“Oh my god! Come here, look at this! Hurry, you have to take a picture of it!” My mom yelled at me to catch up. She pointed up at the Tel Aviv street sign. Lucky for her, street signs in Israel have three languages on them: English, Hebrew and Arabic. In English, it read, “Yeremyahu […]
MORE10 Simple Games and Exercises to Practise Your Vietnamese Skills
In the summer of 2015, a Vietnamese production company asked me if I would be the main character on a new TV show. My own TV show? This was a dream come true! The show’s name is “Funny English Class”, or “Lợp Tiếng Anh Vui Vẻ”. It’s show aimed at children ages 4-8. Since accepting […]
MORE10 Good Reasons to Learn French
When I was thirteen years old, I finally graduated from the “kids’” table at my family outings. This was a huge deal to me. I was so excited for the privilege of sitting next to my cool, older cousins at dinner. Things were going great, until one night when it came time to order dessert. […]
MORE5 Reasons to “Fail Fast, Fail Often” in Your Language Learning
When you look back over your life, what stands out? I’m guessing it’s your achievements. Those small (and big!) successes that lead us to the bigger triumphs. Here’s the rub: by focusing on success, we gloss over our failures. Aren’t those important, too? I think failure is really important. In fact, the best language learners […]
MOREHow Yoga Can Make You a Better Language Learner
I took a friend of mine to my yoga studio last week. When we walked out of the classroom, I asked him what he thought of the class. He could barely talk. “That was the hardest thing I’ve done in the last year.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, yoga can be hard.” Truthfully, I hadn’t […]
MOREMultilingual Dating: Should I Date Someone Who Speaks Another Language?
When I was a senior at high school, I had a Brazilian exchange student live with me for three months. We became best friends instantly. On the first day at school, all the girls had a crush on him. Even the teachers. I don’t know exactly what it was. Perhaps his accent, possibly it was […]
MOREHow to Apply Stoic Philosophy to Language Learning
What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgments about these things. – Epictetus, Stoic philosopher An ancient way of philosophy has been on the rise recently. Stoicism is all about adjusting your thoughts to make yourself happier. When I first learned about Stoic philosophy, I realized that I had been practising it already. […]
MOREHow Learning a New Language Boosts Your Creativity
I’ve been working on a book recently. It’s about my experiences in Vietnam and going on a reality TV show. One of the show’s rules was that we had to write a diary about our feelings towards other participants on the show. Well, I have to admit, my Vietnamese wasn’t as good back then. I […]
MOREWhy Tonal Languages Aren’t as Hard as You Think
Here’s my take on language difficulty: All languages are created equal. Mandarin Chinese. English. Russian. Arabic. You name it. They all have their own challenging aspects. But – here’s the kicker – humans can speak all of them. I’ve yet to hear about a language that went extinct only because it was so difficult to […]
MOREHow to Learn a Song in a Language You Don’t Know (And Why It’s the Best Thing You Can Do)
I love meeting new people, but I am the worst at remembering names. I don’t even know the name of my next door neighbour even though I see him every morning and I’ve asked him over ten times… At this party recently I met a girl named “Leyla.” I found myself singing Eric Clapton’s song […]
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