Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. Note: Posted in 2010 Sceptics beware; as always I’m going for an ambitious goal 🙂 In a few short hours, I’m going a complicated route (Krakow –> Prague, Prague –> Amsterdam, Amsterdam –> Bangkok; it was the […]
Happy New Year!! 🙂 Four years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to never ever make New Year’s resolutions again, and I have stuck to it! The reason? I almost never kept to the resolution. I’d join the gym, and go just a few times and then get lazy, and stop, or I wouldn’t […]
Learn Carioca Portuguese through Rio expressions, pronunciation, rhythm and a respectful listening routine for Brazilian Portuguese.
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 […]
Practise a foreign language without travelling, using local meet-ups, video calls and online exchanges to build real conversation skills.
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 […]
Social