Hello and Welcome!
Friends with Words is a space for anyone who
loves learning languages
hates learning languages
speaks at least one human language fluently
I’ve challenged myself to learn 12 languages in 12 months. Crazy? Probably. But that matches the crazy times we live in.
Maybe you’ve never learned another language and have no idea where to start. Maybe you have learned a few but want to find a better way to go about it. Maybe you’re curious about how language works, or maybe you also want to believe that curiosity and language learning can help us find our way back to each other.
Whatever it is, I’m so glad you’re here.
All subscribers get:
One or two posts a week, on Monday (and sometimes Friday) at 8:37 pm GMT:
Insights into the learning process, based on what I know and what I find out this year. Look I’m a linguist but I’m not a neuroscientist and I've never done this sort of thing so I'm also learning how to learn as I go along. Consider me your human lab rat.
Fascinating facts about language that you didn't know you had to know.
Stories that would have never happened to a severe introvert like me if I hadn’t started this crazy journey.
Occasional videos of me making a fool of myself in a mystery language in the hopes of inspiring others to do the same.
My complete bestselling and award-winning "Learn a Language in a Month and Reverse Aging, Boost Your Immune System and Create a Thriving Vegetable Garden" program. (Just kidding. I'm still working on that one.) There won’t be any language learning ‘hacks’. Although I do believe that if you can learn the names of ten new vegetables in your language in a month YOU CAN LEARN TEN NEW WORDS IN A NEW LANGUAGE AND GO ON TO HAVE A VERY BASIC CONVERSATION BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT WHY AM I YELLING.
I’ve always wanted to create a space to write about languages and language learning in a not-boring way. There is a mind-boggling linguistic diversity out there that, just like biodiversity, will soon be lost.
But there is also something inherently cosmopolitan about the desire to learn a foreign language. Language helps us organize ourselves into groups (it’s good for us!) but it’s also the ultimate equalizer between humans because everyone speaks at least one.
If you’re disillusioned with how things have been turning out for humanity lately, but still secretly hope that curiosity can fix the world or at least make it a less horrible place, this space is for you. Welcome.
Who (the fuck) are you, Tanya? (and why do you think you can pull this off??)
Hello, I'm Tanya 👋
I'm an essayist, a linguist, a former language teacher, and a forever language learner.
I’m also a single mom to two trilingual kids and one trilingual labrador:
I was born in Russia, have lived in Canada, the US, and the UK, and am now based in Israel.
I have a Ph.D. in Linguistics, and I speak three languages in my daily life: Russian (my native language), Hebrew, and English. Before starting this project, I have also studied French, Spanish, Latin, Sanskrit, and Oji-Cree.
Oji-Cree is an endangered native Canadian language of the Algonquian language family that I focused on for my doctoral and postdoctoral work.
I left academia to become a full-time writer and have published essays in Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Newsweek, Boston Globe, and other exciting places (you can read most of them here) but none as exciting as this newsletter.
I had managed to learn a language in four weeks once before (French) to the point of being able to do a job interview in it. It was both fun and crazy and it gave me the courage to start this project.
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