I want to learn Spanish, and while I wish I could just move somewhere and be immersed, that is not feasible at this juncture. So I am reaching out to the open source world to help me along. The first step was to get a flashcard-like system that would provide me with a way to test my vocabulary and keep track of my progress. To that end, I have installed Mnemosyne. Read all about it because it is a pretty groovy program for flashcard learning. I then downloaded and installed the four Spanish card packages available through the site. As you can see on the left, the site has many languages supported, as well as a variety of other topics to study (including Swedish road signs). This gives me my base of vocabulary and expressions. Second on the list of tools is the Firefox plugin ImTranslator. This is a great plugin for doing on the fly translations. So when I browse a site in Spanish, or come across something I want to know how to say in Spanish, this plugin gets me going in the right direction. Using the default media player in Ubuntu, Rhythmbox and its ability to play online radio stations, I've searched for and subscribed to several Spanish music and news sites. So now I get to hear music, news, and commercials in several different Spanish cities (Madrid and Barcelona stations currently, though I plan to get some Central and South American stations since that's where I'll likely travel to first). And, for some extra vocab, I signed up with the Spanish Word-a-Day mailing list. I've really enjoyed the emails as they have a word, pronunciation guide, synonyms, the word in a sentence, and usually some Spanish trivia, like a joke, expression, or conjugation table for a verb/tense. The most important piece, however, is actually conversing with native speakers, and I am lucky to have a Mexican restaurant across the street with several native speakers who I've gotten to know. Any other tools you suggest? I think my next one will be finding folks who speak both English and Spanish and chatting with them via GChat or Skype.