By Sarah-Claire Jordan Shanghainese, also known as the Hu language as well as the Shanghai language, is actually a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in Shanghai and neighboring areas. Sometimes, when discussing the Shanghai language in English, it is used to mean ALL Wu dialects, but linguistically this isn’t the case. It is, to be […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Geordie refers to anyone from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in North East England, as well as the dialect of English spoken by the natives there. The Geordie dialect has become more popular in British media, as it tends to sound friendlier and more melodic than other British English dialects. Aside from pronunciation differences, there are […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Thanks to Nelson Mandela, all of us know at least one word in Afrikaans: “apartheid”. Literally translated to English, it means “apart-hood”, and describes the type of government-endorsed racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Afrikaans is the language that evolved from the dialect of Dutch spoken […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Cappadocian Greek is a dialect of Greek that originally developed in a region of Turkey known as Cappadocia. It was at one point a part of the Byzantine empire, which was just a part of the Roman empire where many people spoke Greek. Originally, this would have been Byzantine Greek, whose influence […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Belgium is a country in Western Europe that is essentially stuck between two language worlds: the Germanic and the Romance. It can be regionally and linguistically divided into roughly two areas, that of the north and south. The northern region is home to a Dutch-speaking population, while the south speaks French. However, […]
The sands of time sift through your hands, grainy as they fall back onto the sparkling beach, clearly distinguishable from the shimmering turquoise water enveloping the massive green peaks that form the Ionian island. This is not the opening scene of “Pirates of the Caribbean 5” or “Prince of Persia 2”, but a place where […]
The white palatial Teatro Solís in central Montevideo has opened its doors for an exposition of the finest Milonga dancers from around. A dramatic recording is played to unleash the passionate dance of a caballero and his dama in the center spotlight. They are dancing an elaborate, quick-paced form of tango, their countenances touching and […]
A precise boundary between the two terms, Pidgin and Creole, does not exist mostly because they both represent “corruptions” of higher languages and include a wide variety of phenomena. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the definition of Pidgin English “as an English specialized jargon corrupted according to another language to permit intercommunication”. This is the […]
