Language

Blog posts on Language.

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A Simplified Introduction to Irish Names

Ó Flaithbheartaigh, Ní Raghallaigh, Ní Tuama, Ó hAonghusa,… No idea how to read, let alone utter, those words? Quite likely like most people and yet these words come from a European language. Gaelige is a speech that differs a lot from its fellow European languages. Official language, with English, of the Republic of Ireland, it […]
July 10, 2019
Average is worse than you think: “Avarie” linguistic tale

Lately, I have been reading a book about the influence of the Arabic language on modern French: “Nos ancêtres les Arabes” by Jean Pruvost. It’s a wonderful book if you are into linguistics and share a passion for words and how they evolved into what they are now over the centuries. Among the many words […]
November 30, 2018
The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth | review

I am a lucky person. Not only have I visited Scandinavian countries, I had the opportunity to visit them several times, on various occasions and to meet and tie friendships with locals. I saw the ever-breath-taking geysers in Iceland, I cycled through the streets of Copenhagen, and I even experienced drinking beer on a bank […]
August 19, 2018
One week of Russian – how much can you learn?

Tweet One week of intensive Russian learning (starting from scratch) was a lot of fun! I spent about 35 hours with Larisa, teacher at the Volkshochschule of Hamburg, and my class of 15 students. Nice group, eager to learn, very passionate about Russian – I guess you have to
February 09, 2016
Language learning tool: Lernkrimi

Tweet Since I’ve been living in Germany, I’ve been working on learning German (very urgent) and Spanish (for fun). My local library has a lot of resources for languages (even for Slovak or Swahili!) and I ran into
December 08, 2014
Swedish is on Duolingo!

It’s still on beta but it is now available as one of the 9 languages you can learn on the language learning platform.
November 27, 2014
The real Hallowe’en is in Germany

It’s dreadfully spooky. It makes you feel like you’ll never make it. It can take a whole day. It’s like torture but you cannot escape it. It’s every year in October in Germany.
October 03, 2014
New language mission: learning Italian!

Summer is slowly bidding farewell for this year, the days are getting shorter and the temperature is dropping. Time to find some indoor activity for the cold months!
August 30, 2014
Language guide for the 2014 World Cup

Tweet Football time! Or should we say soccer? Either way the FIFA World Cup 2014 is about to start and it’s in Brazil this year. So for those of you who feel like learning some Portuguese before the trip and mingling a bit with the Brazilians,
April 22, 2014
What is your favourite language?

When you’re a language specialist, it is not unusual study more than one foreign language. It usually starts with one or two, learnt at school by chance or by default. Then the passion slowly grows and and leads you to devour more languages. Because they are of the same family and you think it’s an […]
September 28, 2013