In his TEDxRanier talk, Chris Bliss posits that "Every act of communication is an act of translation." I have always loved languages and comedy, and I was tickled pink by Chris' connection between the two. In the talk, Chris shows how great comedy can "translate deep truths for a mass audience". Enjoy!

Paulino Brener is one of the few people I know who has managed to successfully blend all of his passions into one, and even get paid to do so! In our interview, he discusses creative ways to harness one's passions in foreign language learning, whether as teacher or learner.

In my interview with Jason West, the creator of English Out There, we discuss the weaknesses of traditional English schools, methodologies, and materials, and how his approach aims to overcome them.

Check out this beautifully illustrated talk about how to learn foreign languages using the Pimsleur approach. I was reluctant to share the video on the site as they sneak in a sales pitch every 5 minutes of so, but they do an excellent job of summarizing what I believe to be the fundamentals of effective language learning.

Kanji: arguably the most enjoyable part of learning Japanese, but also the most intimidating for those just getting started in the language. Read on to see the tips, tools, and tech you can use to conquer kanji as efficientently as possible.

Arkady Zilberman, creator of Language Bridge and a former simultaneous interpreter in Russia, addresses what is perhaps the greatest impediment to adult language learning success: cross-translation to and from one's native language. Few learners are probably aware this sub-concious process goes on at all, but Arkady's extensive experience learning languages, interpreting, and experimenting on learners, have proven that it does indeed occur. As he points out in our interview, even many seemingly successful foreign language learners still translate to and from their native language, but can just do so at such a rate that they can't perceive the process.

Spanish is one of my next target languages and I was quite excited when Amanda Moritz of Brainscape asked me to do a review of their new Spanish language learning app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. There's no better excuse to study a language and play on my iPod touch than doing a product review!

I'm a big fan of Harvard's Steven Pinker and RSA Animate makes his excellent talk about language and human nature even better. If you enjoy the talk, I highly suggest his influential book, The Language Instinct. Incidentally, it was the first book I was assigned in university linguistics, is one of the only assigned books from university that I still own, and is the only college text I actually reread regularly for fun...