Book review: Through the Language Glass

Ever wondered what us language geeks do for fun in our spare time? Reading books about languages, of course! Well, not all the time – but I recently read the very interesting Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher, and would recommend it to anyone else who is interested in how different languages work, and … Read more

10 Reasons to Visit… Las Vegas

I was lucky enough to visit one of the most notorious party cities last December; I, however, can not comment on what the nightlife is like in Vegas as I was only 19 and therefore not allowed to step foot into a bar or club! However, even without the partying, there is so much to … Read more

Just how bad was Mark Zuckerberg’s Mandarin anyway?

A couple of weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg shocked the world by taking part in a 30-minute Q&A session in Mandarin Chinese. And we were all super impressed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr__vZKWdDE It was obvious, even to a non-Mandarin speaker, that he wasn’t completely fluent, but he managed to keep going for almost the full half hour, and his audience at Tsinghua University … Read more

Halloween around the world

Halloween is one of the world’s oldest celebrations, dating back to possibly 500 AD in Ireland. The celebration was originally the ‘Celtic feast of Samhain’, a pre-Christian festival that began at sunset on 31st October and ended at sunset on 1st November. It was meant to be the night when the veil between this world … Read more

Junior Language Challenge 2014 – the final!

On Friday 17th October, 31 young linguists from all over the country came to London for the final of our national competition for primary schools, the Junior Language Challenge. Since March, they’d learnt Italian for the first round, Japanese for the semi-finals and they’d spent the last few weeks studying the African language of Somali in preparation … Read more

10 reasons to visit… Algiers

I must admit that Algeria does not feature highly among people’s bucket list destinations. While most tourists visiting the region flock to Egypt or Tunisia, Algeria is still very much off the beaten track. Nor does it help that it  has attracted a rather bad press over the last year or so:  much of the … Read more