How I’m learning Mandarin in 2026: My Daily Routine in Taipei
This is what I'm doing this year to make sure my Mandarin is strong, so I'm better prepared to travel deep through Taiwan
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Articles
Siestas for better focus, more time, instant jet-lag/party recovery, and a healthier life
Siestas are short naps taken in the afternoon, usually after eating, that tend to be associated with some Latin (especially Spanish-speaking) cultures. Those unfamiliar with them might associate them with laziness, or a lifestyle totally incompatible with their own. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, people who take “power naps” are way […]
Learning Spanish with Shakira’s Tortura
To expand on the range of articles here on Fluent in 3 months, I will be welcoming some interesting guest posts from other language bloggers. Today’s guest post is by Andrew over at How to Learn Spanish – Teach Yourself Spanish with My Help and came appropriately while I was spending time in Shakira’s home country […]
Singing in French & Spanish, dancing salsa & working efficiently: A day in the life of an Irish polyglot in Colombia
Tuesday of this week I filmed a lot of what I did throughout the day, from getting up around 7:30 to coming home at 2am, so check out these videos and summaries of how a typical day for me here in Medellín went! I start with some work and then get into the real fun! […]
The engineering mentality for language learning, being ready & input vs output
For those of you who don’t know my background, I have a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering and actually worked as an engineer several times. Perhaps you would think that it’s hardly the pre-requisite for becoming a full time language hacker, but I actually feel that my engineering background has been a big contributor for […]
Fake it ’till you make it
In about a month I’ll be starting the first of several intensive missions of 2011 to learn to speak a new language well starting from scratch. It will be totally unrelated to any language I’ve learned to date, and yet I’ll be speaking it confidently from day one. How can I be so confident about […]
How to convert PDFs/daily news/anything to ePUB/mobi for your eReader/Kindle
(Note: The Fluent in 3 Months book has been converted to be read on all devices, using the techniques in this post.) Thanks to ditching dead trees and embracing 21st century technology I have been reading a lot more lately and really enjoying myself. I’ve got the fantastic Amazon Kindle (International free 3G version since I’m […]
How to speak multiple languages without mixing them up
Let’s face it; being able to speak multiple languages would be really cool. But can it be done by the average person without getting really confused? When I was living in Spain, still only able to speak English, I hung out with a Brazilian who absolutely wowed me as he switched between people at our […]
Fluent in 3 months language missions: Frequently Asked Questions
As the site grows and I get more comments and more e-mails, I’m starting to see a pattern of the same questions emerging. So I thought I’d simply collect several issues in this post and answer them in FAQ style. If you have any other questions related to the website or my language projects (keeping […]
Why Hungarian is easy
I’m sure the title of this post will have many people doing a double take, but yes you read that right: Hungarian is easy. Hungarian is not an Indo-European language (i.e. Hindi actually has more in common with English/French/German/Russian etc. than Hungarian does), so it’s very different to all of its neighbours and this gives […]
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