Travel report from Italy

My trip to Italy is More than half over now, but it's been quite interesting so far. The experience has been rather eye-opening! Things got off to a rather negative start. In fact, for the first few days, I was beginning to question the entire idea.

Upon arrival in Rome, all of my "romanticized" ideas of Italy were shattered. The city is ugly, dirty, covered in graffiti, and crawling with homeless people — of course you won't see any of that in Eat, Pray, Love, but it's an unavoidable reality... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Using one language to learn another

The very first thing I learned about Turkish this year was actually an interesting revelation about languages and translation tools.

On New Year's Day, I commented on a friend's Facebook photo, and decided to do it in Turkish, since this is my Turkish year. However, since I began the year knowing no Turkish, the only way I could leave that comment was by first getting the words from Google Translate.

I first typed the phrase I wanted in English, and got a Turkish translation. But keeping... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Ongoing action: -iyor

Today, I'm excited to share my first grammatical observation about Turkish, which I've learned without studying at all!

As I mentioned recently, I changed my iPod to Turkish on new year's day of this year, and since then I've been interacting with the device in Turkish and learning things as I do.

When I'm checking my email, the status bar says Denetleniyor. I'm sure that means "checking email", or something like that, and I'm sure I could verify that in Google Translate.

When I go to... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Discovering a new language from afar, part 2

I've already told you how I'm getting myself accustomed to the Turkish language by watching videos of narration while reading along. Today I'm going to share another thing that I did in preparation for my trip, so that I could be learning Turkish even as I'm wandering through Italy.

Okay, so I've shown you a way to find videos even when you don't know the language. Now I'm going to show you how I find music! It's acutally quite simple.

All I do is go to Google Translate and try phrases that... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Russian vowel reduction

A few months ago, I showed you how easy it is to learn the Russian alphabet. If you've been through that, you should already be able to read Russian text, sound out words, and even recognize several cognates. Today, I want to take a look at the really interesting phenomenon of Russian vowel reduction.

In spite of having a much more user-friendly alphabet than we're used to in English (and please, don't try to tell me Cyrillic is hard!), Russian is not a phonetic language. That is due to unpredictable... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Discovering a new language from afar, part 1

I've spent several hours this week on planes, in airports, in stations, and on trains, but during all that time I'm already learning Turkish. And I'm doing it without and language books or lesson CDs, and without access to the Internet.

How? I'm glad you asked!

I did several things in preparation for my trip, to make sure that I would be able to start learning Turkish — without study materials — even as I spend a month wandering through Italy. Today, I'm going to share one of the... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

At last, the Italian eBook is here

There were a few occasions when I thought the moment would never arrive, but it's happened. The Italian e-book is available.

This is my first time writing any kind of book, and as a perfectionist it was hard to ever reach a point where I felt like it was "ready." But after a lot of hard work, I've gathered some really good information into a book that I'm proud to share.

This is the culmination of a year of learning Italian, as well as learning about learning. There is a lot of information... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Discovering a language with my iPod

This year started with me settling into a new apartment, frantically working to finish my Italian eBook, and then leaving the country! I'm away from home, away from my computer and all the things that I use to learn, but that's not stopping me. I'm already learning some interesting things about Turkish, thanks to my iPod!

The first thing I did to start the new mission this year was switch the interface language on my iPod to Turkish. And that has allowed me to make several interesting discoveries.

The... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Setting clear expectations

Just as I did last year, I am going to get my year started by setting some goals and laying out a clear set of expectations with the language. It is always important to do this with big projects, and learning a language is definitely a big project.

Saying you want to learn a language is too vague. Even using the word "fluently" isn't clear. When half of the alotted time is over, you need to be able to look at your list and feel confident that half of your expectations have been met, and determine... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Why no language-learning products?

Judging by the number of page views and retweets I've had, this year's exciting new plan for language-learning has got a lot of people interested! However, judging by many of the comments and emails I've received, I haven't done a good enough job of explaining my intentions and my purpose. I will try to clear that up today.

Challenging assumptions
The first, most important aspect of this year's new strategy is that it challenges the popular assumptions. I think today's assumptions are mostly... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Why learn Turkish?

Before I get into the details of how I'll be learning Turkish this year, I want to first take some time to explain why I made this choice. People often have no idea why they should learn a language or which one they should learn. Maybe after seeing my reasons for this choice, perhaps some of you will begin to make your own choices differently.

Useful language
Turkish is, obviously, a Turkic language. In fact, as you can probably guess, it's the most well-known of the Turkic languages, in... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

A brand new plan for this year

This year, I'm going to take on the task of learning a new language in a brand new way. I'm going to try something that I don't think anyone has tried before. Or perhaps it has been done, but not in a way as public and visible as this blog.

Just as I did last year, I'm going to learn to speak a new language fluently in one year. But this time, I'm going to do it without any of the traditional language learning tools. No lesson books. No vocabulary building software. No instructional CDs. No... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

It’s a new year and I have an exciting announcement!

Today begins the new year, and that means it's time for me to finally reveal a secret I've been keeping for a few months. As you already know, with the arrival of a new year, my attention will be shifting to a new language.

My year of Italian is over, but that doesn't mean I'm going to just forget everything I've learned. It's important to maintain each language even as I shift my attention to a new one.

It's also important to remember why I learn these languages. This has never been about... continue reading at Fluent Every Year