Barlingua was born from a love story between language and business. Truly.

Our founders, Graeme and Lina , met in a language exchange program in London. Lina was busy honing her language teaching skills at university on an Erasmus exchange from Germany, while British-born Graeme worked in finance in the City of London. Life took them to Berlin, as life sometimes does, and a great idea began to spark between them, as great ideas sometimes do.

Graeme’s workplace in London was bicultural, and he noticed how inhibited everyone felt, including himself, in approaching one another. Yes, the language barrier created inhibitions, but the lack of cultural understanding also led to less collaboration, confidence, and ease in the workplace. Meanwhile, Lina was experimenting with different ways to create a non-judgmental space for her language students, having struggled with new languages due to the fear of making mistakes herself. Both Lina and Graeme had been teaching languages for years at this point. They saw an opportunity to create a solution for the problems they’d seen. Highly tailored language classes that would help companies cultivate a culture of care, understanding, and confidence while empowering employees to reach their potential in a whole new language.

In 2017, Barlingua was born.

(“Bar” like the relaxed atmosphere of the pub down the street where great conversations are had; and “lingua,” the Latin root word for language.) In 2022, that cross-cultural environment of care, non-judgment, and understanding feels more crucial than ever. As does a workplace’s ability to be agile and provide exceptional quality to employees, many of whom are looking for much more than they ever have before from their employer.

Our team of empowering teachers (most of whom have been with Barlingua right from the start) are ready to help and support companies interested in bringing language classes to life in their workplace.