Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
So, my new Language Hacking courses are on their way to bookstores around the world, and we’ve already had over a thousand pre-orders. While the courses are en route, I’ve got together a group of language learners who are trying out the courses ahead of time, sharing videos from the missions, and giving me their […]
Movies are a great way to learn a language or dip your toes into another culture. Check out these world cinema favourites, as chosen by our community.
These untranslatable words in other languages can be a lot of fun. They tend to be easy to remember since they are so strange and humorous.
Learn how to express your affection and say “my love” in different languages from all over the world.
In the 1960’s, Pepsi took its “Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation” slogan to China, which was not well very well received. The reason? In Chinese, this translates to “Pepsi brings your relatives back from the dead.”
Clairol and Canadian Mist’s German Blunder
Canadian Mist, a brand of whiskey, failed in German markets because “Mist” in German means “manure.”
The same happened to Clairol when it attempted to sell a curling iron called the “Mist stick” to German markets. Who wants to put a shit stick into their hair?
Coors Spanish Blunder
In the last five months, I have definitely received the most double takes of my life whenever I said that I had been learning all my Egyptian Arabic in Brazil.
It’s just such an unlikely combination! Brazil has never had a huge or even tiny wave of Egyptian immigration. While there, I only managed to meet one single Egyptian in person in my entire 3 months. This was partially the reason I did it – to prove that even if there are no natives nearby, you can learn to speak the language entirely online.
Recently there was an interesting article on Lifehacker called I learned to speak four languages in a few years. Here’s how by Gabriel Wyner. He got in touch with me and asked to guest post about his relevant experience as an Opera Singer (as you can see in the photo!) to help him learn several […]
Thanks to my interpretation of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, I can speak languages shortly after arriving in a country.
Right, let’s get down to business! If you want to sound like a local, you need to work on many things and your foreigner accent is one of them. When I speak in English I’ve got a lovely wee (slightly watered down) Irish accent. However, when trying to speak my first foreign language I had […]
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