The Language Mastery Show
Interviews with the World’s Best Language Learners
The Language Mastery Show brings you interviews with the world’s best language learners. Get an inside look at how polyglots, linguists, and language lovers master languages more quickly, and learn the habits, methods, and mindsets you need to succeed in your own language learning adventures. Each guest shares proven strategies for reaching fluency, overcoming fear, speaking with confidence, and having more fun along the way. I’m your host, John Fotheringham, a linguist, teacher, and the author of Master Japanese and Master Mandarin.
★★★★★
The real deal!
John is a true language aficionado. Knowledgeable, motivating, entertaining… he hunts out the best guests and does awesome interviews which are inspiring for aspiring language learners. Great stuff!
Great Language Learning Advice
John’s philosophy and approach are spot-on: You don’t need to be gifted, spend tons of money, or move to another country to learn a language. You just need to be dedicated and consistent.
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Wonderful Tool
I really love this podcast. I wish there were more resources like this. It is truly refreshing to hear people who know what they’re talking about and are not just trying to sell something. I was teaching a Russian class when I stumbled on to this and I had my students listen to selected episodes as homework. The host and all of his guests are realistic. They are not salesmen. They are not dogmatic. They enjoy languages and they are eager to be helpful to new language learners. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Show Notes
Interview with Kerstin Hammes of “Fluent Language”
Kerstin Hammes is the outspoken author of the Fluent Language blog, Fluency Made Achievable, and The Vocab Cookbook. She is a native German speaker, but has reached a native level of fluency in English, and abilities in a number of additional languages, including French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Russian. She is a great language teacher with an infectious passion for languages and charming sense of humor.
Interview with Kris Broholm of “The Actual Fluency Podcast”
In today’s show, I talk with Kris Broholm of Actual Fluency, an excellent podcast and blog boasting an impressive number of interviews with brilliant language experts, zany polyglots, etc. (over 50 episodes as of writing), including many of my heroes and a few guests who have been on the Language Mastery Show. In his own words, Kris is not an expert on languages, linguistics, or learning, is not a great student, and is not gifted at language learning. While I think he is certainly being humble, I love how he shows that anyone can learn a language regardless of one’s level of introversion, aptitude for learning, location, age, etc. Unlike many who come to language learning as just a hobby, languages helped pull Kris out of severe depression and transform his life.
Interview with Luca Lampariello, Polyglot, Language Coach & Co-Founder of LinguaCore
In today’s show, I chat with the man, the legend, the one and only, Italian polyglot Luca Lampariello. Over the past 20 years, Luca has reached a very high level in 9 foreign languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Mandarin Chinese. Luca is full useful tips and strategies, which he shares in depth at his blog, The Polyglot Dream. In the interview, we discuss: 1) How Luca got interested in languages. 2) Procedural vs declarative memory. 3) The weakness of rote memorization. 4) How to train your brain to learn better. 5) The myth that you have to be a genius to learn lots of languages. 6) The myth that you have to learn a lot of words to become fluent. 7) The myth that just reading or listening a lot will make you a better speaker. 8) The ability to translate and communicate are very different things. 9) Whether there is a proper order of acquisition for foreign language skills. 10) The myth that polyglots can speak all their languages perfectly. 11) The importance of maintaining previously learned languages as you take on another. 12) Luca’s daily language learning and maintenance routine. 13) The myth that intensity always equals speed. 14) Luca’s favorite tools for different stages of learning.
More please!
I just binge-listened to the whole backlist of episodes. Gosh, this is an absorbing show.