Open source software to teach/learn a language? (not computer language)

Question

I'm searching for open source software that can help me when I try to learn a new language, and then I'm talking about a human language like English, German and French.

I'm thinking about stuff like the program show you one word and your guess what it is in the other language etc etc.

Note: I'm using Ubuntu and will focus on learning German so if you have anything useful for that combination I'm happy.

Thanks Johan

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Update:

Anki is a nice little program that does what I would like it to do, and it did have a lot of prepared material to use.

To get going I viewed the instruction videos at their site (http://ichi2.net/anki/).

And the Ubuntu installation was simple as well.

sudo aptitude install anki 

Simple uncomplicated and seem to work :)

Answer 1

While it's hard to find anything truly comprehensive as Rosetta stone that's open-source, you can find many great open source flashcard programs.

A few resources that I found for language learning include this FSI site, and this list of tapes.

A lot of people, however, would argue that learning a language isn't something that a computer can do for you and that it's something that you have to learn actively instead of passively (i.e., through lectures). Perhaps toy around finding some German books, changing some of your programs' locales to German, find some other people you can practice with, all that stuff.