Languages & Literatures
with

Alexander Arguelles

Welcome! I have devoted my life to learning as many languages as I can, as well as I can, so that I can read literature in them with pleasure and understanding.  The purpose of this site is to share the benefits of my knowledge and experience with others who have similar aspirations.

Becoming polyliterate is truly a task of lifelong learning, and if you would like to achieve this, I would like to guide you in doing so as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

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What You Will Find Here

  • A Questions & Answers page where you can send me detailed written requests for consultation and guidance that I can answer in such a way as to form an ever-growing indexed resource and reference center.

  • A virtual Academy where you can read and discuss literature with me in French, German, Spanish, and Latin; engage in English-language seminars to go through the Great Books of Western and Eastern civilization; or join a support group for teaching yourself foreign languages.

  • Updated and expanded Great Books lists for Western, Middle Eastern, Indic, and East Asian civilizations.

Latest Q&A Submissions

Time-Tracking

September 2, 2023

Dear Professor Arguelles, Recently, I came across one of your videos titled “A Polyglot’s Daily Linguistic Workout”, in which you explained your language learning routine at the time. In this video, there was a shot of a little notebook in which you had documented all of the time spent on your languages, including your native language, English. Having diagnosed myself with polyitis, I too want to “collect” my time spent on different languages. This way, I will be able to have something concrete in addition to my theoretical knowledge. As I have been into the study of languages for a

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Advice to an International High School Student

September 1, 2023

Dear Professor Arguelles, My name is Yiğit; I am 17 years old high school student in the US. Next year, I will go to Israel to continue my education as an IB (International Baccalaureate) student in an international school. The education language and everyday language will be English due to the diverse races in school and the IB Diploma Programme. My nationality is Turkish; I live in the US, but our house language is Turkish, so I am fluent in both languages. A few months ago, I started practicing the Latin Language from Duolingo. I completed many of the units,

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Dabbling Around in Different Languages

August 31, 2023

Dear Professor Arguelles, First of all, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and insights with this community. You, Sir, are a great inspiration. My name is Daniel Byers. I´m 31 years old. I am from Germany but I am half American and grew up using both German and English. Unfortunately my English is not as good as my German since I was brought up in Germany. I love studying languages, yet I think that I only dabble around in them. I am not really good or proficient at any of them. I alternate between learning French (I am

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© 2023 Alexander Arguelles. All rights reserved.

[Franciscan philosopher Roger] Bacon was right to say that the conquest of wisdom passes through the knowledge of languages…Bacon was right that the first duty of a scholar is to study languages! – Guglielmo da Baskerville