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Our team-created LanGoNotes for LanGonauts notebook series is now available for learners of 한국어, 中文, and 日本語. We've also got a general notebook for advanced learners of any language. Get yours today on Amazon! We hope these spaces take your language learning journey to outta-this-world places. 🚀 ✨

Most of southern Europe came under the control of Rome, and Latin was the dominant language; 2,000 years later we find in its place a continuum of languages and dialects, most of which are not mutually intelligible. What happened? One of @marisonjc’s Spanish students (who has knowledge of Latin and French) posed an excellent question in class the other day: “How and why do languages change?” In this blog post, we attempt to answer this very intricate and fascinating matter! Read more here: langoinstitute.com/blog/2021/7/9/language-change-how-latin-became-spanish #Latin #LanGoSpanish #LanguageChange

Played a super fun game of Korean Frigatebird 한국어 군함조 in today’s Beginner V class! 😍 #꿀잼

So good to see the incomparable @peterschuelke and polyglot par excellence @dexteritycheck on-site today for Português class!

Scenes from our Spanish Immersion Camp this week taught by @marisonjc! Campers learned so much and created this amazing 5-panel mural as their final project. 😍 We celebrated their achievements with Spanish presentations and Mexican gelatin fruit cake. 🎉

Lil LanGoroos learning Spanish. 😍🦘 #polyglotsintraining

Our summer session starts today! ☀️ Who's ready to brighten up their summer with new language skills? #LanGoTeam

We had an amazing time at our end-of-session party last night. Congrats to our LanGorinos who made impressive gains with their language skills and leveled up this spring! 👏 It was so nice to celebrate in person. 🧡💙 #기말파티 #koreanbbq

New post on the LanGo blog today: Compound Interest, Part 2: Chinese-derived compounds! The LanGo team is currently working on our third book for learners of Korean, an introduction to and dictionary of Sino-Korean compound words. This blog post has grown out of the work on that project. “Sino-Korean” (SK) is the term for words and expressions which Korean has borrowed from Chinese. These two languages are genetically unrelated, but Chinese (the first language in East Asia to be written down) has been a source of thousands of borrowed terms over the centuries. Similarly, we speak of “Sino-Japanese” (SJ) and “Sino-Vietnamese” for words which Japanese and Vietnamese have adopted from Chinese. Collectively these classes of words are called “Sino-Xenic” (SX; from Greek ξένος /ksénos/ ‘stranger’). In this post we use Zh as an abbreviation for Zhōngwén ‘Chinese language,’ Ko for Korean, and Ja for Japanese. Compound words are what we call words made up of smaller meaningful parts which themselves also have the status of words. In many (though not all) compounds, one of the components is called the “head,” that is, the component of which the whole compound is a subtype. More on this below. This kind of word contrasts with complex words made up of a single root or stem with prefixes or suffixes added to it, such as English “un-believ-able.” Complex words like this are plentiful in Korean and Japanese but nearly non-existent in Chinese: of the few that are in the language, examples include ‘we’ 我們 wǒmen, ‘they’ 他們 tāmen, ‘what?’ 什麼 shénme. This post discusses some of the most important ways that words are combined to produce compounds in Chinese (in a wide sense, including SK and SJ) and features comparable examples from English and other languages. Despite numerous important differences among these languages, we will see that they share much in how they form compounds. Check it out here: langoinstitute.com/blog/2021/5/12/compound-interest-part-2-chinese-derived-compounds. #compoundwords #chinese #korean #japanese #linguistics

¡Hola LanGorinos! This summer we are offering 2 weeks of Spanish youth camps. The first week is for Lil LanGoroos ages 2 - 5, the second week is for teens and pre-teens. Contact us to register the kiddos in your life for a summer of Spanish! ¡Nos vemos pronto! 💙🧡✨

Happy Mother’s Day from the LanGo team! Alll the blooms for all the mothers out there today — those with children, those who have passed on, and those who are motherly figures. 💐 #happymothersday2021

It’s gonna be May! Another month, another set of conversation hours ✨ this month we will be offering English, Spanish, and Korean conversation hours. Please RSVP at the “community” link in our bio and we hope to see you virtually! Speak soon! ¡Hasta pronto! 곧 만나요! 🧡💙✨

Meet our awe-inspiring LanGOAT, Maddie (매디)! We've nicknamed her "Maddie Skillz" (매디 스킬스) because of all of the progress she's made with her integrated skills in Korean. Maddie is a high school senior from Dallas-Fort Worth who has been studying Korean since late 2017. She is a lover of words in general, whether they be English or Korean words. Music and a strong curiosity have been the greatest impetus in her language learning journey. Her favorite word in Korean is 파이팅/화이팅! (fighting/hwaiting!). It is used to give encouragement in a way that feels different from any English word. Over time it has been frustrating for her to try and give someone support with phrases such as “Good luck”, as it just doesn’t feel as strong as 화이팅. One of the most useful things that she has learned in her Korean studies is that some words come from Chinese, similar to how some English words come from Latin. These words borrowed from Chinese are known as “Sino-Korean” words, and since she has learned quite a few, she is now able to guess what certain words mean. For example if a word ends with 실, there is a good chance it is a type of room. Such as a bedroom 침실, an office 사무실, or a beauty parlor 미용실. Thanks to her diligent study ethic, Maddie can now understand and speak Korean more confidently. The language also looks much less daunting than before, so she can read it and listen to it with less worry and stress. Although she thinks that many aspects of her studies with us have helped her, the biggest aid has been the ability to speak out loud in class and to go through real-world situations. Since she is a shy person, as well as a perfectionist, being able to speak the language out loud with no “script” in class has really helped her to come out of her shell. Maddie's ultimate goal is to be able to speak the language very well, and to have a broader vocabulary and speak with good pronunciation. She also hopes to visit Korea someday soon, and put everything she's learned into action! Read more about Maddie's language learning journey with Korean here: https://langoinstitute.com/meet-our-students. #LanGOAT #fridaymotivation

More on transitivity for the language learner, the topic of LanGoPod episode #6. Put simply, transitivity refers to the number of core arguments in a clause. A core argument is a noun phrase which is essential to the interpretation of the clause (and is not modified by an adposition, such as a preposition or a postposition). A clause is made up of phrases and expresses a single instance of tense inflection. The notion of theA clause is similar to the notion of the sentence, except that a single sentence can contain more than one clause, for example the sentence “I think Liz made a cake” contains the dependent clause “Liz made a cake,” which is the object of the main clause “I think…” Understanding how many core arguments are in a clause can help the learner acquire case, agreement, and syntactic operations which involve movement. This in turn will help you recognize, understand, and produce these things in your target language. Read more here: langoinstitute.com/blog/2021/4/14/eat-kick-bite-transitivity-for-the-language-learner. #LanGoPod #linguistics #languagelearning

Calling all movie and language lovers! ✨ Join us the weekend after the Oscars to *virtually* watch two nominated films with us: Minari (미나리) and Soul. We will watch and discuss the two movies. Please bring your popcorn and join us! Link is in our bio to RSVP. Speak soon! 곧 만나요! 💙🧡✨

Meet our impressive LanGOAT, Dalton (Daruton ダルトン)! Dalton is a native Texan and lover of anime, gaming, movies, and music (in addition to being a sweet tea and fried chicken fanatic). He has degrees in music business and production, and owns his own music production company. He co-hosts a weekly podcast called The Step Brothers Podcast with his best friend, and is recently married to his wife Chelbie. Dalton's ultimate learning goal is for Japanese to truly be his second language. He wants to be able to speak and listen clearly and comfortably in the language. He has plans to someday open up an anime lounge and move to Japan. Dalton's greatest resource during his language learning journey is his teacher, Tyler. As a hands-on learner, he really enjoys having 1:1 classes with his teacher and learning itineraries customized just for him each week. Thanks to his studies at LanGo, Dalton can now read and write hiragana and katakana with no reference materials! Although Kanji is still a continual learning process for him, he now understands how it is used and can piece together what is intended. One thing that Dalton has found pleasantly surprising about Japanese is that you can say what needs to be said and don’t have to worry about punctuation or capitalization or run-on sentences. Two of Dalton's favorite things to say in Japanese so far are: 分かりません - wakarimasen 'to not understand' (because that's how he often feels when a new topic is brought up!) and ときどき - tokidoki 'sometimes.' Read more about Dalton's language learning journey with Japanese here: https://langoinstitute.com/meet-our-students. #LanGOAT #thursdaymotivation

Happy (almost) April language learning enthusiasts! We have some fun learning opportunities this month. Join us for another English Game Night or attend our new Bilingual (English/Spanish) Yoga Class. Both are offered via Zoom. RSVP in bio✨ Speak soon! ¡Hasta pronto! 🧡💙

In LanGoPod episode #5 we discussed the phrase and the related notion of word class. In linguistics, the phrase is a syntactic unit that acts as a constituent or, as linguist Haj Ross puts it, “a chunk.” The notion of the phrase is useful to the language learner because it raises awareness of syntactic operations in the target language such as asking wh-questions and relative clause formation. Read more about how understanding phrases can help you learn your target language: langoinstitute.com/blog/2021/3/25/1xwprmxbrr4y6o23p2bvsu1ympoo5t. #LanGoPod #linguistics #languagelearning #fridaymotivation

Meet our stellar LanGOAT, Bo (Will)! Bo is from China and came to the States seven years ago for his Master's degree. He now works as a software engineer. Bo's studies with LanGo have improved his integrated skills and have enriched his understanding of English, and this has helped him in both his work and personal life. He can really see his own improvement and is confident in his future learning results. We couldn't be prouder of his progress so far! One of Bo's biggest successes is mastering the ability to hear the difference in pronunciation between closed vowels and consonants, and being able to identify weakened and linked sounds in words within sentences. He thought he had understood the general idea of many of the things he heard in English, but after learning these skills he was surprised at how many words or even meanings, jokes, and sarcasm he'd missed before. Read more about Bo's language learning journey here: https://langoinstitute.com/meet-our-students. #LanGOAT

Conversation, games, and trivia, oh my! From game nights to multilingual celebrations, a recap of our recent LanGoings on: https://langoinstitute.com/blog/2021/3/21/spring-langoings-on-a-recap-of-our-language-events. #LanGoingsOn #conversationhours