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Articles by:
Benny Lewis


Any language, anywhere hack 2: Dancing, painting and cooking your way to fluency

written by Benny Lewis

What are you doing with your target language? Reading? Listening to Podcasts? Watching movies? That’s nice, but why should everyone else be having all the fun and leave you to be nothing more than an inactive spectator? It’s time to get active with your language and/or travels! This doesn’t just mean finding ways to meet […]


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Reading time: 6 minutes

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The many benefits of English-free travel

written by Benny Lewis

When I meet other travellers, it’s great to be able to share stories and relate to them in ways that only nomads can. Because of this I do like to spend time with other travellers when I can. However, most of my time is actually spent socialising with locals, most of whom speak little to […]


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Reading time: 7 minutes

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Any Language Anywhere, hack 1: Social network language search

written by Benny Lewis

The time for excuses is over. Stop studying your language too much and go out and speak it! It’s the only way you’ll make real progress. Think you can’t speak it because you can’t travel? Travel is quite easy, but speaking your target language without leaving your home town is too easy. The countless opportunities […]


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Reading time: 7 minutes

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The Captain Jack Sparrow approach to language learning

written by Benny Lewis

Of all the idols to have when learning languages (I’m sure there are plenty of amazing polyglots throughout history), mine is quite an unlikely one: Captain Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Caribbean). As far as I know, his character doesn’t even speak any foreign languages, but he has all the traits I feel are […]


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Reading time: 4 minutes

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Travel anecdote: How the Kindle saved me

written by Benny Lewis

“I’m sorry sir, but there’s no way I can let you fly to the states today!” Of all the times to hear this, 33 minutes before your international flight is scheduled to take off while you are still trying to check in, is among the worst. Not getting into the states would have meant well […]


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Reading time: 8 minutes

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New mission: Speak any language, anywhere

written by Benny Lewis

Hello from Colombia! I’ve just arrived and am ready for my last language mission of 2010. Since the blog started just over a year ago, I’ve learned pretty good Czech and Hungarian (both in two months), got by in Thai, managed to convince Brazilians that I was one of them, and passed most of the […]


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Reading time: 4 minutes

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How I became a pro Language Hacker

written by Benny Lewis

The question of “What do you do?” has always been a tough one for me to answer. I have actually had about 40 jobs in the last 10 years, so answering with a single description just doesn’t describe what I “do” with my life in any real sense. I was the race controller at a […]


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Reading time: 10 minutes

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Two months in Budapest

written by Benny Lewis

My time in this Amazing city has come to an end! I’m quite happy with the progress I made in Hungarian, and genuinely sad to leave! As this post goes live, I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic, on my way to Las Vegas to attend the Blogworld conference to meet some blogger friends and make […]


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Reading time: 7 minutes

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Speaking with mistakes quickly is better than speaking “perfectly” slowly

written by Benny Lewis

Rather than write a long post about a topic that I have covered in various forms before, I’ll make this short. Above you will see a video showing me talking Hungarian with Bálint Kőrösi, who translated the Language Hacking Guide to Hungarian for me. My level in the language is the result of my two […]


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Reading time: 2 minutes

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