Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
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. […]
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 Thai, and just recently passed 4/5 of one the hardest formal examinations in German. So now it’s time […]
NOTE: The Language Hacking Guide is now available to be read in its entirety in six languages (seven next week), translated by natives. The stone of Rosetta You might think that this post has something to do with expensive yellow boxes that you can buy at airports with language learning software. Nope. The Rosetta stone […]
Every Friday I send out an e-mail to the Language Hacking League with a list of interesting websites to check out, as well as more precise updates regarding my own language missions. This particular tip got a great response from our readers, so I’ll share it on the blog too. It’s very easy, and yet […]
Now that I’ve sat three of these diploma examinations (French, Spanish and German), I feel like I can give a useful summary for those curious! When I introduced my current mission, I only quickly mentioned some details about the exam and what it exists for. They do indeed serve much more of a purpose than […]
One of the most important things I’ve learned in my first year of blogging about my 3 month language missions has probably been discovering that achieving the “impossible” is actually easy. It turns out that several people that I’ve come across or read about have achieved the impossible several times over each. Taking their lead, […]
Can you guess what I’m thinking from looking at my expression in the photo? When I run into some study-focused learners and the discussion turns to languages, sometimes I honestly feel like we are talking about completely different things. A lot of them like talking about subjunctives, past participles, cases and word roots, conjugations, tone […]
Whenever I meet new people and try to help them with their language learning missions, when they hear that I have already learned to speak a few languages and ask me to list them, the one that always gets their attention the most is Esperanto. Most people have never even heard of it, but occasionally […]
“I made a new video – I look cool in it! Want to come up and check it out?” Sounds like an innocent enough thing to say, right? While talking to a German friend of mine (a girl, but seriously just a friend and one I’ve had for many years), I wanted to say this […]
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