Have you ever wondered where the Yiddish language comes from? The answer is not difficult to find, as Yiddish /(j)ɪdɪʃ/ literally means ‘Jewish’. Indeed, this is an Indo-European language derived from a High German variety originally spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews. Despite its growing recognition, many foreign language learners sometimes stay away from Yiddish because(…)

If your friend sent you this meme, how would you answer? The most likely options are “haha” or “LOL” (which means “Laughing Out Loud”, if you didn’t know). But if you found this meme hilarious, you may want to laugh hard and use “HAHA”, “hahahahaha”, or “ROFL” (Rolling On the Floor Laughing). The problem is(…)

You may have heard that learning a language is a long-term investment and that the best way of becoming fluent is to communicate with native speakers. While this is true, it poses a little problem. If you live in Australia, for example, and want to practise Spanish, you’ll need to go abroad to find native(…)

One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is learning a new language. It’s January 1st, and this seems totally doable: you still have the whole year ahead. Yet, the days start to pass and you soon forget about your objective. Suddenly, you are already in the last quarter of the year and start to(…)

The three main Scandinavian languages—Danish, Swedish and Norwegian—are consistently ranked among the easiest languages for native English speakers to study according to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). But mastering them still requires effort. Typically, learners need between 575 and 600 study hours to become fluent in any of these languages. Now, while this is a(…)

What’s the most tedious part of learning a second language? For most people, it’s grammar and vocabulary. It usually takes many hours of senseless repetition and there’s no fun in that. Or at least, that is if you’re doing it wrong. While memorising lists of words and grammar rules is one of the most common ways(…)

Are you looking for your next travel destination and stuck for what to choose? How about the beautiful country that is Columbia in South America? With a rich history and even richer biodiversity, there will be plenty of things for you to see and do. So where do you start? Here are some of the(…)

It’s World Ocean Day, a time to not only celebrate our beautiful oceans, but to reflect on our overall environmental impact. With just 228,000 known species in the ocean, and over 2 million unknown, the vast body of water that covers most of our planet is still largely a mystery. Human activities often have a(…)

We live in a globalised world, where people move around all the time and make different countries and cities their home. In this way, we can be in places like Buenos Aires and speak in English with friends from the US, taste delicious kebabs from Turkey or dance to the rhythm of Brazilian samba. But(…)

In 1994, the UN’s Division for Inclusive Social Development (DISD) decided to observe the International Day of Families on May 15th every year. In 2020, it has become more relevant than ever. As stated by the UN, “It is the families who bear the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis, sheltering their members from harm, caring for(…)