How Many Languages Are There in the World?
How many languages are there? Today, there are over 7,000 around the world. But in all of history, linguists think people have spoken some 31,000 different languages.
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Il sabato della scoperta – Who wants a postcard / What’s Benny’s next mission?
As the name of this blog suggests, I move somewhere new about once every three months (although I was in Berlin for four months and will have only spent just over two months in Hungary by the time I leave, so this time limit fluctuates). This means that my date of departure is slowly approaching […]
Speak! Or stop pretending you want to
If you read different sources to see what language ‘experts’ have to say about mastering a language, you’ll get such vastly different advice that sometimes it’s hard to know which one to apply. Listen a lot even when you sleep, read all day, study thousands of words of vocabulary before you are ready to speak, […]
Solo travel hacking: How to make new friends using a stethoscope and 200 ear plugs
Ever since I started travelling over nine years ago, I have arrived at each location by myself, many times not having a single contact or friend waiting for me in my destination. This has been essential for my language missions, since I need to immerse myself in the local language. Bringing someone with me to […]
Back to school! Some small changes to classroom learning that will make a dramatic difference
It’s September and people are going back to school and are learning languages inside classrooms again. I think it’s time for me to open up this pandora’s box and discuss why I don’t think classrooms work for language learning. Of course, the classroom itself isn’t the only problem so rather than argue for the sake […]
How to learn a language in hours, not years
I get told so many times that someone has been studying Spanish/French/Japanese/etc. for five, ten (or whatever) years. Despite this, in most cases, if they tell me how many years they have been studying it, it’s usually a precursor to “but… I don’t speak it!” This is usually to justify how hard their language is, […]
My first weeks in Budapest: Hungarian mission update
It’s been a few weeks since I arrived in Hungary and got my teeth into my latest mission. I had a bumpy start, but got over it and am on schedule towards my end goal! So it’s time for a mission update! 🙂 Starting with grammar: great in theory, but not useful for speaking Since […]
What’s the hardest language to learn in the world?
If you’ve come here to find a detailed explanation categorising down to precisely one answer, or a small list of the toughest languages, then stop reading the post right now. I’m not in the business of discouraging people so if you are looking for some more discouragement, you’ve come to the wrong place! The term […]
Why ESL teachers are the best teachers and the best learners
I’ve had many jobs in the last many years on the road but the one that I could always rely on was ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher. I worked in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, and Ireland as an English teacher for non-natives and found it to be very satisfying work. However, what I […]
Are Germans Rude? Killing the Stereotypes
Rather than learning languages for academic or professional reasons, I do it to vastly improve my travel experience by allowing me to socialise almost entirely with residents of the country I am visiting. Even though all the studying I did in for my exam in Berlin prevented me from socialising as much as I would […]
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