by John Fotheringham | Feb 27, 2015 | Japanese Language, Mandarin Language, Podcast, Russian Language
In today’s show, I chat with the man, the legend, the one and only, Italian polyglot Luca Lampariello. Over the past 20 years, Luca has reached a very high level in 9 foreign languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese. Luca is full useful tips and strategies, which he shares in depth at his blog, The Polyglot Dream. In the interview, we discuss: 1) How Luca got interested in languages. 2) Procedural vs declarative memory. 3) The weakness of rote memorization. 4) How to train your brain to learn better. 5) The myth that you have to be a genius to learn lots of languages. 6) The myth that you have to learn a lot of words to become fluent. 7) The myth that just reading or listening a lot will make you a better speaker. 8) The ability to translate and communicate are very different things. 9) Whether there is a proper order of acquisition for foreign language skills. 10) The myth that polyglots can speak all their languages perfectly. 11) The importance of maintaining previously learned languages as you take on another. 12) Luca’s daily language learning and maintenance routine. 13) The myth that intensity always equals speed. 14) Luca’s favorite tools for different stages of learning.
by John Fotheringham | Jan 19, 2015 | English Language, German Language, Japanese Language, Mandarin Language, Portuguese Language, Russian Language, Spanish Language, Videos
On August 28, 1963, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., an American activist, humanitarian, and pastor gave what would become one of the most famous speeches of all time and a defining moment in the Civil Rights Movement. The masterful address, usually known simply as “I Have a Dream”, was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in front hundreds of thousands of people who had joined the “March on Washington”. If you haven’t watched the speech in a while, please take a moment now to relive a bit of history and honor King’s memory. And for extra points, read the speech in 12 different languages.
by John Fotheringham | Apr 5, 2009 | Apps, English Language, Japanese Language, Mandarin Language, Methods, Portuguese Language, Product Reviews, Russian Language, Spanish Language, Videos, Websites
Pronounced like the word “link” (not “ling-kyu” as it is often mispronounced), LingQ is an an online and iOS app based language learning system created by Steve Kaufmann. The “freemium” site allows users to easily look up and save unknown words and phrases (what they call “LingQing”, hence the name of the site)m with tools for 11 languages: Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish (which happen to be the same 11 languages Steve speaks).
