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
Free21Jan
21 Jan 2020
How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?
How long does it take to learn Spanish? How long does it take to learn any language? I hear these questions quite often. There is no simple answer. It is really up to you. The US Foreign Service Language institute published some numbers about how many hours required to learn different languages. For Spanish the […]
Read more How Long Does It Take to Learn Spanish?14Jan
14 Jan 2020
The Swedish Language: How I Went About Learning It
I was born in Sweden. I lived there until I was five. I imagine that I only spoke the Swedish language for that period. I have no recollection of transitioning from Swedish into English after we moved to Canada. My parents decided we would speak English in the house. My parents were actually from Czechoslovakia, […]
Read more The Swedish Language: How I Went About Learning It07Jan
7 Jan 2020
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 the Internet, […]
Read more How to Learn Chinese: My Top 6 Tips31Dec
31 Dec 2019
Can We Sound Like a Native?
Today, I’m going to talk about speaking like a native, sounding like a native, because it’s a discussion that showed up sort of in response to my latest video, which I did in Japanese. Sometimes I study on LingQ using the computer. Mostly, however, I use my iPad because it’s more comfortable […]
Read more Can We Sound Like a Native?24Dec
24 Dec 2019
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 [...]
Read more How To Learn Portuguese17Dec
17 Dec 2019
Interview with A.J. Hoge of Effortless English
Successful language learning doesn’t depend on the study and grammar nor writing tests like TOEIC and TOEFL, although these are popular in Japan. What is needed is sustained engagement with compelling and comprehensible input, as well as a little encouragement. This is what A.J. Hoge of Effortless English provides. Here is an interview I did […]
Read more Interview with A.J. Hoge of Effortless English10Dec
10 Dec 2019
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?03Dec
3 Dec 2019
Learning Three Languages a Day
Some people will say, geez Steve, you used to say you should focus entirely on one language. I did used to say that, but a number of things have changed. I have come to realize that the more you focus on one thing, you try to nail one thing, you stay with one […]
Read more Learning Three Languages a Day26Nov
26 Nov 2019
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.
Read more The Definition of a Polyglot22Oct
22 Oct 2019
A Guide to French Pronunciation
French was the first language where I was able to transform myself into a fluent speaker of another language, other than English. I love listening to French when it is spoken well. I think acquiring good French pronunciation is one of the challenges that French learners face, and so I would like to offer a […]
Read more A Guide to French Pronunciation