Kia ora, how are you?: The Curious Case of New Zealand English

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

5 times you spoke Italian and didn’t know it

Did you know that you speak Italian? No, really – you do. And we don’t just mean that time you ordered a pizza. Here are a few words you’ve probably used at some point, but might not have realised were Italian: Novella Longer than a short story, but not quite a full novel. Well-known novellas include … Read more

Something Borrowed: when one language just isn’t enough

After reading Konstantia’s post a few months ago about how many of our everyday words come from Greek, I started to think about where some of our other words came from. You might think that we are the ones influencing everyone else (words such as wifi in French, surfear for surfing the net in Spanish, … Read more