25 Must-Know Halloween Words for a Spooky Season
Halloween is just around the corner, and it's time to brush up on your spooky vocabulary with some special Halloween words!
Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!
Halloween is just around the corner, and it's time to brush up on your spooky vocabulary with some special Halloween words!
After almost eleven years of travelling the world, I finally had the time to learn some Japanese and visit this unique country. I had a whirlwind adventure over several weeks, and am right now in as opposite a culture as I can imagine, in Texas (to launch my book Fluent in 3 months when it […]
What a whirlwind few months! Rough start, but a good first two months Back in September after announcing my Japanese project, I jumped in and started speaking spontaneously my first weeks, and was able to share a prepared speech pretty confidently. But I quickly ran into a hitch of being desperately sick, just when I […]
Let’s be honest. I can take it. Americans aren’t exactly known for our foreign language ability. Often, we speak English and we simply expect the rest of the world to do so as well. There are many reasons why this problem has developed, but that’s not the purpose of this article.
As with all stereotypes there is both a bit of truth here as well as many exceptions. I’m an American diplomat (or Foreign Service Officer as we’re officially known) and it is not only helpful in my job to learn foreign languages, it is required.
When I tell people that I am trying to learn Iñupiaq, the native language of my hometown in Northern Alaska, invariably I hear a long, drawn-out, “Whyyyy?” “Not many people speak the language, so what’s the use of learning it?” “Almost all the people who can speak English anyways, right?” “I thought you were a white guy?”
All these questions are of course ridiculous and to prove all the naysayers wrong, here are 5 reasons why learning an endangered language is not only a supremely gratifying endeavor, but it’s one that can be done more easily than you think! I have experienced this by attempting to learn Iñupiaq, but these reasons can apply to any endangered language!
Time to give you my update from Japan! I got into Okinawa just over a week ago, and have been settling in, exploring that beautiful island paradise, and have just got into Kyoto, where I’ll be spending the next 2 weeks.
A belated Happy 2014 to everyone! And a สวัสดีครับ (hello) from Thailand – my temporary stop before I head to Japan in a couple of weeks to begin my language and cultural immersion experience there. I can’t wait! This post is an update of my plans for the year, but it’s not the big news […]
Let’s share another “Why a supposedly hard language isn’t as impossible as you thought” type post! This time from Cantonese native speaker Brian, who has guest posted here before and who organizes the Add1 challenge (now the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge). One of the challengers, Jan, took on Cantonese for his project and you […]
As you all know, I like to delve into interesting cultural observations as I travel, as the local culture, and especially time with its people, is what travel is all about for me. Other than speaking with people (the general focus of this blog), there are so many ways to explore other cultures, one of […]
Thanks for following along in my Japanese project! Right now there should be two weeks left, but realistically what was initially a three month project has morphed into a two month one. This final month has led to another secret project of mine taking over! [Edit: Several months before this Japanese project, I had written my first […]
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