By Sarah-Claire Jordan Morocco has been in the mind’s eye of people from the U.S. since before the release of Casablanca, the famous black-and-white movie set in the largest city in Morocco. For one reason or another, it is a country that fascinates and charms outsiders, much like the other countries that make of the […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan It’s no news now that Cuba and the U.S. have begun the process of restoring their relationship to what it was before the embargo. The changes include a visit from Obama, some restoration of tourism from the U.S. (for educational purposes only however) and modifications that make sending and receiving mail possible […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan, With Arabic being an official language in 24 different countries, you have to at least wonder how many different dialects or varieties of the language exist. Just like the Spanish spoken in Latin America, each country has its own flavor of the language with local slang and even different verb conjugations sometimes. […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan If you’ve studied a bit of Spanish history, you’ll know that it’s a country made up of many different regions with their own distinct culture. Some of these regions also have their own languages, like Catalán, Asturian, Galician, and more. Most of these languages are protected under Spanish law and have enjoyed […]
By Sarah-Claire Jordan A lot of you may not know very much about Morocco (or perhaps you do, in which case you should skip this part), a country in North Africa that has a very interesting mix of cultures. You can find it right across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, so you can imagine […]
Language is a crucial consideration in international development. In communities around the world, language diversity is common, and bilingualism of individuals is vital to business and social life. Language diversity raises issues in education that must be addressed, because they underlie many other important social issues. For example, choices about the language in which children […]
“Darija” is the blanket term for Arabic dialects spoken in the Maghreb region of North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya). Darija is strictly used for oral colloquial communication, while Modern Standard Arabic is employed for written communication, official/government correspondence and news broadcasting. Modern Standard Arabic is characterized by its complex grammatical rules and abundant […]
There are approximately 6,912 living languages in the world today. Most languages belong to larger language groups or families, which is a group of similar or related languages that developed from a common ancestor, referred to as protolanguage (“proto” means “early” in Greek). Let’s take a look at a few major language groups, including an […]
