travel the world, strengthen your language skills for business purposes or just learn a language for the fun of it, “BabelNation.com” will offer you free interactive online language courses. “
6. InternetPolyglot is a site with a large choice of languages to choose from. They have free language lessons online, many different fun games and even slide shows to help you learn.
7. eLanguageSchool.net provides free information and resources to learn ten different languages. They compile information from the internet to give you one place to find everything you need to start learning.
8. Parlo is a website that offers one or two of their courses at no cost each month to help you learn one of the languages they provide. Although everything on this site is not free, there are a few courses each month for each of the different languages.
9. The BooksFactory offers language tutorials and online courses for free to also help with learning a number of languages.
10. MyLanguageExchange.com is a really cool site that helps you to learn a new language by practicing with a native speaker of that language. I think this concept is so cool.

While I was researching online for these resources to share with you, I found that there are a lot of sites that offer Spanish, French or German individually. I did not include these because I wanted to share with you the sites with many languages to choose from. But if you are looking for one of those three, a quick google search and you will easily find free online help.

So, I wish you well on your travels and practicing your languages! Good luck!

Do you know of a great free site online to help learn a language? Please share it with everyone in your comment!