For people who love languages, or would but were discouraged.
- Believe in yourself and have the right attitude
- Put in an hour a day
- Use a system that works... like LingQ

01Dec
How to Learn Chinese: My Top 6 Tips
I studied Mandarin Chinese 50 years ago. It took me nine months to reach a level where I could translate newspaper editorials from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English, read novels and interpret for people, I did this in the age of the open-reel tape recorder, long before the age of […]
Read more How to Learn Chinese: My Top 6 Tips24Nov
The Best Way to Learn a New Language
Good language learners notice what is happening in a language. They notice the sounds of the language, and the structure and the vocabulary. They notice as they listen and read. They notice when they use the language. How can we train ourselves in the ability to notice, in order to become good language learners?
Read more The Best Way to Learn a New Language17Nov
How Long Should it Take to Learn a Language?
Language learning depends mostly on three factors, the attitude of the learner, the time available, and learner's attentiveness to the language. If we assume a positive attitude on the part of the learner, and a reasonable and growing attentivenes...
Read more How Long Should it Take to Learn a Language?07Nov
Similarities & Differences Between the Slavic Languages
The most popularly spoken Slavic languages are Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian in the east, Polish, Czech and Slovakian in the west and then the the languages of the former Yugoslavia in the south.
Read more Similarities & Differences Between the Slavic Languages24Oct
Learn Japanese – 5 Essential Tips
If you are going to learn Japanese, you need to decide why you are learning the language. Why did I learn Japanese? My work took me there in 1971. I lived there for nine years, mostly during the 1970s. I learned in Japan, surrounded by the language, on my own, largely by listening and reading and […]
Read more Learn Japanese – 5 Essential Tips06Oct
Want to Learn German? Here’s How I Did It.
In 1987, I decided I was going to put forth a major effort to learn German. I’m going to explain that to you in detail. Long before I decided that I was going to learn German, I did have exposure to the language. My parents were from Czechoslovakia and they spoke German at home, […]
Read more Want to Learn German? Here’s How I Did It.22Sep
¿Cuánto tiempo se tarda en aprender un idioma?
El aprendizaje de un idioma depende fundamentalmente de tres factores: La actitud del estudiante, el tiempo disponible y la atención que ponga éste en el idioma. Si asumimos una actitud positiva, razonable y una atención creciente hacia el idioma por parte del estudiante. ¿Cuánto tiempo tomaría en aprender un idioma? El FSI, el estadounidense […]
Read more ¿Cuánto tiempo se tarda en aprender un idioma?08Sep
My 7 Goals of Language Learning
My hierarchy of goals is what I consider to be more important at what stage in my learning. There are seven of them and I'm going talk about the seven today, and then I've been giving some thought to doing one video on each of these seven goals. In other words, how do we achieve those goals? How do we use those goals to improve our ability in the language that we're learning?
Read more My 7 Goals of Language Learning25Aug
How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?
How many hours a day will you spend with Spanish? This is perhaps the most important consideration and does not refer to how many hours do you spend in a Spanish language classroom. It means how much time do you spend listening, reading, speaking or writing in Spanish. It can be listening to podcasts while walking the dog, reading, watching movies, listening to songs in Spanish or being [...]
Read more How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?11Aug
Create Your Own Dictionary
When it comes to learning a new language, some learners like dictionaries. They read them. They treasure them. They worry about getting the best possible dictionary. I don’t like using dictionaries. Using them is like one-way love.
Read more Create Your Own Dictionary