China Encourages Beijing Residents to Le...

The Chinese government just announced a new drive to encourage residents of Beijing to learn English, according to this article in the Australian. The program comes as part of an effort to turn Beijing into a “world city” that welcomes foreign visitors, especially English-speaking visitors. The...

Milkman Learns Gujarati At Work...

Some people spend months in language classes without becoming fluent, but the Daily Mail recently published an article about John ‘Jimmy’ Mather, a Lancaster milkman who became fluent in Gujarati just from listening to his customers talk. Mather has been delivering milk since 1960. When...

Estonia Sends Out The Language Police...

Now that Estonia has broken free of Russia, the former Soviet state is trying to encourage the use of the Estonian language.  However, many Russian-speaking people emigrated to Estonia when it was still part of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet government discouraged the use of the Estonian language...

Bilingual Adults Can’t Stop Thinki...

In foreign language classes, professors will often tell you that in order to be successful, you need to stop thinking in your native tongue and start thinking in the language you are trying to learn. This is harder than it sounds, and a new study suggests that even fully bilingual adults can’t...

Site Makes US Foreign Service Language C...

Interesting in studying a new language on your own time? All of the study material used by the US Foreign Service is available for free, online, on the fsi-language-courses.org web site.  The site is the work of private volunteers and is not affiliated with the US government, but the lessons, which...

Learning Languages Cheaply...

Recently, the New York Times’ Frugal Traveler blog addressed the issue of learning a foreign language, looking for the most effective ways to gain foreign language skills without breaking the bank. Here’s a quick summary of what the Frugal Traveler found: Podcasts on iTunes are a cheap (sometimes...

Different Grammatical Structures Use Dif...

All languages have a vocabulary and a grammatical structure. However, the type of grammatical structure varies depending on which language you are looking at. In some languages, like English, the order of the words largely determines the meaning of a sentence. However, in other languages, like German,...

How Do Babies Learn Language? Apparently...

Can you teach your baby new words, maybe even make him smarter, by putting him in front of the television? That was the promise of the popular “Baby Einstein” videos-parents get a break, and they don’t have to feel guilty because their toddler is actually learning while he watches TV. Unfortunately,...

Is Romance the Best Way to Learn a New L...

Here’s a special Valentine’s Day tip for learning a new language- find a foreign sweetheart! According to this article from DallasNews.com, a love affair is the best way to become fluent in another language. That may sound incredibly cheesy, but consider this striking statistic: language...

I Love You in 25 languages...

To help you to be extra romantic this Valentine’s Day we have added the language translation of ‘I love you’ below… I love you in Bulgarian: Обичам те I love you in Catalan: T’estimo I love you in Chinese: Cantonese: 我愛你 – Mandarin: 我愛你; 我爱你 I love you in Croatian:...