archives: Languages
How To Study Xhosa
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Unfortunately, the nature of South Africa’s past, and the diversity of its population has prevented linguistic assimilation to a large degree. Even More »
Indigenous Languages of South America: Where to Learn Them and Why You Should
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Beyond the practical benefits of increased understanding or deeper cultural travel, these languages pose a fascinating study of the human capacity for More »
4 Strategies to Make the Most of Language School Classes
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It can take time, effort and some experimentation to figure out the best way to progress with language learning in the classroom. More »
How I Learned Bahasa Indonesia
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Things went fine for a while, but pre-planned conversations can only go so far. Indonesians have no qualms bursting out in laughter when a foreigner m More »
What’s a Critical Language and Why Study One?
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Not only do you need to learn a new way of moving your pen, a new way of reading and how to produce foreign sounds from places in your mouth you never More »
What To Do When You Hit A Plateau In Your Language Studies
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Once you get to a certain point in language learning, you hit the inevitable plateau. How do you keep moving up the learning curve when it feels like More »
What’s the Sexiest Accent in English?
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Can the way people speak English make them more or less attractive to us? More »
How I Learned Hindi
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My family repatriated to India when I was in the ninth grade. More »
Why Hindi-Urdu is One Language and Arabic is Several
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Language and culture are so intertwined that people groups often use language to define themselves. More »
Slang And Idioms From Around The World
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Careful in Portuguese - "ficar na" means stay at, but "ficar com" means make out with... More »
What’s The Most Beautiful Language?
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Your opinions about the world's most beautiful language. More »
How I Learned Thai
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I carried a notebook everywhere, its pages flecked with food stains and warped from constant touch. I scribbled every new food word, and recited them More »
A Tale of Two Carmens: How I Learned Spanish
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I remember the word for ice cream by recalling the vendors who board buses in Chile and shout, “¡¡Helado helado!!” More »
How I Learned Turkish
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I spent the breaks between classes sipping Turkish tea with the dancers while they taught me new vocabulary and phrases. More »
12 Swahili Words to Know Before Traveling in East Africa
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Go beyond Jambo and make the most of your East Africa experience! More »
Lenguajero’s Podcast Contest For Language Lovers
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Matador is sponsoring a sweet contest for language lovers and learners at the Spanish-English conversation exchange site Lenguajero. More »
How I Learned Welsh
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I learn it because I love the place, because I’m curious, because the sound of it to me is a song and not the ‘spitting’ that people make fun of More »
Coming To Grips (Or Not?) With Violence As Communication In Bangladesh
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Alarmingly, what I found myself doing was adapting to another way that Bangladeshis communicate: through force. More »
Call For Submissions: How You Learned A Language
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I want to hear your stories about struggling with new languages, stumbling forward and finding your identity, your voice, your comfort zone and finall More »
How I Learned Mexican Spanish
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I wanted the international assignment so I could learn to speak Spanish like a native. Never mind that Spanish fluency was a requirement for the job, More »
Looking Back On The First Year In Paris
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My decision to leave Los Angeles for Paris came from a desire to try on a different personality in a place where no one would be able to pick out, lik More »
How To Use Your Spanish To Learn Portuguese
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Portuguese is a logical next step after learning Spanish. It is different enough from Spanish that you will learn new LA skills, but so similar that More »
ATTN: India Travelers – Learn Hindi!
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Hindi will lead you beyond tourist traps into a real place with real people, whose lives and histories are diverse, complicated, and riveting. More »
Beginner’s Guide to Nigerian Pidgin English
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Try these phrases on your Nigerian friends to gain quicker access into their world. More »
What Can You Do To Help Preserve The World’s Endangered Languages?
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Nearly half of the world's languages are predicted to disappear by 2050 - what can you do to help prevent this? More »
What English Sounds Like To People Who Don’t Speak It
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What does English sound like to those who don't speak it? Listen and find out. More »
8 Classic Mexican Expressions To Perk Up Your Spanish
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Echar la hueva: the opposite of "echarle ganas." Instead of giving it your all, you give it an egg, the ultimate Mexican symbol of laziness. What am More »
How To Learn A Tonal Language
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The more I looked into it, the more I grew certain that this language would be a snap. It has no verb conjugation, no noun declinations, no adjectival More »
How To Speak Like a Kiwi: Essential Words, Tips, and Phrases
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8. Kiwis say "Bob's your uncle" to mean "there you go." More »
British and American English: How To Teach English You Don’t Speak
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Brits and Americans share a sarcastic disdain for each other's pronunciation of ‘tomato’ and have long argued about the difference between ‘bisc More »
The Bizarre Politics of Speaking English Overseas
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Why, I wonder, are foreigners so often insulted when other foreigners speak to them in English? I've never understood the purpose of having a tedious More »
5 Steps To Building a Startup While Living in Latin America
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The lower cost of living, the tranquil atmosphere, and the abundance of good beer, better food, great beaches and great people have made "working" in More »
A Quick and Dirty Phrasebook of Mexican Slang
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You can’t come to Mexico without a bare bones understanding of its slang. More »
Useful Arabic Phrases For Travelers
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Ana saeed Bush halas means ‘I’m glad Bush is gone'. More »
Useful Nepali Phrases to Know Before You Visit Nepal
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A willingness to try, a lack of self-consciousness, some good body language and these key words will get you far! More »
Expressions that Define Cultures
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Think of these expressions as ways to get inside of a particular worldview, and to show the locals that you've got an awareness of their cultural valu More »
10 Extraordinarily Useful Brazilian Portuguese Phrases
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É o jeitinho brasileiro. More »
Start Learning Italian with Benny Lewis
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The Irish Polyglot strikes again. Benny Lewis is on a mission to help people become multilingual. More »
The Traveler’s Guide to Okinawan Dialect
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We have met and now we are family. Let’s go drinking together, play and sing karaoke. By the way, I’m starving; you got any money? More »
How to Bargain in Arabic
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If you're going to the Middle East, learn these Arabic phrases before you bargain with the best! More »
6 Tips For Sounding Like A Local
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Speaking a local language is much more than studying grammar and vocab. More »
5 Metaphors For Language Learning
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Language is culture. Culture is language. More »
10 Extraordinarily Useful Japanese Phrases For Travelers
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If you lose a gamble on a fart while in Japan, we've got you covered. More »
Follow Your Intuition To Fluency
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The single most important skill any language learner can have is the ability to induce and intuit meaning. More »
Get Motivated To Learn A Foreign Language
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Having clearly defined goals and the motivation to charge at them makes all the difference in learning a language. More »
6 Products That Would Never Sell in the U.S.
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Real Products that could never enjoy success in the U.S. market. More »
Latin America’s Indigenous Languages and Where to Study Them
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Zapotec, Quechua, Nahuatl, and more. More »
7 Reasons to Learn Spanish in Chile
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The land, the people, the special accent and expressions: Chile might just be the best kept secret for learning Spanish. More »
Dreaming in Arabic, Learning in Yemen
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The labyrinth streets of San’a give you a glimpse back into the Persian Gulf before oil and the trappings of modernity. More »
Five Reasons Dating Abroad is the Best Way to Learn a Language
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Learning a new language is difficult. Make it easier by sharing the experience with someone else. More »
10 Japanese Customs You Must Know Before a Trip to Japan
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The following Culture Crash Course will help you ease right into Japan. More »
