Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
Kids are great! I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for several years in several countries, teaching mostly children, and I could see how quick they were at learning a second language. Of course, who of us doesn’t want to go back to our childhood, when things were simpler and the world […]
This detailed post describes how my first week in Amsterdam went. As requested, I’ll be giving regular updates on how I’ve been adjusting to a new culture and learning a new language. In future I’ll send this update (which will likely be much shorter and include occasional videos) to the Language Hacking League, so sign […]
It’s time for a new language mission! DUTCH! I’ve just arrived in Amsterdam, and I plan to speak fluent Dutch by May 31st (so technically not even 2 months; actually in 8 weeks). There’s many ways to define fluency and I’m very precise about mine. There are some obvious advantages I’ll have and some big […]
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 […]
It’s time for the first language mission of 2011! I am actually hoping to work on four new languages by September, so this is going to be one hell of a year, and I hope you’ll subscribe and read along to get some tips for your own language missions 🙂 So, in a few short […]
Today’s guest post is from surfer-single-traveller Marília who writes at Tripping Mom. Coming from a bilingual family it’s easy for me to see how manageable and beneficial it is to speak two languages at home. My dad would always speak to us in Italian and my mother in Portuguese while we lived in Brazil. Much […]
I’m sure the title of this post will have many people doing a double take, but yes you read that right: Hungarian is easy. Hungarian is not an Indo-European language (i.e. Hindi actually has more in common with English/French/German/Russian etc. than Hungarian does), so it’s very different to all of its neighbours and this gives […]
In my current language mission I’m trying to prove that you can speak any language in the world anywhere in the world. So far I’ve mentioned how you can search social networks for nearby speakers, and take culturally relevant classes in the target language. There are actually infinite ways to practise your target language without […]
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