The Linguist – A polyglot's blog on language learning https://blog.thelinguist.com/ The Linguist - A polyglot's blog on language learning Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:38:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 https://blog.thelinguist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/cropped-favicon-1-32x32.png The Linguist – A polyglot's blog on language learning https://blog.thelinguist.com/ 32 32 Is French Hard to Learn? A Polyglot’s Honest Answer https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-french-hard-to-learn/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-french-hard-to-learn/#respond Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:38:06 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176491069 TL;DR French is one of the easier languages for English speakers, mostly because we already share so much vocabulary. What makes it feel hard is that French spelling doesn’t tell you how...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-french-hard-to-learn/feed/ 0 How Long Does It Take to Learn Japanese? A Polyglot’s Answer (2026) https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-japanese/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-japanese/#respond Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:07:59 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176491042 TL;DR How long does it take to learn Japanese? The US Foreign Service Institute estimates about 2,200 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency. In my experience, the...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-japanese/feed/ 0 Is Korean Hard to Learn? My Honest Answer  https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-korean-hard-to-learn/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-korean-hard-to-learn/#respond Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:52:41 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176491008 TL;DR Yes, Korean is hard for English speakers. The US Foreign Service Institute puts it in its hardest group, at about 2,200 hours of study to reach professional working proficiency. The alphabet...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/is-korean-hard-to-learn/feed/ 0 How I Learned Spanish: 60 Years of Reading, Hitchhiking, and Enjoying the Language https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-spanish/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-spanish/#respond Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:59:12 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490952 TL;DR My connection to Spanish goes back 60 years, starting with a single university course and a painstaking read-through of a Blasco Ibáñez story. It grew through hitchhiking around Spain in the...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-spanish/feed/ 0 How I Learned Ukrainian: A Language Journey Through History, Politics, and Curiosity https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-ukrainian/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-ukrainian/#respond Fri, 11 Sep 2026 18:07:58 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490915 I’ve spent my life chasing the places where cultures mix. Olive oil on my sushi, wasabi with my French food, a Dutch painter’s print of a café in the south of France...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-ukrainian/feed/ 0 How I Learned Cantonese https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-cantonese/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-cantonese/#respond Fri, 04 Sep 2026 20:12:37 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490868 TL;DR I lived in Hong Kong for two and a half years focused on Mandarin, and my wife is a native Cantonese speaker, but I made almost no effort to learn Cantonese...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-cantonese/feed/ 0 How I Learned Swedish https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-swedish/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-swedish/#respond Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:09:10 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490837 TL;DR I was born in Sweden and left at five, which gave me an early ear for the language but almost no vocabulary. Decades later, a shift in my lumber export business...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-i-learned-swedish/feed/ 0 The Best Way to Learn French (What Actually Worked for Me) https://blog.thelinguist.com/the-best-way-to-learn-french/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/the-best-way-to-learn-french/#respond Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:49:23 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490768 I want to talk about how I learned French, and about the best way to learn French based on what actually happened to me, not what I was taught in school. I...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/the-best-way-to-learn-french/feed/ 0 Language Chunks Explained: What They Are and Why I Never Study Them Directly https://blog.thelinguist.com/language-chunks-collocations-explained/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/language-chunks-collocations-explained/#respond Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:50:36 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490750 I want to talk about learning languages in chunks. It is a concept many of you are probably already aware of, but I want to explain why I think it matters and...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/language-chunks-collocations-explained/feed/ 0 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Learning Languages https://blog.thelinguist.com/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-about-language-learning/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-about-language-learning/#respond Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:42:48 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490737 After 60 years of learning languages, I find myself thinking about what I would tell my younger self. Not the specific techniques or the tools, those have changed enormously over the decades....

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-about-language-learning/feed/ 0 How to Find Time to Learn a Language: My Daily Routine https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-to-find-time-to-learn-a-language/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-to-find-time-to-learn-a-language/#respond Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:20:54 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176490701 I hear it all the time. “I would love to learn Spanish, but I just don’t have the time.” I have been learning languages for most of the last 60 years, almost...

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]]> https://blog.thelinguist.com/how-to-find-time-to-learn-a-language/feed/ 0 Which Language Should You Learn? https://blog.thelinguist.com/which-language-should-you-learn/ https://blog.thelinguist.com/which-language-should-you-learn/#respond Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:56:51 +0000 https://blog.thelinguist.com/?p=176488283 TL;DR The question most people ask (“which language is easiest?” or “which is most useful?”) is the wrong one. After learning 20+ languages over six decades, my honest answer to “which language...

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