Google Translate is helping to overcome language barriers online with its free online translation of texts, web pages and documents, and it’s progressed a long way since the early days of Babel Fish with its sometimes hilarious, nonsensical “roundtrip” translations. But the web is also facilitating language learning in a way that doesn’t require sitting in a classroom. As Eric A. Taub notes in a New York Times article, “The Web Way to Learn a Language“:

The young woman seated next to us at the sushi bar exuded a vaguely exotic air; her looks and style, we thought, made it likely that she was not American born.

But then she spoke in perfect American English, even ending her declarative sentences in that rising questioning lilt characteristic of many young Californians.

As it turns out, however, she wasn’t from these parts after all; she was born in Iran and spoke only Farsi until her arrival here two years ago. What classes, we wondered, had she attended to learn the language so well?

“I didn’t,” she said. “I used RosettaStone.”

Those yellow boxes sold at shopping-mall and airport kiosks may be the most recognizable example of PC-based language learning, but it certainly isn’t the only one.

With the growth of broadband connectivity and social networks, companies have introduced a wide range of Internet-based language learning products, both free and fee-based, that allow students to interact in real time with instructors in other countries, gain access to their lesson plans wherever they are in the world, and communicate with like-minded virtual pen pals who are also trying to remember if bambino means baby.

In addition to Rosetta Stone, there are a number of other language programs, including TellMeMore, Livemocha and Babbel. There are also some free sites provided by the  British Broadcasting Service (bbc.com/languages), theGerman television network, Deutsche Welle (bit.ly/ts6×7) and japanese-online.com, or learn-korean.net. And of course there are also apps providing useful phrases.