You learn a language the way you learned your first one: by hearing it, then saying
it. Every LIMBA course is a series of audio lessons of about fourteen minutes that you download
as MP3 files and keep. No alphabet drills before you are allowed to speak, no grammar tables to
memorise first.
Four languages are taught in English, and the first lesson of each is on this page. Play it before
you decide anything — it is the whole lesson, not a sample, and nothing is asked of you to
hear it.
Palestinian Arabic audio course
67 lessons · about 14 minutes each · MP3 download
Levantine Arabic as it is actually spoken in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — not
the Classical Arabic of the Quran, and not the Maghrebi dialects of Morocco, Tunisia and
Algeria. The difference matters: a learner of Classical Arabic can read a newspaper and still
struggle to order a coffee. These recordings were made by Palestinian speakers, and the
course builds the everyday language first.
A grammar guide for Palestinian Arabic is in preparation. Until then, the
course itself introduces structure as you go, without a single table to learn by heart.
Russian audio course
50 lessons · about 14 minutes each · MP3 download
Spoken Russian, built one lesson at a time. The six cases are the part every textbook puts
first and every beginner stalls on; here they arrive through sentences you have already heard
and repeated, so that the ending starts to sound wrong before you can explain why. Vocabulary
and verbs are introduced gradually rather than listed.
A Russian grammar guide is in preparation, on the model of the Mongolian
one below.
Georgian audio course
37 lessons · about 14 minutes each · MP3 download
Georgian is spoken by about four million people in the central Caucasus and is related to no
language you already know: it belongs to the Kartvelian family, has seven cases, no gender and
no articles, and is written in its own Mkhedruli alphabet of thirty-three letters. That is
exactly why hearing it first works better than reading about it first.
Spoken Mongolian, recorded with a native speaker, together with the Central Asian culture that
comes with it. Mongolian builds words by stacking suffixes on a stem and puts the verb last,
which sounds forbidding and turns out to be regular: once you hear the pattern, it repeats.
This is the one course that also has a full written grammar beside it.
Reading about a language and speaking it are two different skills, and the first one does not
turn into the second on its own. An audio course reverses the usual order: you meet a sentence
as sound, you repeat it, and only afterwards do you find out what the pieces are called. That is
the order in which every person on earth learned to talk.
Listen
A lesson lasts about fourteen minutes — a commute, a walk, the time it takes to make
dinner. Short enough to do every day, which is the only thing that matters.
Repeat out loud
Saying it is not optional. The mouth has to learn the shapes, and silent listening never
teaches it. One lesson a day, said aloud, beats three lessons read.
Keep the files
The lessons are MP3 files you download once. They work on a phone, in a car, on a plane,
with no connection and no account to sign into.
Why learning a language by ear works
Grammar explains a language after the fact. It is a map, and a map is useful once you have been
to the place. The trouble with starting from the map is that it gives you something to be wrong
about before you have anything to be right about: the learner who has memorised six cases but
never heard a sentence has nothing to attach them to.
Hearing comes first for a practical reason too. A language you have only read is a language you
cannot recognise when someone says it at normal speed — and normal speed is the only speed
anyone uses. The sounds that English does not have are the ones you will mishear for months:
the Georgian ejectives, the Arabic pharyngeals, the two Mongolian u-vowels that an English ear
merges into one. You learn to hear them by hearing them.
This is why the courses are built from recorded speech rather than from word lists, and why the
written grammar — where it exists, as it does for Mongolian — is offered separately,
for the moment when you want to understand what you can already say.
Questions people ask before starting
What exactly do I receive?
MP3 audio files, downloaded from a link sent to you after payment. They are yours: no streaming,
no account, no expiry. You can copy them to a phone, a car, or a backup drive.
Do I need to know the alphabet first?
No. The courses are spoken language. For Georgian, Arabic and Mongolian you can complete the
audio lessons without reading a single character of the script — and many people find the
script far easier afterwards, because the sounds already mean something.
How long does one lesson take?
About fourteen minutes. The courses are designed around one lesson a day, which is the pace
that people actually keep. Fifty lessons is therefore a bit under two months.
Can I hear a lesson before buying?
Yes, and it is on this page. Lesson 1 of each course plays in full, free, with no sign-up.
It is the real first lesson, not an excerpt.
Is there written grammar as well?
For Mongolian, yes: a free guide of sixty-four pages with exercises, covering the seven cases,
the verb, vowel harmony and the rest. Guides for the other languages are in preparation.
Which of the four is hardest?
For an English speaker, Georgian and Arabic ask the most of the ear, Russian the most of the
memory, and Mongolian the most patience with word order. None of them is hard the way people
fear: they are unfamiliar, which is a different thing, and unfamiliarity wears off with hours.