In this episode I share my own review of language learning in the year 2019 and what's next for me in 2020. It's like an audio #clearthelist article on my goals and what matters most in the upcoming year.

In 2019, my main foreign languages were Chinese, French and Welsh and I'm sharing where I am at in each of them.

In Chinese I am finding myself in a plateau - that frustrating slog where it feels like nothing is moving. You'll hear my answers to the questions I asked myself to get unstuck:

Special Offer for Podcast Listeners

Thank you to Kendra for this episode introduction.

And as always...Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or becoming a member of our Patreon community

Sponsored By:

• The Language Habit Toolkit: Enter the code FLUENTSHOW to get 20% off this unique course bundle Promo Code: FLUENTSHOW

Links:

• Chinese: Assimil Workbook for Fake Beginners
• Dr LaMort - Wondery - Feel The Story
• Chinese Teach Yourself Course
• Welsh: Myfanwy: Geiriau Cân / Lyrics – Parallel.cymru: Bilingual Welsh digital magazine
• italki: Learn a language online — This is where I find my language tutors.

In this episode, Lindsay and Kerstin wrap up the year by reviewing a BIG crop of Words of the Year from Australia, the USA, the UK, Germany, Portugal and Japan.

We also create a Spanish version of #yolo, explain why Austria is going to Ibiza, and figure out the Portuguese nominations (even though we don't know a lot of Portuguese).

Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or becoming a member of our Patreon.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Google's Year in Search - Google Trends
• 'Voice' named 2019 word of the year by Australian National Dictionary Centre | Australia news | The Guardian
• PALAVRA DO ANO
• Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2019 – About Words – Cambridge Dictionaries Online blog
• Cancelled for sadfishing: the top 10 words of 2019 | Science | The Guardian
• The Word of the Year Is “Existential,” So Here Are Our 75 Headiest Stories
• The Spanish word of the year 2019 - Yabla Spanish - Free Spanish Lessons
• Language Stories
• From the Margins : Reviews : The Gentle Good : Ruins / Adfeilion — Welsh folk
• 2019 Wrapped

Grab a Brandy and a Mince Pie! This is the festive Fluent Show. Is your mind wrapped up in gift wrapping and hosting this week instead of flashcards and language partners?

Don't worry, because in this show I have put together some quick tips for staying in touch with your target language during the festive season.

Click or tap here to read my Christmas learning tips on the blog

Feliĉan Zamenhofan Tagon to all my Esperantist listeners! Thank you to Petra for this episode introduction in Bulgarian.

Music credit

Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show!

If you enjoyed this episode and you're feeling the festive generosity, please back the show on Patreon today.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Christmas Movies in Different Languages
• Christmas Food Traditions Around the World - Fluent in 3 Months
• Focus & Fluency | Fluent Language
• Festive Fluency Tips: How to Learn German This Holiday Season by Fluent Language

Shahidah Foster is an American expat in Germany, creator of the Black Girls Learn Languages community, and a passionate language learner. She's an English native speaker but her German is 💯 so prepare for a bilingual show today!

If you are not an experienced German learner, there will be some parts of the podcast that you don’t understand. You can learn it by the way using my German Uncovered course.

Here is where I always remember the wonderful Ron Gullekson, saying "In a new language, I want to find an opportunity to be uncomfortable as soon as possible." So even if you don't speak German, dive in. We will be speaking English for more than half of the time.

In our conversation, Shahidah and I discussed moving to Germany, how to apply for university in another country, and the role of languages in the black community.

She shared some unbelievable experiences, and her ideas for making the language learning community more inclusive and welcoming for black girls.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by becoming a member of our Patreon community

Special Guest: Shahidah Foster.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Black Girls Learn Languages - Home
• Black Girls Learn Languages
• Home - Study in Germany - Land of Ideas

In today's podcast, I'm excited to tackle a big question:

Listener Maria writes that she hears people sounding different to her depending on the language they speak. Could it be that learning another language can change your entire personality?

Listen in to hear me discuss a few of the aspects that contribute to how we perceive personality through a language:

Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or becoming a member of our Patreon community

Thank you to listener Gosia for sending an introduction to the Fluent Show

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Fluent Show Episode 95 “French is Romantic, Arabic is Aggressive”
• M.Lynne Murphy : University of Sussex
• Lynne Murphy (@lynneguist) / Twitter
• Kerstin | The Fluent Show (@thefluentshow) / Twitter
• Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage - Penelope Brown, Stephen C. Levinson - Google Books
• Sociolinguistics | Linguistic Society of America
• Politeness in Europe (Multilingual Matters)

Wrap up warm, it's the autumn/winter edition of Top Tools for language learning, bringing you ingenious solutions to common language learning problem.

This podcast has chapter support, so if your podcast player supports chapters, you can skip to relevant parts as your little linguist heart desires.

Click or tap here to read the full show notes and get all links <<

This time, we're covering 6 resources that can make your life easier when you're learning languages. You'll hear about:

Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or becoming a member of our Patreon community. And if you have a question or want to share your listener intro on the show, please email it to [email protected]

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Full List of Links & Top Tools on the Fluent Blog
• The Ultimate Guide to Netflix for Language Learning
• Garispace Creative Language Vocabulary Coil Book Mini Notebook Diary Notepad (Style 4)
• Language Chats Ep #008 — Language Lovers AU
• BBC Sounds - Music. Radio. Podcasts
• 푸 시크릿 단어암기장 - (주)스튜디오8 -- Korean Vocab Notebook
• Moomin Secret Word Memorization-Studio 8

Today I am answering a listener question from Jessica who is an English native speaker, but so advanced in German that she wants to use it to learn a third language, Spanish.

Can you learn a language through another language? Of course!

Here are some advantages:

Some people say this is a more efficient way to learn, but is that really true? In this episode, I've got some answers and I share my own experiences of language learning in different settings.

Thank you to Sophie for this episode introduction in Thai.

Thank you for listening to the Fluent Show! If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the show by leaving a review in your podcast app or becoming a member of our Patreon community.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• 2000+ Deutsch - Walisisch Walisisch - Deutsch Vokabular
• How to Learn Several Languages At The Same Time by Fluent Language
• Language Laddering // My Update on Learning Russian, Croatian and Japanese - Eurolinguiste
• My Black Friday Offers 2019 — Sign up to the newsletter & I'll email you the offers

"Polyglots and language creators...that Venn diagram is almost a circle."

In this episode, language creator David Peterson sat down with me to talk about language creation, language ownership, and the joy of it all. No other interview has had such an impact on me, the level of mastery in language creation was completely unclear to me.

Every single choice that you're making is an active choice. Nothing in a language has to be that way.

Here are just a few of the questions we discussed on this show.

And David also explained the phases language creators go through.

If you're fascinated by language invention and created languages after listening to this interview, I recommend David's own book "The Art of Language Invention". (see links below)

Thank you to David Peterson for this episode introduction.

Special Guest: David Peterson.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Utopian for Beginners | The New Yorker
• Conlanging film | Language Creation Society
• The Fluent Show: Top 5 Fictional Languages
• The Art Of Language Invention — on Hive, a UK book site to support bookshops
• The Art Of Language Invention — on Amazon UK

When you are learning a language and selecting courses and materials, it's important to assess your level accurately. But how do you do that? In today's episode I've got English teacher Michael Lavers on the show and we go into the deep detail of what determines your level...and when it even matters to know.

If you've ever wondered about the real difference between A2 and B1, this conversation will bring you some clarity.

Bonus Episode: British Slang

Fancy learning some British English slang, guv'nor? Then head over to Patreon and become a member of our podcast community for a special bonus episode recorded with Michael. We're sharing our top 3 British slang terms - and one in Mandarin Chinese!

Special Guest: Michael Lavers.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• Self-assessment grid - Table 2 (CEFR 3.3) : Common Reference levels

Lindsay is back from Korea and Kerstin is back from America, and we're all together again to talk about finding yourself a GREAT language tutor!

We discussed

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Fluent Show patrons get early episode access and the show's full show notes every week.

Sponsored By:

• Yabla: Stream authentic shows you enjoy and learn at the same time. Give Yabla a try with a free trial for Fluent Show listeners

Links:

• When Should You Consider an Offline Language Tutor? + The Tutor Pages Reviewed by Fluent Language
• ...the research bit
• italki
• Why I Love Reality TV for Language Learning (+ How to Use It)
• italki Review: Find Your Online Language Teacher by Fluent Language