If you’re traveling in one of the world’s many Spanish-speaking countries, or meeting a Spanish speaker anywhere for that matter, you need to be able to say “Hello” in Spanish, as well as some other Spanish greetings. Of course greetings are just the tip of the iceberg, but you have to start somewhere! Continue reading
Basic Greetings in Arabic
Arabic is one of the world’s major languages, spoken throughout North Africa, much of the Middle East, and beyond. And across that huge geographic area there is a lot of variation.
People who want to learn Arabic always face Continue reading
50 Essential Japanese Words and Phrases
Japanese has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn, in particular for English speakers. That’s partly because kanji (ideographic Chinese characters) make reading and writing Japanese a challenge. And it’s partly that the way ideas are expressed can be quite different in Japanese, so predicting how to say things you’ve never said before can be tricky once you reach an intermediate level. Continue reading
Spanish Vocabulary in Tagalog (Filipino)
In my recent video comparing Indonesian and Tagalog, I mentioned that Spanish has had a big impact on Tagalog vocabulary, since the Philippines was controlled by Spain for hundreds of years. An estimated 20% -33% of Tagalog vocabulary is of Spanish origin. This vocabulary is deeply Continue reading
How Similar Are Finnish and Estonian?
Finland and Estonia are situated a mere 80 km apart from each other across the Gulf of Finland. The languages of these two countries, Finnish and Estonian, were the same language (Late Proto Finnic) around 2000 years ago, but have grown apart since then. Continue reading
