Teachers and Resources
Personal Recommendations
In my journey to becoming a polyglot, I have studied under various teachers. If you’d like to learn Mandarin, Hindi, or English, my first recommendation would be me. For other languages, below is a list of teachers that I have personally worked with and learned from, and who I would not hesitate to recommend.
Urdu
1. Akshita Nagpal is a journalist. She runs Urdu classes at a beginner and advanced level, wherein she teaches the script, as well as speaking and listening. She is based in Mumbai, India.
You can connect with her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akshita.shuruaat/
2. Shanza Syed teaches Urdu online, on the platform Italki. She words as a teacher during the day and teaches in the evenings. She is based in Islamabad, Pakistan.
You can connect with here, and sign up for her classes here.
Punjabi
1. Shubhika Sharma is a feminist activist and writer. She also teaches Punjabi online.
You can connect with her here.
Spanish
1. Abdul Shahir and his team, over at Maitrise Language Essentials. Abdul has a degree in Spanish from EFLU, Hyderabad, and his team consists of native speakers from South America. The mix is useful because he personally speaks both Hindi and Spanish, and understands where students tend to get stuck, whereas communicating with his team helps with understanding and conversing with a native speaker. All this at very affordable prices.
You can get in touch with them here.
2. Angélica T is a native speaker from Mexico, and teaches Spanish on Italki. You can sign up for here classes here.
Korean
1. Hayeong teaches Korean to foreign students at a university in Daejeon in Korea. He has an MA in Korean Language and is a professionally qualified teacher. You can connect with him here, on the platform Italki.
I have also learned Korean with LKI (Learn Korean in India), and personally did not find their classes well structured, so I dropped out of the course.
Arabic
When searching for an Arabic teacher, make sure to select one who speaks the dialect you want to learn. Personally I have tried learning Modern Standard Arabic, Masri (Egyptian Arabic) and Darija (Moroccan Arabic). If wanting to go to the Gulf for a job, you may want to choose Saudi Arabic.
1. Doha Hassini is a Morocco based Egyptian teacher, who teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Darija. You can connect with here here, on Italki.
2. Nermine Said is from Egypt, and she teaches Egyptian Arabic as well as Modern Standard Arabic. You can connect with her here, on Italki.
Persian
https://www.italki.com/en/i/reft/FfdCAH/GB0FHB/persian(farsi)?hl=en&utm_medium=share_teacher&utm_source=copylink_share1. Fateme is a native Persian speaker from Iran. Her classes are very well organized and eminently affordable. You can connect with here here, on Italki.
2. Farzaneh Roohamiz is a native Persian speaker from Iran. She is superb at adjusting to the pace of the student. You can connect with her here, on Italki.
Swahili
1. Jacinta Siago is a native Swahili speaker from Kenya. You can connect with her here, on Italki.
Other Languages
I also sometimes get enquiries for German, French, Japanese, and other Indian languages. Since I have not personally studied these, I am unable to provide a recommendation, but I will be updating this page with a list of picks from Instagram, and recommendations from my students.
Resources
You will notice that a lot of my teacher recommendations are from Italki, a language learning platform that I use whenever I want to learn a new language. Usually, you can take a couple of Demo lessons and decide which teacher you want to work with. Sometimes it takes a bit or trial and error, but you eventually do end up finding teachers who match your learning style, pace, and feel safe and comfortable to work with. I would unreservedly recommend signing up for this platform.