May
May
Follow the money
It’s only May, but already this year I’ve received several free copies of foreign language-related products, and the only thing asked in return is that I review the products on my web site — and I will give each of them an honest, fair review. But as I see more and more new language learning…
May
May
Solving the real problem of language learning
It is my firm belief that one of the main reasons why so many people do not learn foreign languages, or why so many people fail at learning foreign languages, is that they simply do not know how to do it. This is the worst kind of problem, because it is a problem whose existence…
May
May
What are the first things you learn in a new language?
Instead of a long post today about things I do when I learn, today I’m going to change it up a bit and ask for input from my readers.
When you first decide to learn a new language, what are the things you need to know? What strategies do you use? What tricks do you…
Apr
Apr
Learning Greek through English roots
In my last post I pointed out a number of false friends that make life more difficult for the new learner of Modern Greek. But everything isn’t bleak… there are also some not-so-false friends that can be used to your advantage. Today, I’ll look at some of the ways that Greek words can be found…
Apr
Apr
False friends – Greek has a lot of them!
One likes to think that with so much influence on the English language, there should be a wealth of cognates in Greek which would make it easier for a native English-speaker to learn — and there are — but there are also a lot of “false friends”… words that sound like cognates, but are not.…
Mar
Mar
Learning to read (in other languages)
If you asked me to choose the one language-learning activity that I think provides the greatest increase in knowledge and ability, for the smallest investment of energy, I would always say the same thing: learning to read.
For those of you who don’t know Aaron Posehn, check out his new language blog, “For the Love …
Mar
Mar
The big move!
It’s been a while since I updated here. Rest assured, that’s not because I’ve given up. There’s a good reason for the recent silence — I’ve moved!
I’ve hinted in recent posts that I wanted to find an apartment near my office, and thus near Greektown. Who could have imagined I’d find the perfect place?…
Feb
Feb
Is language learning difficult?
Yesterday morning, I woke to an email from David Mansaray, asking me “Is learning a language difficult?” Part of my response was quoted in his latest blog post, but I found the topic very interesting, and it inspired me to give a lot of thought to how we use the word “difficult” in relation to…