Category: Languages

The more I learn about learning, the more I realize how much of a role psychological factors play in whether or not you learn something. As such, if you are trying to learn a new language, it may be a better approach to think of ways you can “hack” your psychology for bigger gains. Here […]

I need to learn Portuguese fast. I don’t have time for dilly-dally, clicking pictures, or time-consuming, low-yield efforts at learning the language. I need a plan to hack it, and hack it fast. Of all the writing on learning languages, there still seems to be lacking a practical layout of how to hack a language. […]

As you may know, I am attempting to learn Spanish in preparation for my trip to Colombia. I have really been working hard at it during the last 2 weeks… trying to avoid things that slow me down, and often studying over an hour a day. Now, if you think about it, an hour a […]

If you read this blog, you probably know I have been learning Spanish. It has been my first attempt to learn a foreign language in a functional, life-enhancing way, which would enable me to play, live, and do business comfortably in Latin America (among other things). I’ve discovered some things that work, and some things […]

Here’s the final post in our five part series to guide you through some of the key terms you need in your language learning vocabulary. T is for Travel and Teaching One of the best ways to stay motivated to learn a new language is through travel. People, place, culture, they are all experiences you […]

Have you ever noticed that the French have a funny way of interchanging le and la depending on what they are discussing? The waiter may bring you le café but when it comes time for dessert you’ll be ordering la glace. One of the first thing you discover when studying French is that all nouns have a gender […]

Why did you choose to learn Hebrew? I was accepted for an internship with a tech start-up in Tel Aviv and decided that learning Hebrew would go a long way toward helping me fit into Israeli society. I firmly believe that learning a country’s language is not only an amazing intellectual and linguistic endeavor, but […]

Reading StrategiesWhen it comes to reading in a second language, strategies are every learner’s best friend. Making sure you start off with an engaging text that contains words you already know is step one in employing a new strategy . But being aware of how the strategy works and what it is designed to do is […]

French. The language of love. Paris is the most visited city in the world year after year and I’m pretty sure a crazy little thing called love has something to do with it. Did you know that a bridge in Paris was recently closed due to the amount of love locks weighing it down? I […]

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 writers, James Joyce among them, and they have a very lively way of telling stories, both in Irish and in English. But one thing you might not […]