Looking for a Toilet It is usually pretty simple to find a toilet when you are abroad. For example, in South America the words hombre and mujer are pretty self explanatory even if there aren’t little pictures on the door. However, I was with a group walking to Machu Picchu when we came across a(…)

Get a Foreign Language Haircut The first time I got my hair cut in Spanish was a scary business. I was used to asking for a bit of extra length on top and nicely shaved in at the back and side in the UK (no, I am not much of a follower of fashion now(…)

Learn More Words in English One of the unexpected side effects I discovered when I started studying a foreign tongue is that I began to pick up a few words in English I hadn’t used before. I think this is most likely to happen to you if you are learning a Romance language, as some(…)

I reckon than I am at least a little bit smarter since I learned Spanish but sometimes I wonder if this is just an illusion after all. Maybe it is time to think about whether learning a second language could help to make you a bit more intelligent or not. Think in a Different Way(…)

Because Not Many People Learn It It is incredibly romantic to imagine learning a tongue which is spoken by very few people in the world these days. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of endangered languages all over the world if you want something really obscure. For example, the Faetar dialect in Italy has an(…)

There are many different reasons for choosing to study one language over all of the other ones which are around. I am always fascinated to find out why language students have chosen the one they are learning. I thought it might, therefore, be a good idea to think about some of the top reasons for(…)

The Funeral It is even more important to know what to say if you go to a funeral in a place where your native tongue isn’t spoken. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if you made a big mistake when offering your condolences to the bereaved family? These aren’t really occasions for doing(…)

Popping down to the shops to buy some bread and milk is a huge challenge when you are in a country where they speak a language you are learning. However, after a while you won’t  have to go home with eggs and shoe polish instead and will be able to order what you actually want(…)

Learn a Difficult Word a Day As I hinted at in the last point, there are some words in Spanish which I instinctively shied away from at first. I would rather spit out a long and convoluted alternative to the likes or veterinario or aeropuerto than try and get my tongue round these words. As(…)

One thing I have noticed while travelling is that it is easy to slip into a comfort zone with your second language. There appear to be plenty of people out there who have a reasonable grasp of the basics of a language but who never seem to push themselves enough to further their knowledge. So(…)