Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
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 […]
What are you doing with your target language? Reading? Listening to Podcasts? Watching movies? That’s nice, but why should everyone else be having all the fun and leave you to be nothing more than an inactive spectator? It’s time to get active with your language and/or travels! This doesn’t just mean finding ways to meet […]
When I meet other travellers, it’s great to be able to share stories and relate to them in ways that only nomads can. Because of this I do like to spend time with other travellers when I can. However, most of my time is actually spent socialising with locals, most of whom speak little to […]
Hello from Colombia! I’ve just arrived and am ready for my last language mission of 2010. Since the blog started just over a year ago, I’ve learned pretty good Czech and Hungarian (both in two months), got by in Thai, managed to convince Brazilians that I was one of them, and passed most of the […]
What language should you learn next? This is a question only you can answer. But I’ve put together a guide to help you in your decision.
If you read different sources to see what language ‘experts’ have to say about mastering a language, you’ll get such vastly different advice that sometimes it’s hard to know which one to apply. Listen a lot even when you sleep, read all day, study thousands of words of vocabulary before you are ready to speak, […]
NOTE: The Language Hacking Guide is now available to be read in its entirety in six languages (seven next week), translated by natives. The stone of Rosetta You might think that this post has something to do with expensive yellow boxes that you can buy at airports with language learning software. Nope. The Rosetta stone […]
Now that I’ve sat three of these diploma examinations (French, Spanish and German), I feel like I can give a useful summary for those curious! When I introduced my current mission, I only quickly mentioned some details about the exam and what it exists for. They do indeed serve much more of a purpose than […]
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