Do you know the difference between a boot and a trunk? Can you differentiate your aluminiums from your aluminums? The differences between British and American English are more than a skin-deep accent change. This makes them an interesting topic for discussion, but...
December 25th is traditionally the time that the birth of Jesus is celebrated by followers of Christianity. At least, it is in most parts of Europe and the United States. But there are many places where the celebration of the birth of Christ happens quite differently....
Arabic Language Day will take place on 18th December. Created by UNESCO in 2010, the day is intended to promote cross-cultural understanding and celebrate cultural diversity. Because even though it’s one of the most-spoken languages on the face of the Earth,...
India is a vast country – and a melting pot of several hundred different languages. Some of which are still unclassified. Amongst them are 29 languages which are spoken by more than a million people. But it’s important to remember the country’s size...
On or around October 31st every year, people all over the world come together to celebrate Halloween. Though often seen these days as an American holiday, the traditions behind Halloween are much older than the United States itself! There have been many historical...
We hear lots of questions about the Chinese language during the course of our work in Asia. Thanks to its incredibly long 4000-year history as a continuously used language, as well as its current usage by more than 1 in 6 people worldwide, Chinese sure does have a lot...
Japanese is a beautiful but often confusing language to the outsider. There are so many interesting facts about Japanese that they wouldn’t fit into even a very lengthy article! But here we’ve collected some of the most intriguing snippets of information...
On a journey through Japan, perhaps from Osaka to Tokyo, you will hear dialects which differ substantially from Standard Japanese – as well as from each other. When you’re doing business in Japan, this is a vital factor to consider. Because, despite what many...
There are thousands of languages that most people have never even heard of. The number of unique dialects with their own specific attributes, words, and classifications has grown exponentially as humans have migrated and adapted. For many people, learning a language...
French is one of the most widely spoken Romance languages, also referred to as Latin or Romanic languages. Not least because it evolved from a language originally spoken in Rome, many agree that French is the language of love. Taking its roots from the Latin language...
Say the words ‘Burmese’ or ‘Burma’ to someone outside Asia, and most probably they will either tell you about a certain breed of domestic cat, think of an exotic and faraway country from colonial times, or reply without a clue whatsoever. Aside from the feline breed,...
So, you already know how the obligatory phrases of ‘My name is…’, ‘Pleased to meet you’, and ‘Where’s the bus stop?’ translate into several languages. Perhaps you’re fairly competent with Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Care to add another vernacular to your...
Hebrew and Yiddish may seem like similar languages since they share the same alphabet. However, the similarities end there as various socio-political happenings drew a very clear line between the two. Hebrew is a Semitic language while Yiddish is a Germanic Dialect...
Asia is often referred to as an area with an air of inscrutability, and perhaps one of the foremost reasons for this is its languages. With many intricate characters and myriad meanings gleaned from seemingly cryptic glyphs, the languages of Asia are easily perceived...
We’re often asked to help clients navigate the issues surrounding Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese scripts, or to identify which variant of Chinese has been used in a specific document. Here’s a crash course for the non-Chinese speaker on this increasingly...
How many English words do you know? Consider these words: ‘Garage.’ ‘Magic.’ ‘Sack.’ ‘Cake.’ They are not as foreign-sounding as ‘sushi’ or ‘curry;’ and you might be using these words every day. However, all of them are actually borrowed words. If you check the...
Pure and simple … the Thai language (also called Siamese) has no article, no gender, no plural, no conjugation, no declension, no upper or lower case, no punctuation … and no alphabet! Thai language overview – the simplicity of Thai grammar The Thai language...
According to the Merriam-Webster website, there are roughly around 1 million words in the English language. No other language has a vocabulary that’s as vast as this one. With such a huge figure, you might think that every foreign word has an English equivalent....
Arabic is the fifth most-spoken language in the world. Modern Standard Arabic is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. 1.8 billion Muslims hear Classical Arabic as a liturgical language every day. But there are many different dialects of...
Asian Absolute is often asked by clients to translate into Bahasa but in reality there is no such language… From experience we know most clients are in fact looking for a translation into either Indonesian or Malaysian. What is Bahasa if not a language? In this...
