First week in Istanbul, where I live & first (video) attempt at Turkish!
Here it is! My first attempt at speaking Turkish (first minute of the video), followed by a look around where I live (in English).
Here it is! My first attempt at speaking Turkish (first minute of the video), followed by a look around where I live (in English).
Here it is! My first time ever speaking in front of such a large audience! The video is 30 minutes long and covers some tips and encouragement that I’ve mentioned on the blog at various times and which are covered in much more detail in the Language Hacking Guide of course. Since the audience was […]
Today I want to share two great video interviews in Spanish (subtitled) with you about an excellent means of learning a language for young ladies: working as an au pair. While living in Amsterdam, I actually met quite a lot of au-pairs when I wasn’t hanging out with the Dutch. It turns out that city […]
Dutch is a fascinating and unique language, and you can find many good introductions to it online. (See the links at the end of this page for a nice collection of resources). What can be most interesting about the language is how it is one of the closest in the world to English, while also […]
There are many myths about language learning that I’m trying to dispel as nothing more than lazy excuses on this blog. The fact that you are too old, your destiny (genes, background etc.) is against you, you can’t afford to travel and there are no opportunities to speak where you live or systems to speak […]
OK, so you have put in the time and can now speak a language at a confident level. But maybe the course that helped to get you there has ended, or your stay abroad is over and it’s time to go home. What do you do to make sure that you don’t forget that language? […]
In years of constantly comparing the many successful vs unsuccessful language learners to see what really makes them different, I can share another huge realisation with you today. Many of the major questions most people start asking themselves in language learning are, in my opinion, things that should be coming much later in the priority […]
Two years after my experience in Paris, I decided to get back into French and move to Montréal (in 2007). It was a drastically different experience to my time in Paris! Everyone was so incredibly nice to me, people were much less formal and more open to making friends, and they especially had more patience […]
I’m exactly five weeks into my mission to speak Dutch. While there are major advantages of my German and my English giving me a head start thanks to many linguistic similarities, I have had a major set-back in this mission that has been slowing me down tremendously; simply finding opportunities to converse! Dutch culture is […]
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