How I’m learning Mandarin in 2026: My Daily Routine in Taipei
This is what I'm doing this year to make sure my Mandarin is strong, so I'm better prepared to travel deep through Taiwan
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The linguistic genius of adults: Research confirms we’re better learners than kids!
I wrote in great detail before about why adults are much better language learners than kids, but now linguists are starting to chime in! There is a stupid rumour going around that you can’t learn a language after a certain age (was it 6, or 12, or 14? I forget where the drunk blind man […]
Easy lifestyle adjustments to get a huge boost when things are going slowly
Now that I’m about a month into my Turkish mission I can say that things are going slower than expected. I’m behind on where I would normally be at this stage in learning a language. This has nothing to do with any issues with the language itself; Turkish is actually one of the most logical […]
Why does the language have to be so weird?
This post was originally part of my introduction e-mails for the Language Hacking League (which you can sign up for on the right to get similar tips or links twice a month in your inbox after an introduction series). Considering how I use Turkish as an example (but you can apply this tip to all […]
29 life lessons learned in travelling the world
This blog post was written on my 8 year travel anniversary in 2011. In 2013 I celebrated my TEN year travel anniversary with a much more visual representation of the top ten lessons learned in travelling the world, including the absolute best footage from my travels, and you can hear me speak out the lessons […]
Manga Case Study: Learning Japanese in One Year
How comic writer Mars Dorian set himself the challenge of learning Japanese in 12 months so he could read Manga comics. Did he make it?
How to prepare, record & upload a video entirely in a foreign language just after starting to learn it
Making a video in a foreign language is incredibly easy, even if you have just started to learn it. I made a minute long segment of my video entirely in Turkish this week just a few days after starting to learn it and have been getting great feedback and encouragement from people once they had […]
First week in Istanbul, where I live & first (video) attempt at Turkish!
Here it is! My first attempt at speaking Turkish (first minute of the video), followed by a look around where I live (in English).
How a Personal Assistant can help budget travellers
People are always curious about how I can set myself up so quickly in a foreign country and I’ve shared my typical strategies for finding accommodation quickly before. That’s what I typically do and it’s been very effective. But this time I tried something very different! Because I’d have a 10 hour jet lag (coming […]
New mission: Speak Turkish in two months!
Hello from Istanbul – my new home for the next two months! My mission is to speak conversational Turkish by mid August! This will bring the total number of languages I’ve dived into this year to four (Tagalog, ASL, Dutch & now Turkish) as I had initially set out to do. I’m only giving myself […]
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