language

Scire linguas: Why Knowing Your Latin Can Help Your Language Skills

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Thanks to London Translations for today’s blog post about the value of learning Latin! Latin, a language that is more than 2,000 years old and is still spoken in the Vatican today, has shaped modern European languages like no other. Who would’ve thought that this medium of communication, which spread through the power of the … Read more

10 reasons to visit… Barcelona

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A couple of months ago, I visited Barcelona in north-east Spain. The city has something for everyone – history, architecture, beach and mountains. We were only there a few days – and on a bit of a budget – but we had great weather, and managed to explore the majority of this amazing city on … Read more

Book review: Through the Language Glass

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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

Just how bad was Mark Zuckerberg’s Mandarin anyway?

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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

Japanoises (How things sound in Japanese)

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Have you ever wondered how to make the sound of a typewriter in Japanese? Or how to describe the noise a cat makes? Well, wonder no more. We present to you – Japanoises! (Yes, we were so excited that we made up a word.) Which one’s your favourite? Other Japanese sounds that almost made it … Read more

Win a $100 travel card with uTalk!

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When we asked you in our recent survey why you were learning a language, almost half of you said it was for travel. Which makes perfect sense, of course – why learn a language unless you plan to use it? As you know, our uTalk app is designed for people who are travelling, who want … Read more

Language of the Week: Japanese

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As it was the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, we have chosen Japanese as our Language of the Week. First and foremost, our thoughts and good wishes go to Jules Bianchi for his full recovery following his crash on Sunday at Suzuka. Though in many respects I’m a complete petrol head, I have never found … Read more

Language of the Week: German

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As the annual festival of Oktoberfest gets underway in Munich this week, we’ve chosen German as our latest Language of the Week. If you’re anything like us, when you hear ‘Oktoberfest’ you probably think of beer (oh – just us?) but there’s a lot more to the event than that. Oktoberfest is actually the world’s … Read more