Words That Have Circumnavigated the World

The Indonesian word for ‘dictionary’ (kamus) is almost the same as the Swahili word (kamusi) and is in fact an old borrowing from Arabic that somehow came from the Greek word for ‘ocean’. Confused? Here’s how multilingualism and trade spread three rather unusual words around the world. An ocean of words The Indonesian word for … Read more

Can You Say These 10 Devious Tongue Twisters in 10 Different Languages?

Every language has its own tongue twisters—words or phrases that are difficult to say without making mistakes. In this post, we’ll show you ten different tongue twisters in ten different languages; can you say them all? How many tongue twisters do you know in English? Red lorry, yellow lorry is a fun one, though perhaps … Read more

Latin at the Movies

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

Beginner’s Guide to Latin

Last week, Latin became the 133rd language to be added to uTalk, our app for iPhone and iPad. (Don’t have an iOS device? You can also learn Latin on your computer.) And to get you started with Latin, we’ve put together this beginner’s guide with a few essentials – some basic greetings, colours, numbers and … Read more

Did You Know You Can Speak Latin?

Last week we added our 133rd language to the uTalk app – and it’s a good one! Latin has been around ever since the year 75 BC and it has evolved from Old Latin to Classical Latin, to Early Modern Latin and finally Modern Latin. Along with Greek, its roots are used in theology, biology, … Read more

10 Famous Faces Who Speak Other Languages

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

Beginner’s Guide to Romanian

The Junior Language Challenge is a national competition for children aged 10 and under across the UK. One of the goals of the competition is to give young learners the chance to discover exciting new languages, and this year we’ve chosen Romanian as the first language. But how much do you know about this European … Read more

Why Russian? Why not?

Lucy was our first ever winner of the Junior Language Challenge and at age 23 has now chosen to take part in the uTalk Challenge learning Russian. Lucy already speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German and Latin and has been learning languages since she was 10 years old. Why? Why not? I was talking to some … Read more

Learning Latin with Harry Potter

Just before Christmas, I helped our language producer record Latin, which will be coming to uTalk later in the year. Whilst listening to the Latin speakers I found I recognised some of the words (although I have never learnt Latin before). And then I realised this was due to my love for/slight obsession with Harry … Read more

Why learning Persian made me feel Fanta-stic

Nancy Reynolds is a freelance writer from the USA, who’s currently working on a novel.  In her spare time she studies Persian and has vocabulary contests with her teenaged daughter who has studied Latin, German, Mandarin and Ancient Greek. Here’s her language story… For some people, learning a foreign language is good for business, a school … Read more