New Year, New Language?

Five Tips to Ignite Your Language Learning Goals in 2025

It’s January 1. The sugar-cookie hangover is wearing off and the inebriated pledge you made to live your best life in 2025 while sloshing champagne over the side of your coupe may be little more than a blurry memory.

But maybe you’ve made a few resolutions, like hitting the gym or establishing healthy boundaries with your in-laws? What about that language textbook languishing in the corner of your home office?

If learning a (primarily dead) language from scratch is on your 2025 resolution list—or if you simply need to recommit to your language-learning goals this year—this post is for you! It’s also for the time-strapped, cash-strapped, mildly unmotivated, serial procrastinator who wants to maximize gains while minimizing effort studying independently.

Now, I’d be remiss to suggest that you can learn a language by osmosis, or—what I suspect most of us would prefer—by spending a paltry hour a month on some flash cards and a grammar video or two. However, I do believe that for many of us …