There are plenty of things we do know about the Irish: they live in a country full of sprawling green countryside, they’ve produced some of the world’s best […]

Why did you choose to learn Arabic? Actually, I was originally just learning French. But because I have many friends from North Africa, it bothered me that I […]

Anyone who has studied abroad or visited France knows that the last thing you want to do is walk into a bar and alienate yourself by using awkward […]

Vocabulary in a second language seems like a relatively straightforward entity to assess. You either know a word or you don’t, right? Unfortunately, that’s not really the case. There […]

A few weeks ago I received an email from a friend asking which foreign language his daughter should learn. She was entering high school and had several options, including Spanish, French and Chinese. He […]

You’ve probably only encountered a word like the English ‘platypus’ a handful of times in your life, but that doesn’t mean you initially had trouble remembering it or […]

A word doesn’t always have just one meaning. From time to time, native speakers and language learners must contend with words that have multiple meanings. It could be a word that […]

There are more second language speakers of English in the world than there are native speakers– that means a lot of people have been successful learning the English […]

Portuguese and English: One happy language family People interested in language learning are always asking me: “Is Portuguese a hard language to learn?” My answer remains the same: […]

It’s a myth that language learning is all work and no play but there’s more to fun&games than avatars and competitive leader-boards. Check out these tips on how […]

I remember my first trip to Rio de Janeiro. Although I was blown away by the scenery, charmed by the locals and inebriated by the caipirinhas, do you […]

I have made learning Italian a lifestyle choice. I studied Art History in Florence and sixteen years after my Florentine college adventure concluded, Italy was still weaving its magic […]