Why Hungarian Is Easier Than You Think
Hungarian grammar looks intimidating, but regular spelling, vowel harmony and suffix patterns make it easier to learn than you might expect.
Category: Language Hacks
Free book: The polyglot project, how to learn languages
Today I’ve got an interesting treat for you all! Almost 140,000 words (534 pages) of free information about learning languages. This project was headed by Claude Cartaginese, who gathered the advice from dozens of “youtube polyglots, hyper-polyglots, linguists, language learners and language lovers” and put them all in this one book, which is free to […]
Any language anywhere hack 3: Helping tourists for free language practice
In my current language mission I’m trying to prove that you can speak any language in the world anywhere in the world. So far I’ve mentioned how you can search social networks for nearby speakers, and take culturally relevant classes in the target language. There are actually infinite ways to practise your target language without […]
Any Language Anywhere, hack 1: Social network language search
The time for excuses is over. Stop studying your language too much and go out and speak it! It’s the only way you’ll make real progress. Think you can’t speak it because you can’t travel? Travel is quite easy, but speaking your target language without leaving your home town is too easy. The countless opportunities […]
The Captain Jack Sparrow approach to language learning
From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. Of all the idols to have when learning languages (I’m sure there are plenty of amazing polyglots throughout history), mine is quite an unlikely one: Captain Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Caribbean). As far as I […]
Your worst enemy on the path to success? You!
Whether your goal is to lose weight, save money, or speak a language, out of the many obstacles you will encounter on your path, the biggest one by far is you. In a language-learning context I see people spending countless hours on forums and even the few blogs like this one to get the latest […]
Speak! Or stop pretending you want to
If you read different sources to see what language ‘experts’ have to say about mastering a language, you’ll get such vastly different advice that sometimes it’s hard to know which one to apply. Listen a lot even when you sleep, read all day, study thousands of words of vocabulary before you are ready to speak, […]
Back to school! Some small changes to classroom learning that will make a dramatic difference
It’s September and people are going back to school and are learning languages inside classrooms again. I think it’s time for me to open up this pandora’s box and discuss why I don’t think classrooms work for language learning. Of course, the classroom itself isn’t the only problem so rather than argue for the sake […]
Track Language-Learning Hours, Not Years
Track useful language-learning hours by activity, choose a real task and build a practice routine you can keep.
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