The Language Mastery Show

Nelson Dellis is a memory athlete, 4-time U.S. Memory Champion, a Grandmaster of Memory, a high-altitude mountaineer, author, speaker, and all-around cool dude. He is now on a mission to reach conversational fluency in Dutch in just one year, applying all the memory techniques, mnemonics, and visualization strategies he used to train for memory championships.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Last week, I shared part one of my most recent chat with the inimitable Olly Richards, who first appeared on The Language Mastery Show back in in April 2014. Since that time, he's gone on to build I Will Teach You a Language (now called StoryLearning) into one of the top language blogs, launch a slew of excellent language courses, and publish a series of great short story books through Teach Yourself.  In part two of our wide-ranging conversation, we get into his language learning routines and habits, how he tackles reading (especially in Japanese), the importance of getting a wide range of high-quality exposure to your target language, the power of following your interest and curiosity, and Olly's top tips for launching a successful online language learning empire or just a profitable side hustle to help pay the bills.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Author, polyglot, and "langpreneur" Olly Richards from I Will Teach You a Language (now called StoryLearning) returns to the podcast six years after our first chat to share what new lessons he's learned and how a high-altitude near death experience led him to the power of stories in language learning. Olly has been quite the busy bee since we last spoke, going on to build one of the most popular language blogs on the planet, launching a series of in-depth language courses, and publishing 16 short story books with Teach Yourself (with more coming soon, including a Japanese edition)!  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Jan van der Aa is a Brussels-based polyglot and entrepreneur from the Netherlands, the co-founder of the language learning site LanguageBoost, and the co-founder of Langpreneur (now called Creator Smarts), an event series and podcast dedicated to helping language lovers, teachers, influencers, podcasters, YouTubers, etc. turn their passion for languages into profitable, scalable online businesses. Note: This interview contains some adult language.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Arieh Smith, a.k.a. Xiaomanyc (Xiǎomǎ, 小马), is a popular YouTuber who loves practicing Mandarin Chinese on the streets of New York and surprising unsuspecting native speakers. From 24-hour crash courses in new languages like Korean, to learning additional Chinese dialects like Cantonese and Fuzhounese (which are really mutually unintelligible languages), his viral linguistic exploits have entertained and inspired millions of learners around the world. In our conversation, he shares why and how he learned Mandarin Chinese, tips for mastering Chinese characters and tones, and strategies for going from zero to basic conversations in a matter of days no matter where in the world you live.  🇨🇳 Learn Chinese Anywhere!   Want to learn Mandarin Chinese through at-home immersion instead of boring textbooks or expensive classes? My detailed how-to manual and resource guide, ⁠Master Mandarin: How to Learn Mandarin Chinese Anywhere in the World⁠, will show you exactly how. 👉🏼 Learn more at ⁠ChineseMastery.com⁠.

Jonty Yamisha is a language activist, an "accidental polyglot" in his own words, a "third-generation Circassian refugee," and the founder of OptiLingo, an audio-based language app that uses "guided immersion" to help people reach fluency in foreign languages more quickly. We discuss the Circassian language and cultural history, how he's raising his children bilingually, and how he "steals back" time for language learning amid his busy professional and family life.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Michael and Ellen Robins first met in 2004 while they were studying Spanish in Mexico. Though Ellen had intended not to spend time with any other native English speakers while abroad, Michael's charm and sufficient command of the Spanish language were enough to overcome her initial objections. They are now married, have two children, have visited 23 countries, and have lived abroad nine times. In the interview, they share key lessons they've learned while acquiring Spanish, living abroad, and raising children bilingually.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

In 2015, the Danish podcaster Kris Broholm joined me on the Language Mastery Show to talk about how discovering the polyglot community helped pull him out of depression and give his life direction. His podcast, Actual Fluency, is now one of the most popular language podcasts on the planet, with 166 guests to date! Though Kris speaks multiple languages, he sees himself not as a language expert himself, but as a "language learning journalist" who highlights the expertise of the world's best language learners.  In this special two-part two-way interview (which is also being shared on his podcast), we each talk about lessons we've learned in the last four years, patterns we've observed after talking to so many polyglots, and how our respective blogs, podcasts, and language businesses have evolved.  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

In 2015, the Danish podcaster Kris Broholm joined me on the Language Mastery Show to talk about how discovering the polyglot community helped pull him out of depression and give his life direction.  His podcast, Actual Fluency, is now one of the most popular language podcasts on the planet, with 166 guests to date! Though Kris speaks multiple languages, he sees himself not as a language expert himself, but as a "language learning journalist" who highlights the expertise of the world's best language learners.  In this special two-part two-way interview (which is also being shared on his podcast), we each talk about lessons we've learned in the last four years, patterns we've observed after talking to so many polyglots, and how our respective blogs, podcasts, and language businesses have evolved. 📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠

Ruben Adery is a pronunciation and dialect coach who helps language learners, actors, singers, etc. develop native-like foreign accents in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Italian. I first met him at the 2019 Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava where he gave a talk titled The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Imitating Foreign Accents to Help Master Any Language. The content of the talk itself was great, but the really impressive part was that he had the audience fooled for the first five minutes that he was from Israel when he is in fact a native English speaker from Los Angeles! As Ruben likes to say: "Accents speak louder than words!"  📧 Get expert language immersion tips in your inbox each week! Join my FREE weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to get fluent anywhere in the world. 👉🏼 ⁠⁠LanguageMastery.com/newsletter⁠