Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
I was about to update my facebook status to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, but this creates a certain problem; most of my facebook friends are not native English speakers and some don’t celebrate Christmas. While they may have enough to understand the simple phrase “Merry Christmas”, it’s forcing a language in their feed that […]
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 […]
Edit: This post was so well appreciated by people that I’ve rewritten it and added it to lots of other unconventional tips, in the Language Hacking Guide. I recently shared my most important decision ever that started me on the path to becoming a polyglot, but it lead to a lot of questions that some […]
In an ideal world, you would have a native beside you every time you spoke or wrote something, so that they could help and correct you. This is not possible for many of us! Luckily, thanks to modern technology and the Internet, you can have your grammar and spelling corrected immediately and automatically, in any […]
Do you feel like you your memory capacity for learning lots of new words is holding you back? I certainly felt that way… When I was given a list of foreign words (German in my case) to learn the meaning of in school, it was always unclear how to actually do this. Nobody ever taught […]
Please note: this article was written in June 2009. Those who know me, are aware that I can actually take a lot with me on cheap flights, but I still have to decide what is and what isn’t coming with me for my next 6 months on the road! (Czech Republic, then likely somewhere in […]
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