I just had this random idea reading a site on the Internet. Isn’t the best way to learn a language discussing in it? Here’re a few reasons why it might be.

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There are quite a few dialects of Arabic. The question is: which dialect of Arabic should you learn if you want to communicate with as many Arabic speakers as you can? I attempt to give a summary of this question.

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I have posted a while ago how to become educated even if you have finished school (and have fun in the process). This time I want to talk about something yet unrelated to languages, yet very cool: star gazing. It is something I have done only for the last few nights yet but I have thoroughly enjoyed and I want you to try it: watching at the night sky and identifying the constellations. Here’s what it’s all about.

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I was thinking about the future when I started pondering what languages would look like in the future. One of languages is English and it is possible that it will become the lingua-franca of the whole world. What would English of the future look like? That’s the question I want to ponder on in this blog post.
If we are talking about the future, it is helpful to find out what future we are talking about. Let’s suppose it’s a …

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I know Lithuanian. I have been learning some Latvian lately. If somebody asked me “Which one is easier: Lithuanian or Latvian?” I would now answer “Latvian”. Latvian is easier to learn for both English-speakers and speakers of other non-Baltic languages. Here’s why.

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A Renaissance person is somebody with a wide-range of interests, talents, skills and knowledge. Alternative terms are a polymath, a Renaissance man/woman or informally a jack of all trades. Let’s discuss what you should know to become one!
Here are the skills and subjects that I believe a Renaissance person should have or be knowledgable in:

Languages: I have once written a post discussing what languages you should know to travel the word freely. I would say you would have to know …

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One thing that I have learned by making courses for a lot of different languages was that I can learn them all (a bit). So can you.
When I was little, I thought I would speak several languages as a grown up. I never remember dreaming exactly about knowing a lot of them but I can remember that I was thinking I would later speak Lithuanian, English, German, Russian, French, Spanish… and that would be good to go. At that …

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“What lies behind it?” is one of the main questions that I constantly find myself asking when it comes to learning new things. I think everybody should be asking it too.
This boils down to a whole philosophy there but let’s apply it to languages and specifically to vocabulary learning. Whenever I learn new words, I always want to find out what exactly they mean. Take the Lithuanian word for thanks which is labas. You say it without thinking about it …

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Do you think having a perfect accent is possible?
For all practical purposes, I don’t really think so anymore unless a) the sounds in your native language happen to coincide with those in the language you’ve learnt or b) you’ve learnt the new language since childhood.
Let’s take the language that is the most learnt in the world: English. I, for one, haven’t met anybody speak absolutely without an accent.  Seriously. I have met a lot of people with I could say …

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People always think their native language is the hardest in the world.
It’s not true.
Well, obviously, it is true for some nation which truly has the most difficult language of the world.  On the other hand, “difficulty” of a language is like “movement” of an object in Physics: it only makes sense relative to some frame of reference.
In any case, I’ve always heard it from people that their language is the most difficult. For example:

Norwegians told me that Norwegian is extremely …

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