Articles


20 ways to stay safe and prevent theft while travelling

written by Benny Lewis

Hey everyone! I’m back after a summer away and my batteries are recharged for the next huge 3-month-to-fluency language project, that I’ll announce soon to those of you in the LHL email list (sign up on the top right to find out!) I had a fantastic time, and will tell you how it went next […]


Language:

Reading time: 23 minutes

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7 Ways to Study a Language Abroad Without Going Broke

written by Guest Author

Hello from Ireland today! After some time with my family, I fly to London for a week (location locked meet-up details right now on the Facebook page), and then I start my next language mission! To find out what that is, make sure you are subscribed to the Language Hacking League email list, by signing […]


Language:

Reading time: 10 minutes

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How persistence can get a beginner learner to expert level

written by Chris Parker

The decision I made seven years ago to study Chinese at university changed my life. Right from the beginning I decided that I didn’t just want to learn some Mandarin, I wanted to be proficient. I wanted to speak the language to an advanced level and be able to read a newspaper and write characters with ease. It’s fair to say that I got stuck in immediately, and got completely immersed in my studies!

Seven years later, I can’t say that I’m perfect and don’t make any mistakes, or that I understand and know how to say everything. There’s still a lot of room for me to improve, but I have achieved my original goal. I can speak Mandarin fluently, and I know all the simplified and traditional characters other than the really rare ones. I speak and use Chinese every day, and it has really become a part of my life and a second language to me now.


Language:

Reading time: 8 minutes

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Why it’s better to learn a language from children when abroad

written by Guest Author

In continuing the summer series of guest posts, today’s is from Emily, who blogs over at The Babel Times. Her interesting suggestion is about how she learned German from children while living in Switzerland! People often complain that you feel like you are being judged when with adults, and while this is simply not the […]


Language:

Reading time: 6 minutes

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The Oslo Challenge: being able to interview natives on camera in just a few months!

written by Guest Author

Today’s guest post is from Mariola Czupowska, who blogs at the Language Wanderer. She is from Poland and was recently inspired to learn Norwegian! She set herself an interesting challenge of recording videos in the language, and used a trip to Oslo to motivate her to make even more progress. I found her story interesting […]


Language:

Reading time: 9 minutes

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Top ten lessons learned in travelling the world for ten years

written by Benny Lewis

Today, July 10th, is my 31st birthday! It is also the day that I decided, exactly 10 years ago, to set off on my travels with no definite date to return “home”. Home is now wherever I lay my hat at the end of the day.

To celebrate this “travelversary” I have created a video that I can truly be proud of, to represent those 10 years, which you can see above.

As you can imagine, this is the long-awaited follow up to my 29 life lessons learned in 8 years post, that has been read almost 2 million times, which I wrote 2 years ago at my 8 year travelversary. These 10 lessons are (mostly) different though, so definitely check it out! To make it much more interesting, I had help to edit it professionally and included the absolute best videos and photos from my entire time on the road!


Language:

Reading time: 2 minutes

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The American Accent mission: Learning about phonetics and sentence rhythm in English to help with OTHER language projects!

written by Benny Lewis

Time to reveal what my fun part-time language mission for the summer is, and you may be surprised by how genuinely practical it is!! Basically, rather than learn a new language, as I normally tend to do (or maintain my current languages, which I am doing anyway this summer), I’ve decided to learn a new […]

The many problems with being a long-term lone vagabond without a base

written by Benny Lewis

In less than two weeks, I’m going to hit my anniversary of not having had a base anywhere in the world for ten entire years. I’ve essentially been a “homeless vagabond”, even if leaning more towards the flashpacker style of doing it with a laptop, and having a roof over my head the whole time (well, […]


Language:

Reading time: 18 minutes

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