By Sarah-Claire Jordan To say something is “untranslatable” sounds rather extreme, to be honest. If it were taken literally, that would mean that there would be absolutely no way to convey a certain word or idea in any language besides the source one. We know this to be false, of course, as translators have proven […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan Everyone is aware that there are generally at least two languages spoken in any given country, either due to immigration or the complex linguistic history of a country. Many countries include land where originally the official language was not spoken, like the southwest of the U.S. or parts of European countries that […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan If you have ever talked to someone in English whose native tongue is a Scandinavian language, you probably noticed that they speak almost perfect English. The same thing happens with native German speakers, as German is very similar to English, but it might be less obvious as to why native speakers of […]
By Sara-Claire Jordan The Romani people are an extremely interesting group, who are found mostly throughout Europe, but also in the Americas. You may know them as “gypsies”, a term that is a bit out of date now. The word “gypsy” originally comes from the Greek word for “egyptian”, which exposes the confusion surrounding the […]
Any image of the Ice Age gives us a wizened earth, barren and stony, abdicated to the powerful and relentless freezing of the poles. A few of these glaciers, silently introduced between high and mighty cliffs where lies modern day Scandinavia, would alter the landscape for millenniums to come. Amidst the Norweigan fjords, however, one […]
During Roman conquest the Latin language became widespread in the region that includes present-day Europe and the Mediterranean basin, and so overlapped pre-existing languages, called substrata languages. This dominance was to be tested by subsequent barbarian invasions which gave rise to various Italic dialects. Interestingly, recent theories assert the father of these dialects is not […]
Archipelagos reserve interesting anthropological surprises. One such surprise is the existence of a distinct minority group living in Japan, a society known for its hegemony. They are called Ainu, number around 15,000 and occupy, for the most part, Hokkaido, a northern island whose luminous plains cut by volcanic mountains becomes a shadowed white wilderness when […]
Traveling in Brazil along the 15th parallel is no easy business. From the coastline, the country’s capital, Brasilia, is a whole 24 hours in bus. Add another 10 hours and the bus may reach the rude landscape surrounding the bustling Rondonópolis in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region. This is a backwoods more laden with yellowing grasses […]
