(Want to skip the history? Scroll down to the List of 21 North Korean Words in Crash Landing On You) How much do you know about the North Korean accent? Netflix’s new drama “Crash Landing on You” launched last week, and suddenly the Koreasphere was all atwitter about the North Korean dialect, which is heavily featured in the show. …
Read More »Did you know that Indonesian is one of the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn? Did you know it has more than 43 million speakers? In fact, if you put Indonesian together with (mutually intelligible) Malay, which has 77 million speakers, more people speak these languages than speak Korean, French, or Italian! By the way – a helpful …
Read More »
Are you ready to learn Chinese characters? They will challenge you at first – but trust me, the first time you read a Chinese sentence (and it actually makes sense) you will feel such a rush! Since the Chinese writing system is so drastically different from the alphabet we use for English, you learn to read and write Chinese in …
Read More »
Too late, come back next year! Or check out my lists of language-learning resources here.
Read More »
The United Nations has declared 2019 the Year of Indigenous Languages. I know a lot of you are taking that as your cue to try your hand at learning a minority language, from Occitan to Teochew to Hawaiian! How fun! But of course one of the biggest challenges of learning a minority language is that it can be harder …
Read More »
I’ve been to Japan many times now, but for some reason I always resisted learning Japanese. I suppose part of me was worried it would interfere with my Korean. Maybe a more truthful part of me was worried I would get obsessed (as I often do) and end up neglecting everything else I’m really supposed to be working on! So …
Read More »
At the time of writing, I’m about to attend the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava. After hosting the event for three years in a row, this will be the last one that is held in Slovakia (for the next few years, at least). It is also, by all estimates, the largest polyglot gathering to date! Of course, to prepare …
Read More »
When the recent article in The Cut came out proclaiming Duolingo useless, the glee was palpable. I get it. You’ve spent countless hours at the beck and call of that owl, and you still can’t speak Spanish, or Ukrainian, or High Valyrian. You feel ineffective, incapable. You wondered if it was just you. I’m writing this post on a long …
Read More »
After a month-long break from language-learning to focus on my business, I’ve just booked my next trip: Prague --> Bratislava --> Lviv --> Kiev! Of course, this means I have some new languages to learn (Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian) and one language I need to revive from very dormant slumber (Russian). As soon as I started making these travel plans, …
Read More »I spent a month studying German, before a trip to Berlin. I had only planned on a short-term relationship with this language, 'but I've kind of fallen for it now! Here are some resources I can recommend if you're interested in tackling this fascinating language! Online Asynchronous Courses German Uncovered by Olly Richards and Kerstin Cable This course can be …
Read More »
Misslinguistic Learn more languages.