Category: Language Hacks


Frequently asked questions for an experienced language learner

written by Benny Lewis

Last week I shared some FAQs for a long-term traveller, and taking a bunch of questions that readers have been sending me on Facebook, twitter and the LHL email list, now I’ll discuss some language learning issues that people have been wondering about. Note that I discuss FAQs about the website and my missions separately […]


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Reading time: 9 minutes

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Battle of wits: Nice and nasty ways to win when they want English practice

written by Benny Lewis

Nearly everywhere in the world, and with nearly every culture in the world, when you try to speak their language with them they are so pleased. They will encourage you and compliment you, and be happy to hear more. Your fears are unfounded and you should just make as many mistakes as you can – […]

What will I talk about when my language level is so basic?

written by Benny Lewis

One of the biggest questions I get when I encourage people to just speak, no matter how bad your grammar is and how few words you know, is “What will I talk about?? They’ll just get bored and angry with me!” This attitude is quite strange because it presumes a level of rudeness of foreign […]


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Reading time: 3 minutes

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Why your smartphone will NEVER be a universal translator

written by Benny Lewis

Anyone who follows sci-fi will have come across the “universal translator“. To get around use of other languages on the shows that aliens would undoubtedly speak, (other than when part of a plot device, like Klingon or Na’vi), a computer does all the work of understanding other languages so the human explorers don’t have to. […]


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Reading time: 10 minutes

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Tour of my home… in Klingon!

written by Benny Lewis

As promised, here is a video of me speaking Klingon 😀 Laugh and enjoy as I give you the most guttural tour of my home I probably ever will… and I do it in costume and in character of course! I only started to learn this a couple of weeks back, and as you can […]


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Reading time: 2 minutes

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Multilingual San Francisco: Susanna takes on Spanish, Italian & Russian; Benny interviews Brazilians in Portuguese [video]

Multilingual San Francisco: Susanna takes on Spanish, Italian & Russian; Benny interviews Brazilians in Portuguese [video]

written by Benny Lewis

Title explains it all! 🙂 I met up with Susanna, who has guest posted for this blog on the topic of “Language is music” and who has her own site about language learning, and she had a great idea to make a multilingual video together to show how any city in the states has plenty […]

Handcrafted audio for remembering what you learn

written by Guest Author

Today’s guest post is from Aaron G. Myers. I met him while in Istanbul and he had some interesting ideas about language learning that he blogs about regularly, so I thought they’d be worth sharing here! Off you go Aaron! One challenge language learners face is in retaining the immense amount of new information taken […]


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Reading time: 5 minutes

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