Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
There’s no such thing as starting from zero Great news! You’re already a polyglot! Seriously, if you can read this post, then you can understand and say (albeit with an accent) words in hundreds of languages! It is impossible to say that you don’t speak anything in a language. Any modern language spoken by a […]
Hi! I’m Benny – a long-term world-traveller, I speak several languages, work my own hours at a job I like, have many interesting adventures, meet lots of cool people nearly all the time and am a generally happy and positive guy. There’s only one way all of this can be possible, right? I must just […]
I’ve been travelling for about 7 years so far, and have lived in places like beef-crazy Buenos Aires, shrimp-hungry Brazil, fish-famous Donegal, paella filled Spain, and foie-gras-loving France. My own way to get to know the culture of these places involves learning and hacking their languages and spending my time almost entirely with locals, but […]
What’s the worst that could happen? If you plan on learning a foreign language, and especially if you plan on travelling, you have to meet new people. You can’t avoid this! It’s kind of the whole point of learning a language (unless you are only interested in literature) and travelling (unless you travel only to […]
Those of you who have been following this blog and reading some of my best tips, know that sometimes I focus on advice for those of you already abroad. Even though you don’t have to be rich to be able to travel to another country to learn a language, sometimes it just isn’t desirable or […]
Masculine or Feminine (or Neuter)? This can be one of the most frustrating things for beginner to intermediate learners; the added information they have to learn of associating a gender with each word. Not only can it seem pointless to assign a gender to inanimate sexless objects (especially for native English speakers who aren’t used […]
I’ve always said that total immersion and avoiding English are the key to learning a language quickly. However, even when living in the country, watching TV, socialising and doing everything else in the local language, you may still be exposed to too much English on your computer. And if you can’t travel yet to practise […]
Sorry traditionalists, but printed dictionaries are on the way out! They are either too small to contain enough entries or too large for those of us who travel, as well as being too expensive. In the time it takes me to go get a big fat dictionary, and flick through the pages for a particular […]
One of the most frequent questions I get asked is How can I become a polyglot like you? A polyglot is someone who can speak several languages. You can see me demonstrate the ones that I know in the compilation video above. You can see the full version of all of those videos in several different languages on my videoblog. [Edit: Here’s a much cooler video I made in 8 languages]
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