Other Languages and Less Commonly Studied Languages

For less commonly studied languages and other languages, there are far fewer resources and commercial language learning products available than with the major languages or more popular languages. For languages with less than 10 million speakers, the number of people seeking to learn the language is so small that few commercial publishers will invest the money to develop a language learning product. They simply see little or no profit in it for themselves. Sometimes smaller companies will take up the slack and provide products, but they are harder to find and often of lesser quality. For languages with fewer than 1 million speakers, the problem is even greater. There are hardly any products available at all.

Luckily, the internet often makes up for this lack of commercial language learning products. Even for the most obscure languages, some information is available online, and in many cases some company or individual has created a website for learners of these languages. Basic vocabulary, grammars, email courses, email lists and other resources are readily available for most languages, although much less comprehensive than a commercial product.

In order to make this site valuable to as many people as possible, I am including recommendations and resources for these other languages. Links to pages for the most widely studied languages by visitors to this site are on the navigation bar on the left, all other languages are linked to from this page. These pages include product recommendations, either from major publishers or smaller publishers, books and supplements and links to online resources.

"There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the Earth."

- Elias Canetti