You Can Know a Language — and Still Not Be Able to Think in It

The Language I Live — Author’s Column by Tymur LevitinLanguage. Meaning. Thinking. For more than twenty years, I have been teaching languages to people of different ages, cultures, professions, and life situations.And during all these years, one idea keeps returning — sometimes quietly, sometimes painfully clearly: Language learning is not really about language. It is […]

When people say “Just practice, and you’ll learn,” they rarely mean harm. They simply repeat what they’ve been told — that effort equals progress. But in language learning, this belief can be one of the biggest traps. Practice without awareness doesn’t lead to fluency. It leads to repetition of mistakes. And repetition of mistakes leads […]

The Real Question Behind the Rule Many learners ask: “Why is the verb in the second position in German sentences?” It’s one of the most repeated rules in grammar books—but rarely explained clearly. In this article, I’ll give you not a list of rules, but a real explanation: one that shows how this structure reflects […]