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LingQ is a website that allows you to take learning into your own hands. Watch this video for a brief overview of how LingQ works to help you achieve proficiency in a foreign language: http://bit.ly/m3sgJy

Swahili: spoken across 20+ countries, official language of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda — and genuinely one of th...
07/31/2026

Swahili: spoken across 20+ countries, official language of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda — and genuinely one of the more approachable languages for English speakers to pick up. No tones, phonetic spelling, familiar alphabet. The real challenge is the noun class system, and even that clicks faster than you'd think once you're reading real sentences instead of memorizing a chart.

Full beginner's guide:

Swahili is spoken by 200M+ people across East Africa, uses the Latin alphabet, and has no tones. Here's how to learn it, step by step.

What actually slows down language learners isn't ability. It's friction: perfectionism, fear of making mistakes, impatie...
07/31/2026

What actually slows down language learners isn't ability. It's friction: perfectionism, fear of making mistakes, impatience with not understanding everything right away, and switching methods before any one of them gets a real chance to work.

Steve Kaufmann, who speaks 20+ languages, breaks down the most common forms of this friction and how to work through each one in his latest video:

🔥 Learn languages like I do: https://www.lingq.com/learn-languages-...

Choosing the wrong Japanese learning material for your level is one of the most common (and costly) mistakes learners ma...
07/29/2026

Choosing the wrong Japanese learning material for your level is one of the most common (and costly) mistakes learners make — either too much scaffolding for too long, or jumping into native content before you're ready.

Our latest guide breaks down the best resources by stage: textbooks like Genki and Minna no Nihongo for beginners, graded readers like Tadoku and Satori Reader for intermediate learners, and manga/native news for advanced readers, plus how to use LingQ to make the transition between stages far less painful.

Want to learn a new language? Check out the LingQ Blog for tips and advice to help you reach your language learning goals.

Words or grammar, which matters more?Steve Kaufmann's answer: words, by a wide margin. Most mistakes that hold learners ...
07/23/2026

Words or grammar, which matters more?

Steve Kaufmann's answer: words, by a wide margin. Most mistakes that hold learners back aren't tense or article errors, they're word choice.

He even admits mispronouncing a common French phrase for years despite speaking it well. His fix: build vocabulary first, let grammar catch up on its own.

🔥 Learn languages like I do: https://www.lingq.com/learn-languages-...

How many languages can you actually learn at once?LingQ member Shane Brenner's answer: three. Spanish, French, and Portu...
07/22/2026

How many languages can you actually learn at once?

LingQ member Shane Brenner's answer: three. Spanish, French, and Portuguese, all at once, all real.

His trick isn't some hack. He just treats each language as its own track instead of one blurred effort.

How many languages can you learn at once? Shane Brenner built real fluency in Spanish, French, and Portuguese at the same time using comprehensible input on LingQ.

New from Steve: fluent speech isn't assembled word by word. Research suggests as much as 60% of any language is made up ...
07/21/2026

New from Steve: fluent speech isn't assembled word by word. Research suggests as much as 60% of any language is made up of chunks, groups of words native speakers use as a single unit.

Steve breaks down where this idea comes from (Michael Lewis's Lexical Approach, and an even earlier 1925 attempt to teach chunks directly), why he thinks deliberately memorizing them doesn't work, and what he's actually doing instead while learning Turkish right now.

Read it here:

What are collocations and language chunks, and do you need to study them? Here is what the research says, and what I actually do.

Planning a trip is a good excuse to refresh a language, and Steve Kaufmann, LingQ's founder, is doing exactly that ahead...
07/16/2026

Planning a trip is a good excuse to refresh a language, and Steve Kaufmann, LingQ's founder, is doing exactly that ahead of a trip to Portugal this November.

Instead of generic beginner content, he used LingQ's AI to generate a point of view story built around the specific town he's staying in, complete with real local details (the river, the golf courses, the region's history), specified in European Portuguese rather than the Brazilian Portuguese most content defaults to.

The technique behind it, point of view storytelling combined with circling questions, isn't new. What's new is how precisely AI now lets you target it: the exact place, the exact accent, the exact level.

See how he builds and studies it:

🔥 Learn languages like I do: https://www.lingq.com/learn-languages-...

After 60 years of learning languages, here's what Steve would tell his younger self:→ It doesn't have to be that hard→ R...
07/15/2026

After 60 years of learning languages, here's what Steve would tell his younger self:

→ It doesn't have to be that hard
→ Repetition beats "progress"
→ You have to go find the content yourself
→ Skip the grammar tables
→ Input comes before output

Steve's honest reflections:

I have learned 20+ languages over 60 years. Here are five things I wish I had known at the start, and what they mean for how you learn today.

One of the most common questions I get from Spanish learners is how to know when to use ser versus estar. Both mean "to ...
07/14/2026

One of the most common questions I get from Spanish learners is how to know when to use ser versus estar. Both mean "to be" in English, and the rules can feel impossible to remember.

The answer that actually works is two acronyms. DOCTOR covers every situation that needs ser: Description, Occupation, Characteristics, Time, Origin, Relationships. PLACE covers estar: Position, Location, Action, Condition, Emotion.

The key thing to understand is that the common explanation, that ser is for permanent things and estar is for temporary things, is not reliable. Death is permanent but uses estar. Emotions are temporary but also use estar. The acronyms are more dependable than trying to judge how long something lasts.

The LingQ blog has a full breakdown of both acronyms with examples for each letter, a common mistakes section, and a guide to the cases that confuse most learners.

Learn the DOCTOR acronym Spanish learners use to master ser, plus PLACE for estar. What each letter means, examples, and the mistakes most learners make.

Rosetta Stone was genuinely innovative when it launched in 1992. The immersion concept, using photos rather than transla...
07/10/2026

Rosetta Stone was genuinely innovative when it launched in 1992. The immersion concept, using photos rather than translation to teach vocabulary, made sense at a time when language software barely existed.

But the rest of the market has caught up and, in most cases, gone further. The no-translation method works well for early confidence and pronunciation. It does not work well once you are past upper-beginner level, because you need volume and variety, and a fixed curriculum of stock photos cannot give you either.

The LingQ blog has an honest 2026 review of Rosetta Stone covering what it costs, what it does well, where it falls short, and how it compares to LingQ for learners who want to go beyond A2.

Want to learn a new language? Check out the LingQ Blog for tips and advice to help you reach your language learning goals.

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