Eight Top Tips for TEFL (And Mistakes to Avoid!)

Learn from our mistakes! uTalk’s Languages Manager, Emily, shares the things she wished she’d known before entering into the world of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and tips on how to live out your English teaching experience to the max. ‘This cannot be happening!’ I thought to myself one cold, wet, dark morning … Read more

Learning Quebecois French: Top 7 Online Tools

Learning Quebecois French can be an amazing choice for your career, personal life, and even your creative life. But because so much international emphasis is on learning Parisian French, finding online resources for learning Quebecois French can feel difficult. So since we ourselves are big fans of the Quebecois French dialect, we’ve built a list … Read more

Keep Your Herr On: A Beginner’s Guide to German

Here’s the five Gut and Wurst things you need to know about the language: Lots of similar words: Around 40% of German words are similar to English ones because they once shared the same ancestral language.  Shared words include Hammer (hammer), Freund (friend) and gut (good) as well as phrases like was ist das? (what is that?) and … Read more

Sent With Love: Our Tips for the UK Royals

Newly-wed Megan Markle touched our hearts when she called Prince Harry “my love” at a recent gala performance. But how much more fun would it have been if she’d used one of these quirky terms of affection from another tongue? Here’s our top ten suggestions: French: ma puce meaning my flea. Portuguese: chuchuzinho meaning little squash (the vegetable). Persian:  … Read more

Beware of German Gifts!

English speakers should be wary of receiving ein Gift from a German! That’s because Gift just happens to be the German word for “poison”! And more incredibly, both the English and German meanings stem from the exact same Proto-Germanic root – giftiz! Our friend and language guru Brian Loo Soon Hua explains all: The word … Read more

The Story of Tea

Why every language in the world uses the same two words for “tea” and why in fact, that assumption is wrong! (There’s actually only one word for tea!) Our friend and language guru Brian Loo Soon Hua explains all: The word “tea”, in almost every language in the world, is ultimately of Chinese origin. Whoever … Read more

The Origins of the name “Canada”

By our multi-lingual friend Brian Loo Soon Hua aka uTalk’s Language Guru   Did you know that Canada was almost named Efisga? Or, even more unusual, Hochelaga? Imagine the jokes Americans would have been making about their Efisgan or Hochelagan neighbours to the north! Thankfully, “Canada” came into official use in 1791 when the Province … Read more

Le Musée de l’Homme – Paris

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

Blog: Who would you like to say ‘Thank you’ to?

Our word of the month for the #LanguageDare is ‘Thank you’ (as all of you who have bravely posted your social media entry will already know). And it’s got me thinking about all the people who have helped me on my language learning journey, whether by teaching, correcting, encouraging or even just interacting with me, … Read more

Blog: European Day of Languages

26th September is European Day of Languages, and in honour of this special day we thought we’d have a look at some interesting facts about the European languages. Did you know that the root of many European languages can be found in the Indo-European language family, which has many subdivisions including the Italic, Celtic, Germanic … Read more