How Can You Tell You Are Fluent in a Foreign Language?
Some people appear to have a knack for languages, an innate ability that makes them seem like linguistic superheroes that are able to effortlessly switch back and forth from one to another without batting an eye. But what does it mean to be fluent in…
Listening to Podcasts to Learn Spanish
Podcasts have come a long way since the term was coined in 2004 by joining up the words “iPod” and “broadcast”. Besides listening to them on your iPod or mp3 player, you can now download or stream them on your computer, tablet and phone, and,…
Spanish from Spain vs Latin American Spanish
Due to its vast geographical reach and large number of native speakers, Spanish, like English, has diverged in many different ways as it has come under a variety of influences. These influences are sometimes the result of Spanish or “proto-Spanish” moving into an area where…
Greetings in German
To go beyond ‘hallo’, ‘guten Tag, guten Morgen guten Abend’ and so on, it is interesting to know what the way some German speakers will greet you can reveal. Here are some ways that German speakers greet each other in a more informal context and…
Learning German by listening to the radio
We’ve all done it. We have all learned a language just by listening to it. The thing is, that we usually do it when we are babies or young children, although research says that it can be done at least until you hit puberty. After…
My Chattertips: Getting the most out of Chatterbug
When it comes to learning a new language it all depends on our commitment. As a student, you can have all the resources in the world and heaps of motivation to begin, but it’s not until you start to take action and invest your time…
Lost in translation? Ways to say buddy in Spanish
The tricky thing about Spanish is that it quite often happens that speakers from different places use words in ways that make absolutely no sense to Spanish speakers from other places. The same word means different things in different places and this can often lead…
Is German really that difficult to learn?
German and English are both members of the West Germanic branch of languages, within the Germanic branch, which is in turn part of the Indo-European family of languages. Even though this means that they are quite close in linguistic terms, German has a bit of…
Learning Languages Boosts Brain Power
Learning a second language as an adult is a daunting task, and the goals we set ourselves often feel unreachable. We picture ourselves being able to converse freely in French with that Parisian waiter, but we often end up slacking off on the hard work…
5 YouTube Channels to Learn Spanish
Do you want to learn Spanish, but don’t know where to start? Try YouTube! YouTube is full of language learning tools. However, sometimes it can be overwhelming with the amount of content out there, so we have put together a list of some of the…
The Benefits of Being Bilingual
What does bilingual mean? Well, there are several definitions. Some agree that you are bilingual if you speak two languages at a (near) native level; others say it is just a matter of using the two languages actively in your day-to-day life. The fluency of…
Second Languages for Americans vs Europeans
A guy from Spain and a girl from the US meet in a bar. What language do they speak with one another? That depends on various different factors. If they are in the US, they will most likely speak English. If they’re in Spain, they…