I’ve been learning Czech now for some time and whilst I have undoubtedly improved significantly, there is still some way to go before I’m anything like fluent.  The challenge is not helped by the willingness for many people in Prague to converse in English at the first opportunity, which whilst certainly endearing does little to help one practice their skills.

One interesting new venture attempts to combine sharpening your skills with finding the kind of local accommodation made popular by Airbnb is TalkTalkbnb.

Where Airbnb is geared towards helping the traveler find local accommodation, TalkTalkbnb is geared very much towards helping those with a spare room to develop their language skills.

How it works

The concept is simple.  Imagine I have a spare room here in London and want to hone my Czech skills.  I advertise that room on the site for any native Czech speaker.  Should such a person be visiting London, the site matches us up and I offer free accommodation and food in return for the language support given by conversing with a native Czech speaker.

It’s certainly an interesting model.  Suffice to say, its likely success will rest on the ability to attract sufficient numbers to allow people to match up successfully.  As the site is still very new the number of users is still relatively small, but hopefully as word spreads the options will grow accordingly.

If you want to polish your language skills though it’s well worth checking out.  See the video below for more information.

https://youtu.be/6q6JYaLlzP8