Foreign Service Institute Programs 
in Forty Languages

We are pleased to be able to offer FSI language programs in forty languages in collaboration with our distributor, Multilingual Books.

Multilingual Books  produces the full range of Foreign Service Institute programs in 40 languages.

The Foreign Service Programs are still considered the best and most thorough ever produced.  In fact, for some of the more exotic languages, they are the only substantial program there is.

I have had personal experience with the FSI programs in Finnish, Cantonese (Chinese) and German, in addition to Spanish.  In fact, in the late 1960's I was one of the guinea pigs for the Finnish program (it worked fabulously for me--I left the 40-week course with a tested 4 (explanation here).

One of the reasons we have such a shortage of Americans who have some proficiency in some of the important languages (Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Russian) is that these languages are all on the "more difficult" end of the scale.  Starting with one of these languages as a first foreign language can be very frustrating.  Unlike most European countries, we don't make sure that Americans coming out of our education have a good grounding in at least one of the "easier" languages such as Spanish.  Having such a base makes learning one of the harder languages much less intimidating, and confidence that one is indeed capable of learning other languages is important to success.

To give you an idea of the relative "difficulty" of some languages, Spanish and French at the Foreign Service Institute take about 16-20 weeks to reach or approach the 3 level.  Russian (and Finnish) is a year.  Chinese, Japanese and Arabic are two years, with one of those years in a country where the language is spoken.

A couple of the languages (Chinese and Arabic) have more than one course for different dialects.  

While none of these programs has been extensively revised as Platiquemos from the FSI Basic Course in Spanish, many have been remastered by Multilingual Books and are available in compact disk versions, with improved audio.

If you are interested in learning any of these languages, it is difficult to think of a better way to start than with an FSI program.