If ‘Bonjour’, ‘Guten Tag’ and ‘Hola’ is about as far as your foreign linguistic skills go, then it may be time to embrace another language and open up a world of new possibilities. And with dozens of options for free classes available online and in public libraries, there’s no excuse for not saying ‘ciao’ to being monolingual.

Exchange a few words
Running for several years at public libraries around the country, conversation exchanges are one of the best ways to learn a new language for free.
“Language exchanges are a brilliant idea and hugely popular,” says Jim Griffin of Dublin’s Ilac Library.

As well as practising a new language, participants get to learn about the culture and politics of a new country. “French, German, Japanese, Irish, Russian, Spanish and Italian exchanges take place in our library, although other libraries facilitate different languages. Our Italian exchange is so popular that we often get up to 100 people coming at any one time,” explains Griffin.

English speakers team up in small groups with native speakers from other countries and they spend 30 minutes conversing in English, and 30 minutes in the second language, teaching and helping each other.

“It’s completely free, and open to anyone who is interested in learning a new language, and we get all age groups,” adds Griffin.

For those who can’t make it to the library every week, www.mylanguageexchange.com is an international online conversation exchange where you sign up for free to find a language partner from another country.

Free online courses
The web offers endless potential for learning a new language, and the sheer variety of websites offering free courses in everything from Abenaki to Yiddish, is astonishing.

Most e-language schools offer all the more widely spoken languages like French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian and Chinese, but there’s no shortage of others who cater for learners who want to tackle some of the less well-known languages.

Ideal for anyone who has neither the time nor money to attend a local language school, online learning can be done at the learner’s pace. In addition, many of the better language websites also offer plenty of information about the culture of the country whose language you are learning.

The BBC online offers free courses in a wide range of languages. Learners sign up for free and receive tips and encouragement by email. The aim of the BBC language courses is for learners to complete a course in 12 weeks, which is followed by an end-of-course assessment.

Their ‘quick fix’ section offers basic level phrases for holiday use in 36 languages from Arabic to Urdu, and learners can either download them onto their mp3 for free or print them out.

Download free language software
Some language websites such as www.byki.com allow beginner-level learners to download free software enabling them to access user-created lessons online. You can choose from 74 languages and start learning a new language through acquiring thousands of new phrases and words. Then if learners opt for more advanced level courses, they pay a fee.