Parlez vous Francais? Come stai? Guten morgen! If you don't 'entiende' (understand) what I'm on about, then maybe its time to brush up on your foreign language skills online with the
BBC's beginners' language courses in French, Italian, German or Spanish – absolutely free.
All you need is an internet connection and a keen desire to roll some r's in the
Latin-based languages (also known as the Romance languages), or get good and gutteral in German.
By the end of 12 weeks and after a short assessment, you'll receive an official BBC certificate and will be impressing your friends and family with your newly acquired skills.
First things first though. There are six courses to choose from, four beginners' courses, as well as
La France and
Mi Vida Loca for post-beginners. If you're just starting out, do the beginners' course first.
You take the course online as well as subscribe to receive weekly emails giving you plenty of tips and encouragement. Each course provides loads of very helpful information, like
pronunciation tips,
slideshows and videos shot on location for added romance.
Once your certificate is hanging proudly on the wall, you can sign up for further studies in the language you started with, or try your hand – or tongue – at Greek, Portuguese, Chinese or a whole host of
other languages, including
Urdu, a living language spoken by 490 million people around the world, with around 1 million of them residing in the UK. Fascinating, huh!
