About

Welcome to fluentin3months.com, a site packed with encouragement and “language hacks” about speaking languages as quickly as possible, as I travel to learn and speak languages myself.

After over nine years on the road (eight of which was non-stop, teaching me a lot about life), I have picked up quite a lot of short-cuts, unconventional learning techniques, and a pretty good mentality that has hugely helped me to learn these languages, and earn the title of “polyglot”. This site is for sharing these tips so that others may also live their dreams of being able to speak other languages! If you’d like to read my best and most practical tips all in one place, check out the Speak from day One video course and Language Hacking Guide!

Who is Benny Lewis?

My name is Benny (Brendan) Lewis. I’m a vegetarian from Cavan Ireland, and I don’t drink. I like to think of myself a “technomad” – a full-time technology-enabled globe-trotter.

When I turned 21, the only language that I spoke was English and I had done quite poorly with languages in school. In fact, I initially had problems even with English and had to go to speech therapy when I was younger because of it. So I am not naturally talented with languages! I have a degree in Electronic Engineering!

My love affair with other cultures and speaking foreign languages began in 2003, after graduation when I moved to Spain. I discovered that learning languages wasn’t so hard when you apply the right method! You also have to stop making excuses that you are too old, don’t have time, too shy to try to use it etc.

After finally successfully reaching a confident stage in Spanish, my travels led me elsewhere. Dozens of countries and many languages (8 of which I speak fluently; indicated with flags on the right) later, I am now a full-time language hacker!

I have had plenty of other jobs in the last decade such as English teacher, Mathematics teacher, French/Spanish teacher, photographer, youth hostel receptionist, tour guide, yoga store manager, first aid assistant, electronic engineer and several others. Before attempting to support myself from this blog, I was a location independent freelance translator of technical documents. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be rich to travel the world!

I am currently trying to support myself by sales of the Speak from Day One package. If you like this site, maybe check it out! My goal is to earn enough to hopefully eventually be able to live comfortably in Moscow and Tokyo, each one for 3 months (and unfortunately, the two most expensive capital cities in the world!) to learn Russian and Japanese. Until then, I will continue choosing cheaper destinations for my language missions.

I try to take apart the language learning process and explain it to people who have never had any luck trying. As many details as possible are shared on this blog, in the free weekly Language Hacking League e-mail list (subscribe on the right) and in the guide.

Subscribe to the blog if you want to follow my missions to learn languages (a completely different one every few months) and discover my unconventional “language hacking” tips. Make sure to leave comments and share interesting posts with your friends through Facebook, twitter or stumbleupon (using the buttons on the left while reading any post).

Here’s a video of me speaking 8 languages (and 6 dialects), showing my apartment in Berlin (a few weeks into learning German):

If you liked that, you’ll really like my much more funny (props included) other video in 8 languages. And for the best summary of my advice, be sure to check out my TEDx talk!

My other pages on the net:

Follow me on my Google+ page!

You can check out all of my photos (and some short videos) on my flickr page. I have made almost a hundred videos in over a dozen different languages that you can check out on my Youtube channel.

Join in on the discussion about fluent in 3 months posts by “liking” this site’s facebook page!

To see what I’ve been up to lately, have a look at my twitter miniblog . I have several different accounts, in different languages, which I try to update regularly.

You can also learn more about me from what others have written about me in the references on my Couchsurfing profile.

Other sites I have written for:

Zen Habits | Simple guide to speaking foreign languages

Art of Manliness | Becoming a man of the world: How to learn another language

All Japanese all the time | Ditch your resolution, it’s time for a language mission!

Aweber Blog | How curiosity can get you more e-mail subscribers and opens

Everything Everywhere | My multilingual summer in Barcelona

IELanguages | The best Language Hack? Speak it!

Location 180 | How to stick to your New Year’s Resolutions in 2011