The Foreign Service Institute is the US Government’s primary training institution for officers and support personal of the US Foreign affairs community. Through the use of language programs and studies, the FSI prepares future diplomats and other professionals who are advancing US foreign interests overseas and around Washington, via communication and whatever else those people do. These foreign language courses are published using federal money, which basically means they are public domain, and thus, available to any citizen who’s interested in learning a new language. So enter FSI Language Courses.com, a community-driven site, collecting, scanning and distributing the Foreign Service language program documentation and audio-tapes to anyone interested in learning Cantonese, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese, among many other languages, all on the government’s dime (well, your dime really).
Read more: Foreign Language Courses (many thanks to Stiv for the updated link!)
Delicious this
2:31 am UTC on April 26th, 2007
This is incredible!
I just skimmed through the German reading and audio lessons.
Thank you for all, everyone’s work on this site.
Andrew
6:27 pm UTC on November 8th, 2007
I was unable to reach the “Read more: Foreign Language Courses” link.
I get this message:
Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
——————————————————————————–
The resource cannot be found.
Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested Url: /default.aspx
————————————————————————————–
Anything I can do to get to the free courses? Thanks. Rick
11:11 pm UTC on November 8th, 2007
I am unable to get to this site.. What’s happening?
5:33 pm UTC on November 9th, 2007
what is wrong with the Fsi language courses url?
6:01 pm UTC on November 9th, 2007
What happened to the free FSI language course? Has it been pulled from the internet?
3:21 pm UTC on November 10th, 2007
Unable to reach this site….does anyone know what happened?
9:49 pm UTC on November 11th, 2007
FSI is out permanently? I was really like that site! I see similar pages that are pay websites…..
9:55 pm UTC on November 11th, 2007
They are definitely having some web server issues at the moment, possibly due to a server move or high traffic. They should hopefully be back up very soon.
2:08 pm UTC on November 12th, 2007
It appears, to me anyway, that the FSI Language Course has been bought by a private company who is now selling the lessons for a handsome price. Apparently you can purchase anything from the Public Domain and sell it for your benefit. No free education for us. Jim
5:46 pm UTC on November 12th, 2007
Jim, don’t be too worried about the free education. As far as I know, once something is in the public domain, no one can exclude anyone else from using that work. It means that the copyright on it has expired and anyone can publish and distribute it for profit, or for free. No company out there can prevent the free download of the FSI Language Courses in order for them to profit from selling it.
I discovered that site a while ago and it’s amazing. I really hope any problems are only temporary.
5:54 pm UTC on November 12th, 2007
PS. I wanted to make sure and found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain. If you’d like to know more
4:59 am UTC on November 13th, 2007
They can’t take it out of the public domain, but they dont have to give it to us. If someone has copies of the mp3s and pdfs we could recreate the page.
8:27 am UTC on November 13th, 2007
No, unfortunately they don’t. I think I remember reading in one of their forums once that someone came across some FSI courses in their university library. That could be worth a try.
Let’s hope it really is just a server move or something that’s taking up a lot of time. Everything is done in volunteers’ free time and digitizing all those tapes and texts is a huge job.
11:48 am UTC on April 28th, 2008
I thought i had died and gone to paradise when I discivered tis site, but then my joy was dashed, for I am unable to get into the courses. Why? Windows Media doesn’t seem to work nor does Real Player.
11:45 pm UTC on October 20th, 2008
Awesome! Downloads are certainly working at the moment… To think that many sites out there are selling this stuff for hundreds of dollars… Phew… Great many thanks!!!
11:25 pm UTC on October 17th, 2009
As of now, 17 Oct 09, the free fsi courses are not available; the usual two websites containing the downloads cannot be accessed; if anyone knows why, please post a response here.
11:28 pm UTC on October 17th, 2009
Aha, found it. The new url is http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php
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