Language

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Language learning inspiration from the Tour de France

Every year, France plays host to the largest annual sporting event in the world: Le Tour de France. For 23 days, competitors cycle 2000 miles through 21 different stages, covering mountain ranges and coastal villages. With all of its twists, turns, rapid sprints and gruelling ascents, we couldn’t help but compare the event to the

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7 Reasons Why Learning Norwegian is Kjempefint!

Each year, the 17th May marks a very important date in the Norwegian calendar. With marvellous parades and celebrations, Norwegian Constitution Day, known as Nasjonaldagen (National Day), Grunnlovsdagen (Constitution Day) or simply Syttende Mai (17th May), is celebrated in good spirit, and in style.  So, here at Coffee Break Languages we thought that there was

Language

A Postcard for Language-learners from San Diego

You can’t always travel to the country where the language you’re learning is spoken, but whether you’re at home, or travelling in an English-speaking country, it’s still possible to be inspired in your language learning by what’s around you. In this video, Coffee Break host and teacher Mark sends a Coffee Break Postcard for Language

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Why every age is the right age to learn a language

It has been said that to be fluent in a second language, one should start learning by the age of 10. What do you think? To us here at Coffee Break Languages this presents 2 questions: How do you define “fluent”? And, is all learning started after this age pointless? Clearly, the answer to the

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Get your Ducks in a Row with these 10 Interesting International Idioms

If you’ve done as the title says and got your ducks in a row, then you will be more than prepared for the rest of this article! The English language is filled with innumerable intriguing idioms. Sometimes the only way to properly describe the weather is to say that it’s raining cats and dogs, and sometimes

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How to say “Cheers” in Irish … and much more!

Here at Coffee Break Languages we want to help share our love of languages with a worldwide community of language learners, and that’s why we’re celebrating St Patrick’s Day by making our course in Irish Gaelic available for free on YouTube. In this course you’ll learn to introduce yourself, make conversation with other Irish speakers,

10 Italian words to make you fall more in love with Italian
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10 words to make you fall more in love with Italian

Let’s face it. Everybody loves the sound of the Italian language. There is a charming “singsongy” aspect to it that is absolutely undeniable. How can we resist its postalveolar affricates, its dental fricatives and, most of all, its sensual “r’s”? That’s why we at Radio Lingua have decided to bring you 10 Italian words that

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Practice makes perfect: 1-on-1 lessons with italki

Since 2006 we’ve been providing language courses for learners around the world and we believe that Coffee Break provides the perfect solution for learners starting out with a language, or building their comprehension skills to take their learning further. Through Coffee Break French, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, you can build a solid understanding of

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Introducing the Coffee Break Reading Club

Here at Coffee Break Languages, we’ve been very busy putting together a brand new course in response to the Coffee Break community’s requests for more reading content. We’re delighted to launch the Reading Club today in French, German, Italian and Spanish! The Coffee Break Reading Club has been designed to help intermediate learners build their

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¡Es intraducible! Our 10 favourite untranslatable Spanish words

Have you ever learned a new word in a different language and wondered how on earth you would translate it into English? Have you then started to doubt your translation skills, thinking that you no longer even know your own language very well? Well… fear not! In every language there are words which are ‘untranslatable’,

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5 reasons why learning Hungarian is “csodálatos” (wonderful!)

Hungarian is spoken by roughly 14 million people in eastern Europe. It’s the official language, of course, in Hungary, and it’s also spoken in parts of Romania, Slovakia and other bordering countries. Some people find Hungarian difficult to learn, but as even just a little language can go a long way, we’ll show you why

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31 ways to make January your best language-learning month ever!

The start of a new year is the best possible time to make a resolution to challenge yourself to become a better language learner. And this doesn’t necessarily mean hours and hours of study every day! At Coffee Break Languages, we champion the idea of making your down-time your do-time: by using any spare moments

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8 ‘Digestable’ Spanish Idioms for your delectation

It’s said that in order to find out more about the culture of a country, one need look no further than the language, or languages, spoken by the people who live there. To prove this theory, let’s take the example of the United Kingdom, where two of the most well-known idioms are ‘it’s not my

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7 tips to help you learn a language from scratch

Have you ever dreamed of learning a language but never had the opportunity? Perhaps your last language-learning experience was a very long time ago but you’ve always wanted to reignite your love of languages. Knowing where to start and how to study in order to achieve your language-learning goals can often seem like an insurmountable

Coffee Break News

One Minute Languages on the New Academy

The Coffee Break Academy goes live today as we’ve already moved all our One Minute courses over to the new system. This means that you can learn any one of 26 languages with our “espresso shots”. From Arabic to Zulu, choose your language, and enjoy our high quality video versions and lesson notes in these

Coffee Break French

Coffee Break French Live – 19 septembre 2016

Join us for Coffee Break French Live – Q&A with Mark and Pierre-Benoît Questions featured in this episode: When do you pronounce the ‘s’ at the end of the word plus? How do you know whether ‘ll’ is pronounced as an L or a Y sound? Can you give me some phrases to use when