Language Chats

Moving to a new country is never easy (did someone say culture shock?), but it can be especially challenging if you need to learn how to live your life in a different language when you get there. How will you buy groceries or make a doctor’s appointment? How do you get a job and then, once you have one, navigate the workplace? Our guest for this episode of Language Chats, Dory Wang, understands th...

In this episode, we’re chatting with Dr Howard (Howie) Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Monash University. We were so excited to have the chance to speak with Howie, because we are fascinated by his language story and his academic work - from growing up in a monolingual environment and then (unexpectedly) becoming a linguist through joining the US Navy, to working a...

About this Language Chat In this episode, we’re chatting with Canadian-Australian Andrea Plawutsky - currently based in NSW - who has brought her interest in tourism, China and Asia together across her career. From teaching English in north-eastern China, living and working in Thailand and then working in the travel & tourism industry in Australia, we loved hearing about Andrea’s experiences w...

Penny is a long-time travel lover and in this episode, she tells us about her most recent international trip which was actually a bit of a reconnaissance mission… As she will soon be helping others to discover new cultures, languages and adventures through her new venture, Pip & Co Travel . We chat about Penny’s history of embracing language and culture through travel, how we can all enrich ou...

100 EPISODES of Language Chats have now made it out into the world! To celebrate this exciting occasion (and the start of a new year, hello 2024), we’re going back through our archive to reminisce about some of our favourite episodes. We’ve had so many great chats over the last five years, it wasn’t easy narrowing down our top eps! But it has given us an opportunity to think about some of the grea...

In this episode, we're welcoming linguist Karla Zuluaga back to Language Chats to hear more about the interesting work she is involved in as a Community Linguist on Groote Eylandt, Northern Territory. Born in the Philippines and having grown up in NSW, a couple of years ago Karla made the big move to the Northern Territory to work with the Groote Eylandt Language Centre . She tells us more about h...

Feeling a bit ‘under the weather’ because it’s been ‘raining cats and dogs’? Maybe you’ve found yourself ‘in a pickle’! But if a Danish person said to you that ‘there’s no cow on the ice’ (det er ingen ko på isen), would you know what they mean? Idiomatic expressions are a really interesting part of language and in this episode, we’re chatting with Rune Pedersen, host of The Idiom , a podcast co-p...

In this episode, we’re chatting with our intrepid traveller Penny, who is on the trip of a lifetime around Australia with her family! After setting off in August 2023 for a 5-month road trip around the country, Penny and her family are discovering parts of Australia that they’ve never been to before, encountering different languages and cultures, and experiencing all the fun, challenges and practi...

In this episode, we’re again chatting with two members of the Language Lovers AU Community based in Australia - Han-Yu Ong and Ingrid Botha - who both kindly took the time to tell us (and you!) about their respective experiences of learning other languages, the part that language plays in their lives, and what has motivated and inspired them. Have a question for Han-Yu, Ingrid or us? Get in touch...

In this episode, we’re chatting with two Melbourne-based members of the Language Lovers AU Community - Lily Cerôn-Fernández and Deb McLeod - who both kindly took the time to tell us (and you!) about their respective experiences of learning other languages, what has motivated and inspired them, and where languages have taken them in their lives. Have a question for Lily, Deb or us? Get in touch or...

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is a hot topic at the moment, and in this episode of Language Chats we’re speaking with Melbourne-based conversation designer Grace Frances, whose work involves training AI assistants to interact with people and the creative aspect of conversational AI. We chat with Grace about what conversation design is and what it entails, how she found herself working in this excit...

In this episode, we’re speaking with David Hua, Director of Audio and Language Content at SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) Australia , Australia’s multilingual, multicultural and Indigenous media organisation. We speak with David about his own cultural and linguistic background, what inspired him to get into the media industry, the role that SBS has in modern Australia, what he is most proud of...

In this episode, we’re chatting with Tom Shugg , VIC-based co-founder of Meg Languages . Meg Languages focuses on creating global citizens and getting students excited about learning a language by providing live Mandarin & Spanish language instruction in classrooms across Australia and around the world. Tom tells us about how he was inspired by a school trip to China in Year 9, studying Chines...

Love watching movies from around the world? It turns out that Bec goes to the cinema quite a lot and always has a recommendation for a film up her sleeve! Most of the movies she goes to see are in languages other English - surprise, surprise! - so in this episode, Bec is sharing a few of the international films that she’s watched over the last year or so which might also interest other language- a...

In this episode, we’re speaking with Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori , a London-based languages teacher and author, writing specifically for multilingual children. Yoshito grew up in France, bilingual in French and Japanese, and learnt English and Spanish at school. His wife is Korean and they are now bringing up their children to be multilingual and multiliterate in their three home languages: Korean, F...

In this episode, we’re speaking with US-based Lauren Williams, a speech language pathologist and founder of Polyglot Station and Language TV Club . As well as working with language day-to-day, Lauren is also a long-time language enthusiast who has studied French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese (and dabbled in others!). We chat with her about her work as a speech language pathologist, her language le...

In this episode, we’re speaking with Michelle Parkin, a member of the Language Lovers AU Community ! Michelle is a passionate teacher and language enthusiast, who has studied German, French, Italian and Portuguese, and LOVES listening to podcasts! Michelle tells us about her language learning journey over the years, from learning at school, independent language learning, returning to study languag...

In this episode, we’re chatting with Damian Bolton, an Indonesian language teacher based in Canberra who brings his passion and fascination for languages into the primary school classroom. Damian tells us about how he came to learn Indonesian after growing up in regional NSW with very little exposure to languages other than English, how an exchange program after high school changed his life, his l...

In this episode, Penny & Bec are chatting about where our interest in language has taken us in life, both literally and figuratively. We talk about what learning other languages has inspired us to do and how it’s allowed us to have some pretty cool experiences over the years - which have influenced our studies, careers and personal lives - as well as the things that we perhaps wish we had (or hadn...

Our guest for this episode is Joseph Lo Bianco , Professor Emeritus of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. We were delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Joe about his career and work on language, culture and literacy education in Australia and around the world. Among many other interesting research projects and advisory...

In this episode, we’re chatting with John Jang, a Korean-born Australian who has already had many interesting and varied experiences in his life so far… Many of which have involved learning other languages! John’s first language is Korean and he learnt English as his second language after migrating to Australia as a kid, but he has also studied Japanese, Italian, German, Tunisian Arabic, and Frenc...

About this Language Chat In this episode, we’re chatting with Natalie King, a member of the Language Lovers AU Community who shows us that you can learn and continue to learn other languages no matter what stage of life you find yourself at. We’re so inspired by her story! Natalie has studied Latin, German, Japanese, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Turkish at different times in her life, and...

A fresh year, a fresh start! In this episode of Language Chats, we speak about Bec’s attempts at speaking other languages during her Christmas travels, Penny’s plan to re-start a language this year, a different strategy for learning grammar structures, as well as how the chat in our last episode is encouraging us to be fine with feeling like an idiot (thanks to our guest Benny Lewis for the sound...

Full-time traveller, polyglot, author and founder of Fluent in 3 Months , Benny Lewis is our first guest on Language Chats for the new year! Benny is well known in the language learning world for his ‘speak from day one’ attitude and his popular blog , YouTube videos and books ( Fluent in 3 Months and the Language Hacking series), through which he shares his experiences, strategies and tips for ot...

It’s our last episode for 2022 and now that the festive season is here, we’re chatting about gift ideas for language lovers (whether the language lover in question is you or someone else)! From books and games to things that you may be able to gift to a language-loving friends or family members who live further away, we hope this episode helps provide you with some ideas and thought-starters for u...