The Language Learning Specialists
This week is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, or Māori Language Week, in New Zealand and around the world. As one of New Zealand’s official languages (alongside English and New Zealand Sign Language), Māori holds an important position and efforts to revitalise the language are proving successful. But what are the consequences of having … Read more
Latin may not be the dominant language of a vast empire any more, but that doesn’t mean you won’t hear it now and again. In this post, we take a look at seven movies that feature Latin in some shape or form and see how popular culture has helped keep Latin alive. Now, it might … Read more
Valentine’s day – a day for declaring your love in any way you can. But love can often be more tortured than a simple declaration. As Alfred de Musset said in his book “On ne badine pas avec l’amour”: “We are often deceived in love, often wounded and often miserable; but we love, and when … Read more
Language learning company uTalk has launched an app to help save the threatened Southern Saami language spoken by reindeer herders in Norway and Sweden. The herders are nicknamed the people of eight seasons because their culture divides the calendar year into eight or more seasons to tie in with the life cycle of the reindeer. … Read more
7000 languages, 7 billion people – one museum’s answer The word of God, children’s novels, recipes, drunken talk, rumours or political promises: everything is about speaking. It’s estimated that there are 7000 spoken languages in the world and a billion different ways to say all those things. This uninterrupted discussion among people of generations started … Read more
In the spirit of ‘Linguists Anonymous’, I am Felicity Jones, 45, and I am mildly addicted to learning other languages. I speak French, German, Spanish, Italian and some Mandarin. I have used uTalk to learn some Danish, and my January challenge is Greek. Even as a child I would listen under the bed cover to … Read more
Interview with Alexandra Turner – translator, writer, editor Alex left her London life a few months ago to go and travel around the world. She is passionate about culture and languages and has traveled to 26 countries up to now. At the moment she lives in Stockholm, Sweden (and we deeply envy her for that). EuroTalk: What … Read more
Buongiorno! Italian is our language of the week, in celebration of an annual tradition, Il Palio, which dates back to the 12th century and is held on the 16th of August. This is a horse race unlike any other and is all over in 90 seconds. It’s held in the beautiful city of Siena, where the … Read more
We hope you’ve enjoyed our Esperanto week! If we’ve convinced you to give the language a try, you might find this handy beginner’s guide a good place to start… Please feel free to share it with anyone you think might be interested. And for more information about Esperanto, visit edukado.net, a site run by linguist … Read more
You might not believe it, but I regularly arbitrate fairly ferocious arguments about cake. And it’s not because my colleagues can’t share cake (although this has been known to be a problem in the past). The reason is that this little word, which you would think would be a simple thing to translate, actually gets … Read more