25 Prolific Language Learning Bloggers You Should Follow
NOTE: The original list here has been updated, revised and expanded (again) for 2022.
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I thought I’d put together a short list of who I consider to be some of the most prolific and authoritative bloggers on language learning at present.
This is definitely not an exhaustive list of every language blogger out there (there are loads of others I deliberately didn’t include for one reason or another and probably a lot that I don’t know about as well). I haven’t included popular websites (e.g. HTLAL forum) that aren’t blogs either.
When I started scouring the net for the best language learning blogs I found the lack of good quality, reputable blogs on this topic frustrating, not to mention how much I had to dig in order to find them. It’s good to read up on other people’s success and struggles in language learning, and to take what you can use from their various (and often conflicting) methods and approaches.
The people I’ve mentioned below may know several languages but all of them have languages of specialization or expertise to some extent. Many of them may blog about language learning in general but each of them have specialist knowledge of certain languages.
If you know of a blogger (either language-specific or general language learning) that should be mentioned here, add your input in the comments section below and I’ll update this list! 🙂
UPDATE: Interested in starting a language blog of your own? Click here for my detailed post on how to do it.
Mục Lục
Olly Richards
Blog: StoryLearning
Languages: English (native), Japanese, Cantonese, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian.
Products:
His site in his own words:
“I’ll show you the techniques I’ve used to learn seven languages and how you can do it too.”
Olly’s a friend of mine who works as a language educator and is currently in Egypt learning Arabic. He offers loads of sound advice for language learners based on his own many years of experience as both a learner and teacher.
Check out his post: 7 year old speaks 5 languages
Mondly
Blog: Mondly Blog
Languages: All.
Product: Mondly
Mondly is an outstanding language platform and gamified mobile learning app that covers dozens of different languages. It has a great blog with multiple contributors on various languages updated frequently.
Check out this post: Why Better, Faster Learners Are Often Better, Deeper Sleepers
Benny Lewis
Blog: Fluent in 3 Months
Languages: English (native), Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Dutch, American Sign Language
Products: Fluent in 3 Months Premium (review), Fluent In 3 Months Challenge
UPDATE: Benny has teamed up the Teach Yourself series and produced this outstanding ‘Language Hacking’ series.
His site in his own words:
“Over the past 10 years, I’ve developed a simple system for learning languages. Using this system, I can be confident at speaking any language in as little as three months.”
Benny has a popular blog that follows his travels and short-term language learning missions where he documents his progress speaking from day one.
Check out his YouTube channel: Irishpolyglot
TalkInArabic.com Blog
Blog name: TIA Blog
Languages: Arabic.
Product: TalkInArabic.com
Our website which is focused solely on spoken Arabic dialects that features a blog on Arabic language topics, recipes and music lyrics.
Check out the post: Why Learning Arabic Is Easy
Eoin Ó Conchúir
Blog: Bitesize Irish Gaelic blog
Languages: English (native), Irish.
Product: Bitesize Irish Gaelic (which I reviewed here) and Learn Irish With Eoin
I’ve always recommended Bitesize Irish Gaelic to new learners of Irish but I’d also like to mention here that Eoin runs a blog where you’ll find some excellent posts about Ireland and the Irish language. The posts by Audrey Nickel in particular are very good.
Check out this post: Irish Gaelic: The Problem of Phonetics
Jared Romey
Blog: Speaking Latino
Languages: English (native), Spanish (various dialects).
Product: Several books and ebooks on Spanish dialects.
His site in his own words:
“My books and now this website are a consequence of my early bumblings in Spanish, repeated bouts with culture shock, and confusions over the correct words for popcorn, gasoline, pen, bus, underwear, traffic jam and drinking straw.”
Jared guest posted here a while back. His blog in my opinion should be the first point of call for anyone undertaking Spanish, especially Latin American varieties.
Check out his post: Become Fluent Faster By Ignoring These 5 Spanish Fundamentals
Angel Huang
Blog: MandarinHQ
Languages: Mandarin (native), English
Product: Spoken Chinese Vault
Her site in her own words:
“We’re here to help you bridge the gap between textbook Chinese and real spoken Chinese.”
I’ve included Angel’s site here because I think her videos are amazing and I love her approach. If you’re learning Mandarin you should definitely subscribe to this.
Check out her post: “Become” a Native Chinese Speaker with the Character Shadowing Technique
Luca Lampariello
Blog: Luca Lampariello
Languages: Italian (native), English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Romanian.
Product: None.
His site in his own words:
“This blog is entirely dedicated to my biggest passion: languages.”
Luca’s a co-founder of the Polyglot Conference and is a prolific YouTuber. He’s very clear about the fact that language learning takes a lot of time and that there are no shortcuts.
Check him out on Twitter.
Shannon Kennedy
Blog: Eurolinguiste
Languages: English (native), French, Mandarin Chinese, Croatian, Russian, Korean, Italian and German.
Product: Say Goodbye To Shy
Shannon’s one of my favorite language learning bloggers and her site has loads of useful content for different languages (she’s also a great musician :)).
Check out her post: How I Memorized 600 Chinese Words In 2 Weeks
italki
Blog: italki Articles
Languages: All.
Product: Language Teachers, Tutors and Partners
italki is by far the best site for finding language teachers, tutors and conversation partners at very affordable prices (some are less than $8 an hour depending on the language!). The article section they have is huge and full of outstanding blog posts on all languages.
Check out his post: 7 Great Resources To Improve Your Russian
Lindsay Dow Williams
Blog: Lindsay Does Languages
Languages: English (native), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Mandarin.
Product: None.
Her site in her own words:
“For me, a big part of my job is inspiring others to teach themselves languages. Whether that be in a lesson with me when I’m in your home, a class on Skype when I’m in my home, or a blog or video you enjoy when I’m doing absolutely anything miles from you, I want you to know that it’s possible for you to learn a language.”
Lindsay’s one of the most energetic and infectiously positive language bloggers I know. She guest posted here a while back and I guest posted on her blog here about Arabic.
Check out her post: 8 Free Japanese Learning Resources
Simon Ager
Blog: Omniglot Blog
Languages: English (native), Mandarin, French, Welsh and Irish.
Product: None but runs an “Encyclopaedia of writing systems and languages”.
His site in his own words:
“This blog contains my musings on language, linguistics and related topics.”
I almost didn’t include Omniglot in this list for the simple fact that it’s more of a blog for linguists, rather than language learners (yes there is a difference). You’ll find a lot of linguist jargon on this blog that doesn’t really interest a lot of people (as a linguist I personally get a kick out of it), but there are plenty of interesting and useful nuggets of information you can find there for general language learning. His mystery language recordings are a nice touch too.
Check out his post: Do It Because It’s Fun
Richard Simcott
Blog: Speaking Fluently
Languages: English (native), French, Spanish, Welsh, German, Macedonian, Swedish, Italian, Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian, Portuguese, Czech, Catalan, Russian, Dutch, Romanian and Albanian.
Product: None.
His site in his own words:
“Speaking Fluently offers you the chance to read about language learning tips and stories.”
Richard’s the European Ambassador for Multilingualism and founder of the Polyglot Conference. He offers some very solid and useful language learning advice through his YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Check out his post: The Language Monkey
Harilyn Tahir
Blog: theLevanTongue
Languages: English and Arabic (MSA and Levantine)
Product: None.
Her site in her own words:
“The reason why I started theLevanTongue is to help fellow learners of Levantine Arabic to ultimately experience the joys of connecting with native speakers through conversations in a language that goes straight to the heart.”
Lyn’s blog is an excellent resource for Levantine Arabic learners (particularly Jordanian).
Check out her post: An Honest And In-Depth Review Of Talk In Arabic (Levantine)
Maha Yakoub
YouTube Channel: Learn Arabic With Maha
Languages: Arabic (native), Italian, Hebrew, German, English.
Product: None.
Maha’s a Palestinian living in Italy who runs a massively popular YouTube channel where she teaches Arabic (Levantine), Hebrew and Italian. Definitely aimed at low-level learners but I really enjoy her videos.
Check this video out: 5 Reasons That’ll Make You Fall In Love With Arabic
Olle Linge
Blog: Hacking Chinese
Languages: Swedish (native), Mandarin Chinese, English, French.
Product: None.
His site in his own words:
“This website is dedicated to unveiling the mysteries of learning a language in general and about learning Chinese in particular.”
As stated, Olle’s site is primarily aimed at the Chinese language learner and should be the first stop for anyone keen on learning Mandarin. I keep myself up to date with his blog as a lot of what he shares is helpful for language learning in general, not just for Chinese.
Check out his post: Reading Manga For More Than Just Pleasure
Andrew Dempsey
Blog: The Arabic Learner
Languages: English and Arabic (Egyptian).
Product: The Egyptian Arabic Absolute Beginner’s Course
His site in his own words:
“I help Arabic learners take steps toward fluency by drawing on lessons learned in my own journey of interacting in Arabic. This journey has been ongoing over the past 25 years of living in the Arab world.”
I met Andrew a while back in Egypt and we’ve had mutual friends for over a decade who have often talked highly of Andrew’s strong grasp of Egyptian Arabic. He posts some very insightful content on all things related to Arabic.
Follow his active Twitter account: @andrewdempsey
Catherine Wentworth
Blog: A Woman Learning Thai… and some men too.
Languages: English (native), Thai.
Product: None.
Her site in her own words:
“WLT aims to post Thai language learning tips and techniques, local quirks and insights of Thailand. Anything Thai language, culture, or travel related.”
Catherine’s blog should be your first stop if you’re interested in learning to speak Thai or about life in Thailand.
Check out her post: Onomatopoeic Words In The Thai Language
Speak Moroccan
Blog: Speak Moroccan
Language: Moroccan Arabic (Darija).
Product: Moroccan Arabic Forum
Speak Moroccan is the longest-running and most authoritative starting point for anyone learning Darija (Moroccan dialect of Arabic). The site is tailored for both English and French visitors, and runs an incredibly active forum for all things related to Moroccan Arabic.
Check out their post: 50 Basic Words And Phrases In Moroccan Arabic
Susanna Zaraysky
Blog: Create Your World Book
Languages: English (native), Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian.
Product: Language Is Music and Travel Happy
Her site in her own words:
“I am a multilingual world traveler whose goal is to help people have fun learning languages with music, TV, radio and other media and travel the world economically.”
Susanna’s made several television appearances and has her own unique approach to language learning using music. Her approach is particularly useful for anyone trying to improve their accent.
Check out her post: Why You Should Care About Endangered Languages
John Fotheringham
Blog: Language Mastery
Languages: English (native), Japanese and Mandarin.
Product: Master Japanese and Master Mandarin
His site in his own words:
“I created this site, The Language Mastery Show, The Language Mastery Insider, and my series of language guides to help adult learners reach their foreign language acquisition goals as quickly, cheaply, and enjoyably as possible”
John shares lots of insightful language learning content on his blog and runs his own podcast series where he interviews prominent language bloggers (listen to our interview here).
Check out his Language Mastery show podcast here.
Mike Campbell
Website: Glossika
Languages: English (native), Mandarin
Product: Glossika (available in lots of languages – see my review here)
His site in his own words:
“Glossika delivers an efficient foreign language learning method to people who want to acquire a new language.”
I have a lot of respect for Mike and he’s probably the most interesting language/linguistics blogger that I’ve come across. In particular, I’m very impressed by the work he’s done with the aboriginal languages of Taiwan and his Mass Sentence Method is based on solid research (it’s very similar to the Lexical ‘chunking’ method that I adhere to).
Mike had a fantastic YouTube channel that unfortunately was shut down recently but you can subscribe to his new channel here.
Randy Hunt
Website: Yearlyglot
Languages: English (native), Italian
Product: None.
His site in his own words:
“The main focus of this web site is, of course, learning languages. Specifically, I will be learning one new language every year.”
Randy was one of the first prominent language bloggers back when I started many years ago. He’s always been (in my opinion) one of the most insightful and intelligent bloggers in the language niche.
Check out this post: 5 Things To Know Before Buying Lingualift (Review)
Steve Kaufmann
Blog: The Linguist
Languages: English (native), French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Swedish, German, Italian , Cantonese, Russian, Portuguese and Czech.
Product: LingQ and The Way Of The Linguist
His site in his own words:
“For people who love languages or would, but were discouraged…”
The founder of LingQ and a prolific YouTuber. Steve’s language repertoire impresses me along with the frequent YouTube videos he puts out on many important language learning issues.
Check out his post: A Discussion With Stephen Krashen
Conor Clyne
Blog: Language Tsar
Languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Catalan, German & Dutch
Product: None.
His site in his own words:
“The Language Tsar website and YouTube channel are dedicated to teaching you how to learn languages, travel more effectively and become a ‘digital nomad’.”
Check out his YouTube channel here.
…and of course:
Donovan Nagel
Blog: The Mezzofanti Guild
Podcast (iTunes): Language Learning Made Simple
Languages: English (native), Egyptian Arabic, MSA, Korean, Russian, Irish, Ancient Hebrew and Greek.
Product: TalkInArabic.com
I know it’s cheating but I had to include myself in this list! 🙂 In case you’ve just landed on this blog for the first time, I’m a linguist, translator and language instructor with a huge heart for minority languages, cultural immersion and Arabic. I have a bit of a preference for languages of the East (both Near and Far Eastern) and I use my own proven method that I’ve developed based on the Lexical Approach to language learning.
Check out this post: The Uncomfortable Truth: Social Risk-Takers Are Better Language Learners
Who would you add to this list? 🙂
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