The German language is notorious for being difficult to learn, and it can be said that this reputation is based on factual evidence. However, those who don’t have a deeper understanding of German shouldn’t be so quick to misinterpret the details. One of the first rules of German is that nouns are always capitalized […]
A few weeks ago we looked at the southern British Cockney and RP varieties. Throughout the United Kingdom however, many different varieties of the English language can be found. Northern England comprises cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield. What are some of its speaker’s characteristics? Unlike accents found in the south, northern intonation […]
English is the third most spoken language worldwide (preceded by Chinese and Spanish) given that it has 335,000,000 speakers. It is therefore unsurprising that how its sound can vary from one place to another. Today we’re going to have a look at one particular variety: English UK. Even though the UK is relatively small in […]
What do you think of when you think of South Africa? Some things that may come to mind include Cape Town, Nelson Mandela and the 2010 World Cup. South Africa, however, has an incredibly rich history that has influenced one of the official languages spoken there: Afrikaans. English is widely spoken in South Africa, of […]
In my last post, “Common Challenges for Spanish to English Translators,” I wrote about some of the challenges faced specifically by Spanish to English translators on a daily basis. However, it is important to note that for a translator these obstacles are anything but discouraging. Rather, they actually have the opposite effect. They’re part of […]
A few weeks ago, CNN reported the results of an interesting survey carried out through Facebook in which users voted for what was, in their own opinion, the sexiest accent. While it is not the first time that this survey has been done, it can be argued that it is the one with the largest […]
Although it is quite possible that the new Dubbing Law in Argentina will imply an unexpected shove to the translation sector, the new norm could mark the end of a phenomenon which has for decades been coming to the attention of both linguists and those who study languages. It is well known that generations of […]
English has been the dominant global language for a century, and it is still recognized and studied in the majority of the countries worldwide; nevertheless, the most popular language is Chinese. The vast number of native speakers combined with those who use it as a second language, brings it to top the list as the […]
Kurdish is a language belonging to the Indo-Iranian language family, and this one in turn belongs to the group of Indo-European languages. The family of Indo-Iranian languages also includes Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu, Bengali and Pashto. Kurdish is the official language of Iraq and, although spoken in the region called Kurdistan (which draws an imaginary line […]
In the 90’s, some academics started a movement to study the language that part of the U.S. African American population speaks, which is somewhat “different” than English taught in schools. This style was given a name: Ebonics. The language of the blacks, or Ebonics, is also known as African-American Vernacular English, a language variant that […]