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Contextese – the most useful language you are already fluent in

written by Benny Lewis

I came across this strange video on a break (from my top secret project). It depicts an episode of Law & Order as if it had chickens/roosters instead of people (from an episode of the funny show “Robot chicken”). Because of that, the dialogue is nothing but gibberish clucks.

And yet, it is incredibly easy to follow what is likely being “said”, especially if you happen to know the format that Law & Order episodes tend to take. Which “clucks” did you understand?

The many reasons (32 so far) why we DON’T succeed in learning languages

written by Benny Lewis

Today’s post is my serious attempt to list every possible reason why we don’t learn a language, and to offer possible suggestions to overcome them. (Note that in the post after this, I am looking for the opposite to reasons why we can’t and I want to hear your success stories that could potentially inspire millions […]

Fail fast and fail often: why many failures can be the key to success

written by Benny Lewis

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan As I wrote earlier in the week, my […]

Oops! Logically analysing when something goes wrong, rather than resorting to excuses

written by Benny Lewis

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of missions, goals, projects or whatever you want to call them (16 of which I’ve blogged about, so far) to learn languages and take on many interesting other objectives. Generally on this blog I try to see the good in what I can, and I consider each project […]

How far can you get in 5 hours? The Norwegian mission!

written by Benny Lewis

with a pretty successful Polish mini-mission behind me, tomorrow I am flying to Oslo!

Of course I plan to be a respectful tourist and be fully capable of ordering food, asking directions, being polite, and giving basic info about myself, all in Norwegian.

However, since I am not under any pressure to do something else (my trip to Warsaw was specifically to speak at TEDx, and preparing for that talk took time out of the 5 hours I had planned for polish, knocking it down to only 2! The talk went well, and you can see a cool visual representation of what I was saying in the image above that was drawn while I was saying it!) I think I will actually manage to do five full hours of preparation this time! 🙂

My Conversation in Polish After One Hour’s Learning

written by Benny Lewis

As you saw last week, I challenged myself to take five hours to learn enough Polish to help me get by on my brief visit to Warsaw.

In the end, I didn’t actually do that as planned… because I was so busy preparing for my TEDx talk (which will be completely different to the other one I gave, but still with the same topic of encouraging adult language learners – online in the next month or two), and working on my secret 3-month contract, that I only had two hours total time to invest into learning Polish.

Despite having even less time than I initially planned, I was pleased to learn what I needed and can even share the results with you on video!

Mission Impossible? Polish in 5 Hours

written by Benny Lewis

On Wednesday, I’ll be arriving in Warsaw to give a TEDx talk. Unlike the first one I gave, which was completely made up on the spot and only the second time I ever had a stage to myself like that, this time I have been preparing for it in advance and want to give a completely different but really powerful talk that could inspire many language learners. It should hopefully be up on Youtube in a month or two!

I’ll only be in Poland for 3 days, but I’m going to have a unique mission this time of giving myself 5 hours to cram for Polish to become as effective a tourist as I can be! Right now, I don’t know any Polish at all (other than likely common vocabulary that many languages share), and I’ve been too busy with a full time contracted job I have here in Berlin (much more on the top-secret reason I’m in Berlin later) as well as preparing my talk over the last week.

Watch Benny Speaking in Arabic

written by Benny Lewis

This has been a very interesting project!

I started back in September, with three months to intensively learn the language while in Brazil, and then spent January and February travelling through Egypt (ultimately not doing more than a couple of hours intentional work on my Arabic level, although getting lots of practice), and if you check out the above completely unedited, and unscripted conversation, you can hear what my Arabic sounds like!

Unlike in my other videos, where I was focusing much more on an interesting message that the native speaker could share with the world, this time I did most of the talking, but had a very special guest interview me – the first person I ever spoke Arabic with! It’s got an almost poetic conclusion to the mission that I should finally meet her just before I leave! I found Amera on italki in September, and she is one of the teachers I stuck consistently with all the way through to December.

Climbing Mount Moses, seeing camels, the burning bush and the pyramids of Giza before leaving Egypt

written by Benny Lewis

After I got back from Siwa, I got on the train to Cairo for my flight to Sharm el Sheikh. Unlike the previous occasion that I had gotten the train, I arrived with plenty of time!

But I had a completely different problem this time! After I got on the train, I was a little weary of anything happening to my window after rocks had been thrown at it on the Luxor-Cairo leg, and the sun was shining in on my face, so I thought I should pull down the blind of course.

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