About Us
Originator: Neil Breakwell
Born: 1973
Nationality: British
Residence: Thailand
Occupation: Teacher - physics
I never thought much of learning languages when I was young; I was more interested in science, and although I did learn French at school I guess it did not seem very important at the time. I did well at GCSE French (got an A) but I just thought of it as another of the lessons that i had to do. I hope the British education system is stressing the importance of learning languages now and not just telling kids that they have to do it.
It wasn't until I went travelling after my degree in 1997 that I first realised the importance and fun of learning a new language. A language that I would not only use in the classroom to describe the weather, but a language I could use to talk to real people and bring a smile to their faces.
The first language i really learnt was Indonesian after spending about a year in the country. It is a fantastic country with a diverse people and landscape and of course possibly the easiest language in the world to learn. There are no real tenses, no conjugations and each letter has a consistent sound whatever word it is in—always. This makes for a quick and extremely fun learning curve. Although it is easy, very few people actually learn Indonesian, and the people absolutely love it when you can hold a conversation with them. They feel pride that you took the time to learn their language.
The Second language I learnt was Thai. I moved to Bangkok Thailand to live in 2001 and have been teaching Science, English, and Physics to Thai students (In English) since then. Thai is much harder to learn than Indonesian. It is a tonal language to begin with and each tone can completely change the meaning of a word. It also uses consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are hard to pronounce for a westerner e.g. ng, dt—of course these are transliterations of the language as the Thai language compounds its difficulty by using a completely different alphabet. Again, however, most people are extremely excited if you can speak only a smattering of their language. Many more people come to thailand than go to Indonesia but still very few people learn the language to any real degree of proficiency. This is partly due to the perceived ease of being able to get around the world if you speak English alone. Yes you can, but its not half as much fun.
Basically I started this website partly through my belief in the benefits and the fun that can be had by learning and using a foreign language (especially in a foreign country), but also the realisation of how few foreign languages are spoken by most native English speakers when compared to other language speakers. You only have to look through Europe and you see whole countries where their citizens can speak 2,3 sometimes 4 languages on average.
I also think that the world is changing: China is growing more powerful and more influential on the world's economy, japan already plays an extremely important role, and Spanish and Arabic speaking people are becoming a large minority in many English speaking countries. This should be embraced instead of feared and used as a reason to make more people learn a new language.
Now I have settled in Thailand and have stopped travelling so much, I am unable to learn more languages from the people who live in those countries. Now i do what any person in the UK or the US or any other country can do: Learn languages from the internet. If you have a good reason to learn a specific language it is an ideal way; If, like me, you just want to learn new words, and a new language as a hobby then it is perfect. No set times, no travelling, all done in your own home. Of course I can still use the languages I learn on occasion: I have spoken Mandarin to the Chinese, Spanish to friends and Japanese to Japanese tourists...all here in Bangkok. They certainly don't expect it.
Disclaimer:I was born and educated in the UK and although I have been thoroughly Americanised by friends, my spelling still tends to use the British English standard. Although I do not apologise for this (its how I was taught) i do hope that any non-Brits accept it for what it is and do not get offended by my 'unusual' spelling.
Above all, i hope people enjoy my website, find it useful, and enjoy learning that new language.
It really will change your life.