The Russian Alphabet (Cyrillic): A Complete Beginner’s Guide
Learn all 33 Cyrillic letters faster by tackling them in smart groups. This guide covers sounds, false friends, and a proven order to start reading.
written by
Articles
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
From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. 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 […]
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 […]
7 reasons why you should sing to learn languages
Warning: This video contains a silly looking Irish guy singing a German song in bad karaoke-style. Protect your ears! Singing is an amazing way to dramatically improve your language learning strategy. To prove to you that I’m serious about this, you can see a video of me singing in German at the bottom of the post. […]
The ONE thing that will ultimately lead to success
After years of investigating what separates successful language learners from unsuccessful ones, I believe I have found the one thing that those who ultimately succeed and speak the language fluently, all have in common. It’s not the course materials they use, or their ability to travel, it’s not a particular aspect of their “method”, it’s […]
Shocking truth about passive listening
A whole industry of language learning products is based on something that I have to frankly say that I think is absolute rubbish. Some people swear by it, and yet it rarely ever produces any useful results. The shocking truth is that passive listening is never going to get you to fluency in a language. […]
Mission: Conversational Hungarian in 3 months
From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. It’s time for a new 3 month language mission! Since I started the blog about a year ago, I’ve learned pretty good Czech in 2 months, convinced some Brazilians that I was a Carioca, got by in […]
Social