The Language Learning Specialists
No matter whether you call it football or soccer, there’s no denying that association football is one of the most popular sports in the world. In fact, with an estimated 250 million active players in over 200 countries, it might just be the most popular sport around the globe. That means, no matter where you … Read more
If you’re a native English speaker, then you may not ever have noticed your gender affecting the way you speak – at least, in terms of the words you use. However, this is not true across all languages. In this blog post, uTalk’s Language Guru, Brian, set out to find some languages where women in … Read more
Happy Cappuccino Day! In today’s post, uTalk’s guest blogger Brian investigates the many different ways of saying ‘coffee’—and where the word used around the world actually originates! Forget about tea. Linguistically speaking, coffee is the one beverage whose name sounds the same in almost every language in the world today. Just landed in South Africa … Read more
Today is National Comic Book Day, so if you can tear yourself away from stories of superheroes or zombies, then why not check out our very own uTalk origin story? Spoiler alert: there are no angry aliens set on wiping out half of the universe’s population, but there are some comics involved! Way back in … Read more
This colour hasn’t got an exact name in English but it has in Japanese – it’s called mizu which translates as water. (We’d probably bundle it under the umbrella term of light blue.) A study published in The Journal of Vision discovered that the word mizu has been adopted by Japanese speakers over the last 30 … Read more
uTalk has launched 10 free language quizzes on popular game-based learning platform Kahoot. The fun and addictive quizzes are based on the free Starter Words in our utalk.com/app and covers core languages in the curriculum (list). There’s even a Learn English from Spanish quiz specially designed for the US where Spanish is the second language. The quizzes were … Read more
We’ve posted previously about movie and sport stars who speak other languages. But it turns out they’re not the only famous linguists, so here are a few more. Prepare to be impressed… Audrey Hepburn There was much more to the star of Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s than her movie career. Audrey Hepburn was well known for … Read more
Shane came in 3rd in The Junior Language Challenge in 2014 and is now in year 7 studying German and Latin. Below he talks about the wonderful JLC experience and why any teacher/parent should register their kids. If you’re a parent or teacher of children aged 10 and under in the UK, visit juniorlanguagechallenge.com to find out more about … Read more
Today is the day we celebrate ‘Mother’s day’ or ‘Mothering Sunday’ here in the UK. Mum is one of those words we start to use from a young age; perhaps you used ‘mumma’, ‘mother’, ‘mam’ or ‘mummy’ instead; there are many ways to say it! Some languages offer a similar word to English, like ‘la … Read more
Valentine’s Day is a moment we should all pause our busy lives to celebrate love and the important people in our lives with whom we share special moments – not only lovers but also friends or family. Obviously a popular holiday on the American continent, followed by Western Europe and in the last years Eastern Europe, … Read more