Language science, acquisition theory, and the intersection of human and machine learning.
Part 1 · Start here
I spent the pandemic watching everyone on YouTube move to Thailand and Portugal. Then something shifted. Part 1 of the LinguaMama origin story.
Start reading →All 8 parts
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 1: Everyone Else Left
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 2: Portugal, Probably
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 3: You Cannot Come to Portugal
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 4: Do Not Get a French Car
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 5: Tavira
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 6: The Yaris Cross
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 7: Administrative Silence
How LinguaMama Got Built, Part 8: Estepona
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A computational linguist's journey from studying how LLMs learn language to building an app that applies those same principles to human language acquisition.
Explore how your brain's existing mental models and neural pathways enable rapid language acquisition through grafting new connections to existing concepts.
From expert systems to Large Language Models—three decades of reverse-engineering intelligence reveals the universal principles of learning.