Category: Premium Links


Fake it ’till you make it

written by Benny Lewis

In about a month I’ll be starting the first of several intensive missions of 2011 to learn to speak a new language well starting from scratch. It will be totally unrelated to any language I’ve learned to date, and yet I’ll be speaking it confidently from day one. How can I be so confident about […]


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Reading time: 7 minutes

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Fluent in 3 months language missions: Frequently Asked Questions

written by Benny Lewis

As the site grows and I get more comments and more e-mails, I’m starting to see a pattern of the same questions emerging. So I thought I’d simply collect several issues in this post and answer them in FAQ style. If you have any other questions related to the website or my language projects (keeping […]


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Reading time: 8 minutes

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Why Hungarian is easy

Why Hungarian is easy

written by Benny Lewis

I’m sure the title of this post will have many people doing a double take, but yes you read that right: Hungarian is easy. Hungarian is not an Indo-European language (i.e. Hindi actually has more in common with English/French/German/Russian etc. than Hungarian does), so it’s very different to all of its neighbours and this gives […]

Pimp out your browser searches for language learning

written by Benny Lewis

This tip is taken from one of the weekly Language Hacking League e-mails. For more free tips like this in your inbox, as well as two free chapters of the Language Hacking Guide, enter your e-mail address on the right of the site. In this post I’d like to share some of the enhancements I’ve […]


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Reading time: 4 minutes

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Free book: The polyglot project, how to learn languages

written by Benny Lewis

Today I’ve got an interesting treat for you all! Almost 140,000 words (534 pages) of free information about learning languages. This project was headed by Claude Cartaginese, who gathered the advice from dozens of “youtube polyglots, hyper-polyglots, linguists, language learners and language lovers” and put them all in this one book, which is free to […]


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Reading time: 3 minutes

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Any language anywhere hack 3: Helping tourists for free language practice

written by Benny Lewis

In my current language mission I’m trying to prove that you can speak any language in the world anywhere in the world. So far I’ve mentioned how you can search social networks for nearby speakers, and take culturally relevant classes in the target language. There are actually infinite ways to practise your target language without […]


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Reading time: 7 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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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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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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