Ulrike Rettig holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. She’s a lifelong language learner, loves language teaching and is a co-founder of GamesforLanguage.com and Lingo-Late.com.

Peter F. Rettig holds engineering degrees from the ETH, Zurich, Switzerland and Columbia University, NY. In his third career, Peter Rettig started GamesforLanguage.com and – as a language lover and traveler later in life – Lingo-Late with his wife, Ulrike.

How Lingo-Late Got Started

We’ve always loved languages and traveling. Once our children were grown, we had the time and opportunity to put languages and travel more into the forefront of our lives.
In 2011 we started Gamesforlanguage.com, a site to learn German, French, Italian and Spanish playfully, with easy games and a travel story.
Both of us grew up speaking German and learned French as young adults. But now we were definitely motivated to also learn Italian and Spanish. Plus, knowing the language inspired us to travel to Italy and Spain several times and explore these countries in more depth.
To speak the local language of the countries where we traveled always was an added pleasure.
When traveling to countries, where we didn’t speak the language (Japan, China, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary), we used popular travel guides and self-teaching programs and apps to learn at least the basics.
But finding and practicing the basic words and phrases that we needed was not that easy or convenient. Neither the printed travel guides nor the online programs and apps were practical.
In From Budapest to Lingo-Late: Essential Words and Phrases we describe in more detail how our idea of Lingo-Late got started.
In addition to lists and practice lessons with audio for the first 10+ basic words and phrases that we have found useful and essential, we plan to add Quizzes as well as posts with learning tips for fellow travelers, and share travel ideas and experiences.