Nee's Language Blog

Let's meet Lindie Botes from South Africa Tumblr | Twitter
Could you tell us about yourself, including the languages you know? I was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Because of my father’s job, I grew up in Paris, Pakistan, Dubai, and South Africa. Currently, my parents live in Japan. At home, I speak Afrikaans. At English schools in various countries, I learned Urdu, Arabic, and French as subjects. In 2009 I became interested in Korean and this spread to Japanese, Mandarin, and other Asian languages. 

Many of my foreign students like to translate when speaking Chinese. They tend to think in their own language or English first then translate into Chinese. Of course, we know that we probably shouldn’t do that when learning a foreign language, but sometimes we just can’t help it!

Being convinced that I wanted to do research and teaching, I decided to study Ph.D. in France. For that reason, I started learning French. I think that when you learn new things, you need to be motivated in order to assure success on it. Even if I do not consider myself a bilingual speaker, I have had great experiences learning languages.

In 2009 I restarted my language studies of Danish both with self-study of textbooks and workbooks and with community college language courses.

Let's meet Jamerson from Brazil Google+ | Instagram | Skype: jamersuarez  Twitter | Whatsapp: 05511 9 58621213
Could you tell us about yourself, including the languages you know? Hi, my name is Jamerson, 19, from São Paulo, Brazil. I always loved languages but my parents only speak Portuguese so I tried to look for some opportunities to learn more languages. I started with Spanish which is very similar to Portuguese when I was 11 and then I started learning French and English. My goals right now are to learn German and Italian… as everyone says: to learn a language is a key to many more

Let's meet Olle Linge from Sweden Facebook | Google+ | Twitter
Could you tell us about yourself, including the languages you know? Hi! My name is Olle Linge and I'm a language learner and teacher from Sweden. I studied English and French in school, but Chinese in the language I have spent the most time within recent years. I currently study in a master's degree program for teaching Chinese as a second language in Taipei, Taiwan. I'm the founder of Hacking Chinese, where I write about how to learn languages more efficiently as an adult.

Learners learn languages in many different ways, such as attending language classes, playing games or listening to audio. Whatever the methods are, they usually cover four aspects of language learning: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Mastering only one or two of these is not enough because, in reality, we read, listen, speak, and write.

Let's meet Tom Dobbels from Belgium LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Could you tell us about yourself, including the languages you know? I am a Belgian polyglot living and working in Taipei. The great thing about being born and educated in Belgium is that we have 3 official languages (Dutch, French, and German). My mother tongue is Dutch, and we get taught French in primary school. In secondary school, I studied English and German. In university, I studied Spanish and I lived in Brazil for one year where I picked up Portuguese. Belgium is a small country that greatly relies on export with other bigger nations. That makes us very “adaptive”, and learning a new language is often a great asset while doing international business.