Learning a foreign language

(using a well-stocked library)

I had this idea, last night:

To learn a foreign-language,
for free, and without an instructor-
you need a libary with 3 things:
(to learn spanish, for example)

1) a book in english

2) a translation of that book (into spanish),

and, for proper pronunciation,
3) a book-on-cassette (also in spanish)

I've never done this; it's just an idea...
The koran would be a good way to learn arabic, this way.
Most translated korans have the original arabic, alongside the english. I realize some languages work better than others for this. Finding a foreign language book AND the same book in a foreign language on cassette might be unlikely... you might get lucky, though - and you can always find and buy resources on the net.

The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) lists the following as the top languages by population:(number of native speakers in parentheses)
Chinese (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French (79,572,000)

from (http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm)

Another good resource people don't usually consider is a foreign language dictionary. I don't mean, say an english to spanish/spanish to english dictionary; I mean a regular dictionary in the language you want to learn, with definitions, not synonyms.

I admit this might be a bit harebrained. It's probably only good as a supplement to traditional language-instruction methodology. If it uses the same alphabet you already know, you're better off than trying to figure out, say, chinese.