Hasta la Vista, Baby
Arnold's most famous line is a Spanish phrase in an English-language film spoken in a thick Austrian accent. What it tells us about how language acquisition actually works — and how you can learn from his mistake.
LinguaMama
The origin story and field notes behind LinguaMama — learning a language by living in it.
The Affective Filter: Why Stress Makes You Stupid (in a New Language)
Anxiety about language learning doesn't just feel bad — it biologically blocks the process it's supposed to trigger. Here's what's actually happening, and what to do about it.
When LinguaMama Is Not for You
Most companies won't tell you when their product isn't the right tool. We will. Honest guidance on who this is built for — and who should go find something else.
You Have to Understand Before You Can Speak
Everyone asks when they'll be able to speak. It's the wrong question to start with — not because speaking isn't the goal, but because it puts the work in the wrong order.
The Third Time You See a Word, Your Brain Does Something Different
Brain scan research shows that seeing something three times triggers a different kind of memory storage — one that actually sticks. Here's what that means for language learners.
The 1500-Hour Map: What Language Learning Actually Looks Like
Nobody tells you what the journey really looks like — the long stretches of fog, the sudden breakthroughs, the point where the language stops being foreign. Here's an honest map.
Krashen's Five Hypotheses, in Plain English
Stephen Krashen proposed five interlocking ideas about language acquisition in the 1980s. Forty years of research has largely confirmed them. Here's what they actually say — without the linguistics degree.
What Is Comprehensible Input?
The term gets thrown around a lot now. It deserves a real explanation — and once you understand it, you'll never look at language learning the same way again.
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 7: Administrative Silence
The Spanish DNV can be filed from inside Spain, lasts three years, and has a default approval mechanism. We were fifteen kilometers from the border.
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 6: The Yaris Cross
We got a car. Our visas were canceled. We hired a fixer. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the hobby project became something else.
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 4: Do Not Get a French Car
We landed in Lisbon at 5:30 AM with everything we owned, one cat, and a rented Citroën. The charger didn't work. My European friends had warned me.
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 3: You Cannot Come to Portugal
Our attorney said we couldn't come. We were paying for a flat we'd never seen. We rebooked for December 26 and went to see butterflies instead.
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 1: Everyone Else Left
I spent the pandemic watching everyone on YouTube move to Thailand and Portugal. Then something shifted. Part 1 of the LinguaMama origin story.
LinguaMama Language Acquisition
How to Actually Use LinguaMama (And Why It's Not a Course)
Stop treating LinguaMama like Duolingo. Here's the honest truth about what this is, how it works, and why embracing partial understanding is the whole point.
LinguaMama Our Journey
I Built an AI Language App Because Everything Else Felt Wrong
A computational linguist's journey from studying how LLMs learn language to building an app that applies those same principles to human language acquisition.
Neural Language Grafting: How Your Brain Builds Mental Models
Explore how your brain's existing mental models and neural pathways enable rapid language acquisition through grafting new connections to existing concepts.
30 Years Teaching Machines to Learn: The Journey to Modern AI
From expert systems to Large Language Models—three decades of reverse-engineering intelligence reveals the universal principles of learning.
Carbon vs Silicon: The Identical Mechanisms of Intelligence
Your brain and Large Language Models learn through fundamentally identical processes. Understanding this parallel reveals why comprehensible input works.
Why LLMs Prove Krashen Was Right All Along
Dr. Stephen Krashen proposed his Input Hypothesis in 1982. Four decades later, Large Language Models validate every prediction he made about language acquisition.
LinguaMama Our Journey
Building LinguaMama: How We Use AI to Create Personalized Comprehensible Input
A behind-the-scenes look at how we use modern AI to generate, personalize, and deliver thousands of hours of comprehensible input content at scale.