Everyone says you have to leave your comfort zone to learn a language, but is it really true?

I started learning Mandarin in 1968 with flashcards and reel-to-reel tapes, and here is what I would do differently today.

Today I want to talk about learning slowly — and why if you accept that learning a language takes time, learning slowly actually gets you there faster.

After an hour of focused reading in Persian, I felt my grasp of the language jump forward, and it reminded me why reading is the most powerful tool we have for acquiring a new language.

Most adult language learners are chasing a goal they're unlikely to reach, and I want to share what I think we should focus on instead.

There are three stages of comprehension in any new language. Early on, you barely understand anything — and that's fine. The goal at that stage isn't comprehension; it's letting your brain pick up the patterns. Then comes the long middle stretch where you're learning words but listening still feels patchy, until one day you notice you understand more than you used to. Where are you right now?

I've been chipping away at Arabic for years, and I recently sat down with Hasan Alhamwi, the founder of Arabic All The Time. He left a career in civil engineering to build the largest library of Arabic comprehensible input on the internet. We talked about why videos beat textbooks for Arabic, when learners should finally start reading, and whether all those dialects are really one language or many. If you're learning Arabic, what's giving you the most trouble?

I asked AI what the most important element in language learning is, and the answer surprised me — here's why it comes down to time.

Every time I watch interviews from places like Budapest, I'm struck by how well young Europeans speak English. It isn't because their schools suddenly got better — I don't think classroom instruction has changed much at all. What changed is access. The internet, social media, YouTube, and streaming platforms mean people are surrounded by English all day, and that lowers the friction while raising the motivation. I think the same forces are starting to spread to other languages, and speaking three languages could soon be completely normal. Where did most of your language exposure actually come from — school, or something else?

Flashcards feel like progress. But are they actually helping you learn a language — or just keeping you busy?

The CEO of Air Canada spent 550 hours studying French over six years — and still couldn't speak it. Here's why traditional language learning fails, and what actually works.