I have started to follow an on-line language course at Duolingo. At the moment I am learning – or trying to learn Dutch because when I visit the Netherlands to see my Dutch friends, it would be nice if I could just say a little in Dutch apart from ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ ‘please and ‘thank you’… I know all the polite word, you see! About 23 million people speak Dutch in Europe, and another five million have it as their second language.. that may not seem many compared to the total number of people in Europe but since we visit every year, and our friends visit us too, I think it is a good idea for me to learn a little.
Duolingo is totally free and there are other languages you can learn there too, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian already have millions of people learning them. Dutch is in Beta (whatever that means) and more language courses are in various stages off development, Danish, Hungarian and Irish are almost ready, Swedish and Turkish are well on the way, and coming along is Russian, and at an early stage are Romanian and Polish.
I already have quite good French, and I have a little German, italian and Spanish… and i have been struggling to learn Irish for several years now… but I’ll be interested to do maybe just the early stages of some of the other languages… Turkish because I love Turkish food and would love to visit the country, Danish because I’m watching the box set of Forbrydelsen at the moment, and Swedish because I like Swedish music. I’m not expecting to be fluent, but just to get a taste of the sounds and structures of these different languages.
Have a look at Duolingo here:
https://www.duolingo.com/courses
Lois Elsden 