This has been a very interesting project!
I started back in September, with three months to intensively learn the language while in Brazil, and then spent January and February travelling through Egypt (ultimately not doing more than a couple of hours intentional work on my Arabic level, although getting lots of practice), and if you check out the above completely unedited, and unscripted conversation, you can hear what my Arabic sounds like!
Unlike in my other videos, where I was focusing much more on an interesting message that the native speaker could share with the world, this time I did most of the talking, but had a very special guest interview me – the first person I ever spoke Arabic with! It’s got an almost poetic conclusion to the mission that I should finally meet her just before I leave! I found Amera on italki in September, and she is one of the teachers I stuck consistently with all the way through to December.
After a LOT of work to prepare the lyrics, round people together, send way too many emails, have contributors pick verses and languages, give them feedback for several different takes, blend it all together, get through the immense task of video and sound editing, and making sure everyone was happy with it… “Skype me maybe” is finally ready for the world! 🙂
As you can see, the storyline is that I’m a hopeless language learner, ready to give up, when 16 of the Internet’s most famous polyglots show up to give me some encouraging words… in the tune of Carla Rae Jepsen’s “Call me maybe” that was popular this year, and inover thirty languages. Yes, it’s as crazy and as good as it sounds! 🙂
Last week I shared some FAQs for a long-term traveller, and taking a bunch of questions that readers have been sending me on Facebook, Instagram and the LHL email list, now I’ll discuss some language learning issues that people have been wondering about. Note that I discuss FAQs about the website and my missions separately […]
There are many people out and travelling the world, and luckily more and more are trying to speak the local language when they see it isn’t so hard. Every day I’m hearing/reading more and more success stories from others, and I thought today’s one was among those worth sharing! This guest post is from Marcus, […]
Is Turkish hard to learn? See how regular spelling, vowel harmony, suffixes and flexible word order make Turkish more approachable.
There are many myths about language learning that I’m trying to dispel as nothing more than lazy excuses on this blog. The fact that you are too old, your destiny (genes, background etc.) is against you, you can’t afford to travel and there are no opportunities to speak where you live or systems to speak […]
Use the 80/20 rule to prioritise useful vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and speaking practice, with evidence-based caveats and a weekly study audit.
Elizabeth spent 90 days learning Spanish with Spanish Uncovered. In this Spanish Uncovered review, she shares her results (with videos).
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 […]
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