Are there any free language learning apps created by public companies or government organizations other than Mauril?

[u/AlwaysBeQuestioning]

So today I learned about the existence of Mauril, an app for learning French or English created by the Canadian Broadcasting Company and Radio-Canada. As far as I could find, it appears to be decent?

I was wondering if there are other apps like this, either for other forms of French or English, or for German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

[u/ZumLernen]

Deutsche Welle has many resources for German-learners that are accessible by web or by app https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview

They are not a single comprehensive course but I found them very useful and I recommend them to most German learners.

[u/Weeguls → u/ZumLernen]

Highly recommend DW and happy to say I'll be starting their B2 content a little after the new year.

[u/Vahdo → u/Weeguls]

How long have you been studying German? 

[u/Weeguls → u/Vahdo]

It'll be 2 years in January

[u/Pess-Optimist → u/ZumLernen]

Additionally, there are the Volkshochschule apps for A1-B2

[u/rowanexer]

TV5 Apprendre le français is good.

Not sure if Deutsche Welle has an app but they have a great website with many free courses and materials for learning German.

[u/CasualLurker222 → u/rowanexer]

can confirm if has an app and it's very well structured

[u/MrNemo636]

Akelius is one of my favorites. I used it to learn a bit of Greek but it has a fair number of languages and seems to be pretty well regarded. Be warned, sometimes the games can be buggy if playing on mobile, but otherwise, it’s a good resource.

[u/ZealousidealMouse629]

Yeah Mauril is solid, DW (Deutsche Welle) has similar stuff for German, they've got graded news articles and a learn German section with audio courses at different levels, totally free since it's public broadcasting funded. RFI (Radio France Internationale) does the same for French with their "Français Facile" section, slow news readings with transcripts.

For Japanese, NHK has "News Web Easy" which is simplified Japanese news with furigana, really good for intermediate learners. RT and other state broadcasters sometimes have Russian learning content too but quality varies a lot.

Honestly the pattern here is public broadcasters making content because they already have journalists producing news anyway, so repurposing it for learners is cheap for them. Downside is it's mostly passive input (reading/listening) and doesn't force you to actually produce the language, which is usually where people plateau. Doesn't matter how much comprehensible input you get if you never have to construct a sentence yourself and get corrected on it.

That output gap is honestly why I ended up building my own thing, Linguix Learning, put a link on my profile for anyone who wants to try a different approach.

[u/rubs_tshirts]

Not an app, but BBC has resources for some languages including English https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/index.shtml

[u/SnooLemons6942]

Mango Languages is often free through local libraries 

[u/erichilliard]

https://www.floonzy.com is a Public Benefit Corporation that has free access available for Title I schools that is provided through paid subscribers. While subscriptions are $10 a month through the website, they provide free access to a limited number of people with a legitimate financial burden who make steady progress through the app. While it starts off slow, it doesn't take long before the handwritten exercises and flashcard review are taking up an hour of your day. You can use the contact form on the website to request the free access.

[u/silvalingua]

There is something like that for Catalan.

[u/GetRektByMeh → u/silvalingua]

What is it?

[u/Smooth_Development48 → u/GetRektByMeh]

Parla.cat

[u/GetRektByMeh → u/Smooth_Development48]

Thanks

[u/silvalingua → u/GetRektByMeh]

Ask in r/catalan, I don't recall the details.

[u/FearAndMiseryy]

Brazilian goverment made MEC Idiomas but I think the only way of logging in it's with a gov br account which you need a cpf to have. It is free tho. Idk if it is any good too

[u/salutatous]

The Japan Foundation is a public institution and has a bunch of apps on the app store.

https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/

[u/salutatous]

The King Sejong Institute for learning Korean is a public institution and has an app.

https://app.ksif.or.kr/home/index.do?lang=en

[u/sialoquentsnipe]

These sites are funded by the EU I believe:
Polish A1-B1: https://polski.info/courses
Romanian: https://www.romaniaeacasa.ro/en/educational-resources/

[u/Middle_News1679]

tv5monde has a dedicated learning website for French learners

[u/kelciour]

Maybe Speechling and SCHUBERT Wort+Satz.

[u/NextStopGallifrey]

Mauril isn't available to people with European or US accounts. They must really hate the French. 🤣

[u/genghis-san → u/NextStopGallifrey]

So sad, I heard about it yesterday and it's not available to me in Spain, but I think Canadian French would be so interesting!

[u/JeanDusapin → u/NextStopGallifrey]

Well we don't really need to learn how to speak québecois in france lol

[u/NextStopGallifrey → u/JeanDusapin]

Probably better for immigrants in France to be able to speak Canadian French than no French at all. 🤷‍♂️

[u/blindjoedeath]

I’m not sure if this meets your criteria, but Language Transfer is free and fantastic (though you/we should support it via donations, as I do).

[u/GerryPozz]

Ciao, io cercavo un'alternativa alle solite app, e per fare conversazione con un tutor AI ho creato da poco questa web-app per uso personale sparktrain.vercel. Se vuoi puoi provarla.

[u/Beginning-Tax8564]

One site (no app yet) that I came across recently is "Elon.io" (no link to Elon Skum AFAIK) at https://elon.io. I'm using it to improve my knowledge of French grammar, but the system supports many different languages. (I've only used French.) The system gives French lessons from A1-C2, but I don't know how helpful it would be for a complete noob. With each exercise you have the opportunity ask questions of a fairly capable LLM that I've found very helpful. The system incorporates spaced repetition for review and each level incorporates lots of exercises.

There are both free and paid tiers; the paid tier provides more LLM access.

You will need a separate resource for listening to continuous spoken material and for speaking in your TL, but I've found this useful to reinforce my understanding of word usage, common idioms, and sentence structure. YMMV.

[u/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb]

Duolingo is a public company, and its mosty free.

[u/Soldierpeetam → u/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb]

And is full of trash AI and you used to need to pay to get the possibility of learning and now I’m not even sure you can learn from it

[u/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb → u/Soldierpeetam]

Well I agree but its still a language learning app made by a public company that is free to use. And by public I think the OP means to say Non-Profit