Learn a Foreign Language for Free

Want to brush up on your Spanish before your family vacation in Mexico, or need to pick up some quick Japanese phrases before you're transferred to Tokyo? Language education courses can be expensive, and your local library might not have the right resources for the language you need. However, these 10 Websites will provide you with a host of tools for learning almost any language imaginable, from the most common to the ancient and endangered:

BBC Languages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/): Learn or improve your language skills in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Greek and other languages. The online courses cover grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary, and also provide audio and video tools for brushing up your skills in another language.

Free Online Language Courses (http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html): Start here to find links to courses, phrase guides, primers and more for everything from Abenaki to Xhosa.

The Internet Public Library's Kidspace (http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/hello/): You won't get fluent in any one language here, but you and your kids can learn how to say "hello" in any one of 30 languages, including Mayan, Tagalog and sign language. Delve a little further into the site, and you'll find links to many other language-learning resources online.

The Internet Public Library's Language & Linguistics section (http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum40.00.00/): For a comprehensive collection of online resources to teach you how to say more than "hello," check out this section of the Internet Public Library. It provides numerous links to sites for learning everything from American Sign Language and Czech to Swahili, Turkish and Welsh.