Turkish Foods: 19 Must-Try Dishes & Essential Vocabulary
Discover the best of Turkish foods with our guide to 19 must-try dishes, from kebabs to baklava. Learn essential food vocabulary too!
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“Hacking language learning”: My new and improved TEDx talk that includes the best polyglot videos online. Please share!!
I really hope this new and improved TEDx talk will get lots of views, inspire many new language learners and even be considered to be used in the main TED stream to ultimately reach millions!
Even though you may be well aware of my language learning advice, this video shares a new aspect of why I failed at my first attempt to learn Spanish which I have not discussed on the blog yet, and I go through the five most commonly used reasons why adults don’t learn languages and explain ways around them. It also includes clips of the most impressive polyglot videos online within the talk!
40+ FREE online language learning resources
The most comprehensive list of courses, communities, exchanges and more. This is the go-to page for the most comprehensive list of completely free online resources for learning and practising your languages.
I’m severely deaf and partially sighted, but have learned 5 languages. Here’s my story
So, I’m Julie Ferguson and I have nothing on Helen Keller! I am, however, severely deaf and partially sighted.
My parents realised that I had a hearing problem when I was 2 years old, though I didn’t get my first hearing aid until I was 4. Unfortunately, when I was 4, nobody could understand me babbling away in my version of English, except for my mum and my brother. Apparently, I was bad. I couldn’t even pronounce my own name (it sounded like Ooee Fehuhoh).
I was sent to speech therapy for intensive work before I started primary school, and I remember working on all those weird sounds especially “spoon”. My particular hearing loss makes it difficult to hear consonants, especially s, h, and f.
Mini mission: Reawakening a dead language! (Hungarian)
It’s time to raise the dead!! My secret mission that is taking up the vast majority of my time in Berlin continues (don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it when the time is right! For now, it’s so secret that I can’t even give clues as to what it is or when I can […]
Encouraging quotes, Chinese proverbs with original translations, and inspirational thoughts for language learners
I asked those following my Facebook, twitter and G+ pages what their favourite encouragement quotes or short inspirational ideas were, to inspire language learners and got some real gems! I also did my own research online and tried to include some sayings on this blog that people have really enjoyed. And finally, I searched long and […]
Contextese – the most useful language you are already fluent in
I came across this strange video on a break (from my top secret project). It depicts an episode of Law & Order as if it had chickens/roosters instead of people (from an episode of the funny show “Robot chicken”). Because of that, the dialogue is nothing but gibberish clucks.
And yet, it is incredibly easy to follow what is likely being “said”, especially if you happen to know the format that Law & Order episodes tend to take. Which “clucks” did you understand?
The many reasons (32 so far) why we DON’T succeed in learning languages
Today’s post is my serious attempt to list every possible reason why we don’t learn a language, and to offer possible suggestions to overcome them. (Note that in the post after this, I am looking for the opposite to reasons why we can’t and I want to hear your success stories that could potentially inspire millions […]
Fail fast and fail often: why many failures can be the key to success
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan As I wrote earlier in the week, my […]
Oops! Logically analysing when something goes wrong, rather than resorting to excuses
Over the years, I’ve had a lot of missions, goals, projects or whatever you want to call them (16 of which I’ve blogged about, so far) to learn languages and take on many interesting other objectives. Generally on this blog I try to see the good in what I can, and I consider each project […]
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