by John Fotheringham
Gabriel Gelman is the founder of Sprachheld, a popular language learning website for Germans learning foreign languages (and―as an added bonus―non-Germans learning German as a foreign language). On the site, Gabriel shares useful language learning tips and tools, inspirational interviews with polyglots and linguists, and a dialogue-based Spanish course (with other languages slated for production in the future). I’ve followed his work for some time and was delighted to finally meet him in person at the 2019 Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava.
by John Fotheringham
Inés Ruiz is an award-winning entrepreneur, a former Spanish teacher at Cambridge University, and now the founder and CEO of Medita Spanish, the world’s first language and meditation app. By integrating mediation and mindfulness practices, she hopes to make language learning more fun and less stressful.
by John Fotheringham
Shannon Kennedy is a language lover, traveler, musician, and writer. She has written extensively for Fluent in 3 Months and Drops, and is also the Language Encourager and Community Manager for the Add1Challenge. In 2018, she co-hosted the inaugural Women in Language event, an online conference to champion, celebrate, and amplify the voices of women in languages. In the interview, we discuss ① why majoring in music led Shannon to start learning German, Italian, and Spanish, ② how her self-study methods differ from how she had learned languages in school, ③ why learning is short, frequent chunks of time is more effective than longer study sessions, ④ her daily habits and how she fits in language learning around work and motherhood, ⑤ why kids don’t learn languages better than adults, and ⑥ why discipline is more important than motivation when learning any skill.
by John Fotheringham
Tamara Marie is a language coach and the founder of Spanish Con Salsa, a site and podcast that help you learn Spanish through through music, travel, and cultural immersion. In the interview, we discuss: 1) Why high school Spanish probably won’t prepare you for traveling to a Spanish speaking country. 2) Why music and dance are such powerful tools in language learning. 3) Why “Spanish is not Spanish” and why you should focus on learning the sounds and vocabulary of a specific Spanish dialect based on your goals and travel plans. 4) Why you shouldn’t consider languages “easy” or “difficult.” 5) Why one size never fits all when learning a language. 6) Why you need to beware of “false phonetic friends” when learning Spanish. 7) Tamara’s tips for learning languages through songs.
by John Fotheringham
Sara Maria Hasbun, a.k.a. Miss Linguistic, is a polyglot, translator, linguist, and the Managing Director of Meridian Linguistics. She speaks Spanish, French, Mandarin, Korean, American Sign Language, Nicaraguan Sign Language, and Indonesian, and has also dabbled in Thai, Cantonese, and Malay. In the interview, we discuss: 1) How Sara Maria got interested in languages, and went from a struggling Spanish student to a full-fledged polyglot. 2) How studying linguistics has helped her learn foreign languages better. 3) How she learned to mimic immersion environments anywhere in the world. 4) The power of probabilistic, statistical learning, and the importance of learning language through high-frequency chunks. 5) Why you should “spam your brain” with language learning input. 6) The power of using online tutors and the importance of removing pain points between you and spoken practice. 7) The importance of getting the sounds of a language into your head. 8) The similarities between learning a language and working out (and how doing both at the same time is a powerful combination). 9) Why you shouldn’t discount the power of passive learning, “dead time,” and habit pairing. 10) The insufficiency of rule-based learning. 11) Why you should work with multiple tutors. 12 ) The power of the “monologue method” and 30-day challenges.
by John Fotheringham
Idahosa Ness is an accomplished polyglot, world traveler, musician, and the founder The Mimic Method, which helps language learners adopt more native-like pronunciation through the power of listening, phonetics, and mimicry. In the interview, we discuss how he went from a monolingual speaker in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to a globetrotting polyglot who speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Mandarin Chinese, why he focuses on pronunciation and speaking first, how his conversational fluency helped him out of a jam with the Mexican police, why music makes language more memorable and engaging, and much more.
