Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
The big question regarding my Mandarin project that a lot of people have been asking is How well can you really speak it Benny? From the blog’s origin era (2009–2014) — kept as lived proof of the method. See all the missions. I’ve been saying it’s about a B1 (lower intermediate), but I’m sure self […]
This blog post is based on this week’s Language Hacking League email. To get such updates sent to your inbox, which are not usually posted on the blog, sign up (for free of course) at the bottom of this page! You may not expect this from a blog that tells you how travel has been […]
Fun video to share with you today… in Esperanto! Click “CC” to activate subtitles in English (as well as original Esperanto), or if you’re in China (and not using VPN software to circumnavigate the “Great Firewall of China” as I’m clearly doing to be able to use Youtube) then check it out on Youku. I […]
When you understand “language genes” to be something that some people have and you don’t, then you’re being ridiculous. I’ve seen this in many iterations: language talent, gene, skill, knack etc., and today I’m going to tell you why I think it’s all nonsense. The part of your genetic makeup that helps you deconstruct and […]
Here it is! My video of the epic 2,000km (that’s about 1,250 miles in “old money” as we say) train ride I took to get to Chengdu, starting from Shanghai. This video shares the people (and pandas) I met along the way! 🙂 Click CC to enable subtitles (in English, and traditional or simplified Chinese) […]
“Mastering” Chinese can indeed take a long time to do, but getting to a very useful intermediate level is well within the reach of most people, and from that point progressing further won’t be that bad. It is indeed hard work, but if you put it side by side with European languages, then saying it’s “damn hard”, or “orders of magnitude harder than European languages” is nothing but an exaggeration
Someone thinking you are a native speaker of your target language is the holy grail of language learners. It’s something many of us dream about, but then sigh to ourselves that it’s just never going to happen. Well, today I want to burst that bubble and tell you that many people genuinely thinking you are […]
Here you go! My 3 month and one week Mandarin video! [Video also available on Youku. Click CC to enable captions in English, Simplified Chinese, or Traditional Chinese] My interviewer is John Pasden, who writes at the 10-year-strong blog dedicated to all things Chinese-learning, Sinosplice. He is a co-host at Chinesepod (which I’ve been listening […]
As you all know, there are countless ways to go about learning a language. I have a general plan of action that I like to apply myself, but there’s no such thing as a “perfect” way to learn a language. Perfection is not something that humans need to concern themselves with in anything outside the […]
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