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February 7, 2025
You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once. —Czech proverb
“A different language is a different vision of life.” —Federico Fellini
I met fantastic people I’d otherwise never have met because they didn’t speak Greek or English.
Now I know that if I try to improve every day, if I have the hunger to become better, and if I have the will to move forward despite any obstacles that come my way, I can learn not only languages, but any other skill out there.
I sincerely want it to change your life as much as it did mine, and I firmly believe it can do wonders for you. Despite any past failures you may have had, I urge you to reconsider learning a language. I ask you to trust in yourself, become the master of your language learning journey—and your life—and show everyone what you can do.
You’re perfect for language learning, just the way you are. All you need are the desire to learn a language and an Internet connection, and you can make it happen. The changes you have to make are within your power; no external factors can prevent you from making them. If you learned how to speak, read, and write in your native language, then you can acquire any foreign language.
Part of what makes it worthwhile is that it’s not easy to become fluent in a language. It takes time and effort. It’s a journey with both ups and downs, with moments of embarrassment and failures, but also happiness and fulfillment. And in return, not only do you master a language, but you also get so much more! Like I did. The struggle is an asset, not a problem. There’s true beauty in it!
Hard work beats talent, and there are countless examples out there to prove that. This means that the actual difference between you and the fluent non-native speakers of your target language is that they found the courage to try learning the language and to work toward fluency, while you gave up on it (or didn’t do much except talk or stress about it). Changing that mindset requires no talent. It requires action.
The truth is that it doesn’t have to take much time. Successful language learners and polyglots have proven that studying more often is more effective than studying longer. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that thirty minutes a day is all you need to successfully learn a language.
Don’t forget that the countries where your new language is spoken are not the only places where it lives. The Internet is the Place Where Your New Language Lives! It’s forever changed the way people learn languages, and it’s patiently waiting for you to make use of it—right here, right now. You can learn any language from the comfort of your own home!
Let me repeat this: If you have an Internet connection, you don’t have to pay for language learning.
THERE’S AN EFFECTIVE COMBINATION OF METHODS FOR YOU TO LEARN A LANGUAGE FOR THE TIME BEING.
Anything you do in your own language, you can do in your target language—for example, your favorite hobbies and activities.
If you turn to fun activities instead of boring ones, your resentment will gradually turn into enthusiasm, and you’ll be excited and eager to start learning your target language—which means you’ll keep doing it every day and great results will come, guaranteed. So your second question is: how can I make language learning fun?
To recap, the two questions you need to have in mind before you start are “What’s my why?” and “How can I make this fun?”
A language teacher’s job is to show you what you should learn and how you should learn it. Teachers don’t teach you languages. They teach you how to learn languages. There’s a difference. They help you learn a language. You must do the work! Once you realize what teachers are there to do for you, you can take over and do their job for free instead.
You know what you want, what you like, and what you find boring. Language teachers may know how to teach languages better than you, but they don’t know you better than you know yourself.
The point is, once you learn how to become your own teacher, how to organize and plan your learning journey in detail, and how to have fun in the process, you’ll never want to have a language teacher again. And the more languages you learn, the more experienced you’ll become regarding what to acquire and how to learn it. That’s what many polyglots do, and I’m proposing a free version of this in my book.
Become the leader of your journey, and you won’t have to pay for a language teacher again. Create your own language learning material, and you won’t have to pay for language learning again.
But if we were to break down these skills, we’d go back to our three core ingredients of a language. Reading means looking at grammar, alphabet, and vocabulary. Listening involves hearing pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Writing refers to producing grammar, alphabet, and vocabulary. Speaking reflects the creation of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
When you set a concrete goal, you automatically know what to learn, what you should concentrate on, and where to start.
These goals don’t have to be universal and last forever. They can be small goals (like this one) so that they get you started and you create a plan. You’ll fulfill them more easily than the “becoming fluent” one, and you’ll be able to celebrate your small victory and get the boost to keep learning and setting new goals.
You want to make sure you have a deadline—a realistic one so you won’t get frustrated if you don’t succeed—and that you know where to start, that you have something specific in mind that you want to fulfill.
The content of your goal doesn’t matter. As long as you know what you want to achieve and by what time you want to master it, everything will be a lot easier for you.
having the right mentality is key. It’s what distinguishes successful from unsuccessful language learning. Yes, the mindset matters more than the methods or the hours applied.
By choosing to learn for free, you’re actually creating an environment that stimulates creativity and innovation. You know what your limits are, yet you choose to work around them accordingly. That’s what makes people grow. In essence, I have numerous stories I could share about how I learned very important things in my new languages as I was looking for something else.
As we previously discussed, though, free language learning is so much more than just using Google. Let’s find out what other free methods you can use to collect your materials and improve any language skills you want without breaking the bank.
“Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” —Chinese proverb
That’s exactly why learning how to collect material according to your own personal needs is important, and it’s also what a lot of successful language learners do. They don’t expect any teacher to do the work for them. They critically think about how to learn a language themselves and experiment with methods to see if they work for them. You’re the leader of your language journey, so you’re the one who chooses what to learn. But how can you do this in practice? By using the Place Where All Languages Live—the Internet!
A lot of languages have their own place where people ask questions about them. For example, German has its own bilingual question and answer site, Stack Exchange, and Spanish and other languages have Wordreference forums. There’s also a tiny, beautiful Android and iOS app called “HiNative” that enables you to ask native speakers of your target language anything you don’t understand about the language—whether a phrase sounds natural, whether or not they would use it, and whether something you found is correct, for example.
Think about an answer to this question: what would you like to learn how to say in the language right now? “What kind of question is that?” you might be thinking. “Of course I want to learn everything.” Sure, but let’s start somewhere. I always ask myself that question when I’m learning a new language, and most of the time I answer, “I’d like to learn how to introduce myself.”
