Business Opportunities Weblog

September 10, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Brave New Traveler:

Perhaps the most useful skill you can carry is knowledge of the local language.

It can open up a startling range of opportunities, ease the strain of logistics and planning, and allow you to develop a deeper connection with the place and, more importantly, the people you are visiting.

With a little advanced planning, and an introduction to the basics, it can be surprisingly easy to pick up a language on the road.

There are a number of excellent internet sites devoted to language study, most of them providing their services for free.

1. BBC Languages
The BBC offers comprehensive online courses in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Greek, with slightly briefer introductions to several other languages.

2. MIT OpenCourseWare
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a great effort to supply all of its course materials online for the free use of MIT students and the global internet community. The Languages and Literatures department features courses in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Spanish in addition to many interesting literature and culture topics.

3. Internet Polyglot
The Internet Polyglot provides study materials for twenty-one languages. The unit-based materials available are ideal for a student already familiar with the basics of the language and interested in practicing specific areas and applications.

4. The Open University LearningSpace
Similar to the Internet Polyglot, the LearningSpace provides unit-based study materials with a primary emphasis in French and Spanish.

Go here for four more language sources.

Photo by mmagallan.

In Communication, Language, Opportunity | 1 Comment