As a foreigner in South Korea, you might feel overwhelmed by the plethora of questions asked of you by your hosts, including and especially, what your age is. While it…
Category: Languages of Asia
Kawaii: the Japanese art of being “cute”
If you are a fan of manga, anime or Japanese culture as a whole, then you know pretty well that kawaii is not just another Japanese loanword. Kawaii is an…
Dialects – the riches of the Vietnamese treasure chest
“Never let it be said that dialect is a reflection of intellect. On the contrary, it is a reflection of the deep traditional values of a culture” – Patricia H.…
Chinese Moon Festival – a story of love, hard work, and self-sacrifice
Chinese culture is steeped in intricacies and wonderful tales, and with a 4000-year history, there are bound to be some stories that are more memorable than others. This is the…
Translating “Eva dislikes John” and vice versa – how difficult could it be?
The two seemingly inconspicuous sentences, “Eva dislikes John” and “John dislikes Eva” might seem easy to translate into the Korean language at first sight. After all, they each contain a…
Beauty lies in the small details. Discourse particles on Malaysian English
We mention quite often the usage of English “dialects” such as Chinglish, Japlish, etc. In this article, we are going to take a look at the phenomena of discourse particles…
Ikigai – the Japanese “reason for being”
Every person has their own pace of life and each of us decides for themselves just how much work is enough work. There are some that prefer leisure to hard…
Konglish – another example of the vibrance of the “New Englishes”
The late part of the previous century marks the birth and growth of hybrid languages, more often than not mixing a country’s native language with a variety of English. This…
Bahasa Indonesian and its sweet peculiarities
Indonesian (or Bahasa Indonesian) is the official language of Indonesia and the Indonesian archipelago. It is a relatively new language that has quickly taken its place in the rank as…
Exploring Asia: Interesting facts about the Mongolian language
By far, we have acquainted you with the peculiarities of numerous languages, spoken around the continent of Asia. Today, we will be taking a look at the language of the…
The Colors of Hmong – a centuries-old language
If you are a curious person, always searching for new, interesting facts and you happen to have a passion for languages and translation – then this article is for you!…
Challenges in Malay to English translation
Translating is a very interesting, yet challenging process. Whatever the languages that translators are working with, they always bear the great responsibility of correctly transferring the exact meaning of words…
Hinglish – the rapidly spreading Indian phenomenon
As observed in many other countries, the English language is slowly altering the face of local languages due to its popularity and simplicity. While other nations merely add English loanwords…
Exploring Japanese loanwords in English
Loanwords are words adopted from another language and there is almost no language that doesn’t make use of such terms. However, when such words are “borrowed” they do not necessarily…
Translation mistakes uncovered: Chinese Part 1
In this century, translation has become a popular profession around the world, and one that plays a significant role in communication — which we can also consider to be an…
Cultural differences: saying “no” in India – how to read between the lines
In this blog, we’re often writing about cultural differences and peculiarities – habits some cultures have adopted that some of us cannot even imagine. Today we are going to go…