Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
I’ve already settled into Austin and am well into my ASL mission (first impressions & hopefully another video in ASL coming on Saturday!) but I thought I should wrap up the story of my time in the Philippines first! The last time I updated I had just moved into the cottage on White Beach in […]
Hello from Austin, Texas! 😀 It may seem like there aren’t that many options for an English (and Spanish) speaking Irish guy to learn a new language in the United States of America, but I see opportunity everywhere and here is no exception 😉 You can always learn a language no matter where you are, […]
In this post, I’d like to give a summary about some cool features of Tagalog and my impressions of it for those of you curious! Best news: Encouraging locals When describing features of a language if you leave out context of how it’s spoken and who’s speaking it and focus just on grammar and vocabulary, […]
It’s easy to look at someone who already speaks a second language and just think that it comes naturally to them. Perhaps if you see something like the video of me sharing my salsa learning experience in pretty good Spanish, you might think that speaking Spanish was just my destiny. I’m “naturally talented” with languages […]
You see the native speaker of your target language, that girl/boy you like, an important person you admire or you could be moments away from clicking “send” on an important e-mail or job application, or pressing that last digit to make an important phonecall. And then it starts: the self-doubt, the reasons you’ll fail and […]
As an engineer with a scientific background, I am quite sceptical to wild claims, in life, explaining how the universe works, and in language learning. Even in the days of ebooks and smartphones we still apply backward centuries-old thinking to concepts that should have died out long ago. While some would call it closed mindedness, […]
This is a guest post by the author of Language is Music: Over 70 Fun & Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages, by Susanna Zaraysky. She speaks seven languages (Russian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian) with perfect or almost perfect accents because she used music, TV, radio and movies to supplement her language […]
I had the chance to attend one of the world’s most famous parties; Brazil’s Carnival. While most visitors would check it out in Rio, which I have lived in, my experience of the Carnival in Olinda in the Northeast was incredible! Some ‘gringos’ (note: in Brazil that word is used affectionately, not derogatively, and describes […]
What’s the best language learning system? So many people keep asking me this question, so I want to settle it once and for all. It’s not Rosetta Stone, it’s not Pimsleur, it’s not LingQ, it’s not any book you can find in your local library, or any podcast that you can download. If you have […]
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