World languages. If I could, I’d learn them all.

The sexy syllables of French.

The wild gestures of Italian.

The flowing scripts of Arabic.

The clicks of Xhosa.

The soon-to-be-world-conquerer, Mandarin.

But it’s taken me a decade to master Spanish, and at that rate I’d say that learning the remaining 6,000+ world languages may be a tall order.

So I’ve called on friends, readers, fellow bloggers and language learners to help me live vicariously through them, and share with us all their insight into learning a slice of the world language pie. They talk about the confusion of tenses, registers, and hidden consonants; their favorite words and words that can’t be translated; and missteps and mistranslations in the process of picking up the new language. And most importantly, how language is a direct window into another culture.

Be it through mandatory schooling, random interest, job necessities or a thirst for travel, those featured in the Let’s Talk series were inspired to study another language. In the process, they learned not just grammar but new culture, norms, and ways of thinking.

1. Jessie talks Malagasy

2. Zack talks Turkish

3. Ezezz talks Italian

4. Katie talks Russian

5. Trevor talks Galician

6. Kara talks Latin

7. Alex talks German

8. Alana talks Swedish

9. Adam talks Korean

10. Ellie talks Spanish

11. Beth talks Japanese 

12. Kaveh talks Xhosa

13. Pola talks French

Want to be interviewed for the series? Send me an email at athingforwords (at) gmail (dot) com, and we can make it happen!