The Language Learning Specialists
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
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
Find out what Game of Thrones and Star Trek have in common and why fans of both will be living it up in Montreal this weekend! You’d be forgiven for not having heard of Marc Okrand or David Peterson, though it’s likely that you’ve seen some of their work. Both of these gentlemen are going … Read more
This week, our fabulous JLC finalists have started learning their third language before the final competition in October. Having flourished in Romanian and triumphed in Korean, they are now tackling the African Bantu language of Swahili. Luckily for them, Swahili uses the Latin alphabet (one less thing to worry about!), but there is one peculiar … 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
Blogger Erika Holt is a big fan of languages and learning. In today’s blog post, she tells us why, and explains how knowing a little Greek helped her out in a sticky situation… What made you start learning languages? I have always found myself interested in languages. I have a huge passion for reading and writing, … Read more
Recently, Alex wrote about the way languages borrow words from each other. She pointed out that in English, we’re always using words from other languages, sometimes without even realising it, with déjà vu, karate and Zeitgeist being just a few examples. But is this mixing of languages a good thing, or should languages remain ‘pure’? … Read more