French for Beginners: What You Need to Know

French for Beginners: What You Need to Know

French was my first love when it comes to languages. In fact, there’s an expression in French: “On revient toujours a son premier amour." It means you always go back to your first love. I love French; I love all the languages that I learn, but I have a special affection for French. I highly recommend learning French for beginners. There’s a whole world that you can access so much better if [...]
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Levels of Language Proficiency: What Is Fluency?

Levels of Language Proficiency: What Is Fluency?

I recently watched a video which features polyglots Luca Lampariello and Anthony Lauder. In it they make the point that you don’t need to have a large vocabulary in order to be fluent. Anthony has said in the past that even with a few hundred words you can be fluent, or you can be fluent at a relatively low level of proficiency in a language. I don’t agree at all.
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How To Learn Portuguese

Many of us are watching the Olympics in Brazil. Despite all of the bad reports that we always get in the lead up to any Olympic Games – some British newspaper called the 2010 Vancouver Winter games the worst Olympics in the world ever, then there were all the problems with toilets in Sochi and now pollution in Rio – it looks like actually things are proceeding swimmingly, so to [...]
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The Definition of a Polyglot

The Definition of a Polyglot

As people who speak multiple languages, polyglots like to use those languages; we like to see how we do. But there is an element of performance. Are you better than me? Am I better than you? For some people that’s fine. I think a lot of us are very happy, in fact, when we hear somebody speak better than we do.
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