When to use the Turkish ablative case

January 17, 2023Posted inTurkish
Turkish has a lot of noun cases. They mark nouns with their function in the sentence. For example, Turkish has accusative, dative, and locative among others. The Turkish ablative case is one of the major cases that we must look…

Can you learn multiple languages at once?

January 12, 2023Posted inPolyglot Secrets
This is one of the most common questions I get from beginner language learners and non-language learners. It makes sense to ask because it goes against everyone's first experience with languages. Most people learn some language in high school –…

When to use the Turkish locative case

December 20, 2022Posted inTurkish
The Turkish locative case is one of many cases. I've written about the other cases like dative or accusative before. Fortunately, this one is not as confusing as that one. Turkish learners might overestimate their ability to use this case,…

Fix vs. correct: what is the difference?

December 6, 2022Posted inEnglish
A lot of things in life need to improve. Often, things in our life can become broken or wrong. In this situation, how do you know which word to use: fix or correct? They sound very similar, but you can…

How to say “need” in Turkish

November 15, 2022Posted inTurkish
There are a crazy number of ways to talk about need in Turkish, so I want to break down a few of them. Here are a few ways to demystify needing things in Turkish. General rules Who needs it? Be…

How learning languages helped my English

November 10, 2022Posted inPolyglot Secrets
One of my favorite language learning myths is the idea of the uncontrollable mixing. Some people avoid learning another language because they are worried they will confuse languages. In my experience learning about a dozen languages, I've only come to…

Fragile vs. brittle: what is the difference?

November 1, 2022Posted inEnglish
My students have told me that knowing how to use fragile vs. brittle is difficult. They both can be translated the same in their native language, so it's really hard to notice how native English speakers use this word. The…

When to use the Turkish dative marker

October 18, 2022Posted inTurkish
The dative case of Turkish isn't the most complicated noun case; the award goes to the accusative, which I have written about before. I think dative is a close second in terms of difficulty. However, how can we know when…