In case people are interested, the new sessions have begun, so if you want to enroll now is the time. Currently Arabic, Chinese and Czech are ongoing but you can still jump in. Arabic includes both MSA and a Levantine dialect. Courses take you to A1. Link to the courses:
https://www.fun-mooc.fr/cours/#filter/s ... e=1&rpp=50I would scrape the course materials and publish them in a more amenable and accessible format but it seems the institute has a stringent copyright policy and I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that. In any case the entire thing is completely free and doesn't require any commitment on your part so if you have the slightest interest there's no practical downside to registering.
Also worth mentioning is that the platform
offers valid, credentialed certificates officially endorsed by INALCO for 60€. You will then have to take a remote exam using their monitoring software, just like the Duolingo English test. If you choose
not to pay for the certificate, you will instead get an 'attestation' when you complete the course, which has no credential value but still indicates (to you) that you made it to A1, assuming you didn't cheat or something.
Anyway, if INALCO considers Czech as une langue orientale, who am I to say otherwise?
It's kind of a misnomer, the institute's whole shtick is to teach languages that are otherwise less commonly taught and for which few resources exist, alongside the big, actual 'Oriental' ones. So, like, if you've taken a liking to Ainu or Quechua and have no idea where to start, this is the place you can register at and you will find actual professors in it. There are few places like it.