8 odd sounds from other languages
There are many sounds used in world languages. These sounds form an integral part of many words in the language they are used in. But did you know that you probably know and use some of these sounds already? If you imitate someone glugging something down, you are using one of these sounds. So don’t […]
False friends in Spanish
False friends are words that look similar to a word you already know, but actually have a different meaning than the one you think it would have. “Embarazada” is a famous example. You think it means “embarrased” but it actually means “pregnant” 😀 Watch the video in this post for more examples.
Languages of Switzerland
There are a lot of languages in Switzerland! It’s probably because it is so close to so many different countries. There are also interesting variations in the language spoken there and interesting dialects. The French spoken in Switzerland uses different numbers for 70, 80 and 90 than those used in France. In Switzerland, they use […]
The limits of language
This guy talks about the ambiguity in the word “voice”, which can mean “the sound made by a person’s voicebox” but also “their overall style in writing”. What would you call the process of slowly incorporating more and more of someone else’s style into your own. He calls it “voice adoption”. Is this the best way […]
Fun with Spanish Words!
Every language has a different set of words it uses to describe the world. No language matches another language exactly one word to one word. A word in one language might translate to many words in another, and the reverse is also true. An interesting example is from German where “kennen” means to “recognise” or […]
The difference between wa and ga
http://nihonshock.com/2010/02/particles-the-difference-between-wa-and-ga/ Japanese has an interesting way of dealing with different areas of conversation. Unlike English which just has a grammatical subject and object, Japanese has added a topic. The topic is marked with the word “wa”. A sentence can have a topic and a subject. This can add nuance to a sentence with the addition […]
