Blog

Shona is a national language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and the official business language, English. There are also clusters of Shona in Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana. Nearly 80% of people in Zimbabwe speak the Bantu language of Shona, or chiShona, so this is definitely the language to learn if you are thinking of visiting that country! Despite movement to urban areas, the traditional Shona...

Don't be fooled by how similar the name of this language looks to Slovak. While they are both Slavic languages, they are quite mutually unintelligible. Whereas both languages derive the Slov in their names from Slav, Slovenian, or Slovene, is considered to be a South Slavic language along with languages such as Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian. Slovenians consider Slovene to be a langua...

Swahili is a hugely popular language in Africa, spoken by over 50 million people. The initial spread of the language across Africa is owed to the traders from the Arab region that carried the language as far west as Congo and North to Uganda. Later when the Germans colonized parts of Africa, they chose to use Swahili as the administrative language. The Tanganyika and the English standardized the l...

To learn Swedish is to understand the simplicity and beauty of its culture. It is undoubtedly through the export of its culture that Sweden has had its greatest impact upon the world. Drawing inspiration from the stunning beauty of the land itself, Its culture and traditions have maintained a vitality and a simplicity that are now appreciated all over the world. Sweden is also the third-largest mu...

Landlocked by its neighbors, Italy, Germany, France and Austria, Switzerland stands at the very heart of Europe. Three of the continent's major languages, German, French and Italian, are national languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh, spoken by a small minority. While it isn't false that German is spoken in Switzerland, it isn't exactly true either. The Swiss have their own pronunciation, t...

The story of Tagalog started when the beautiful islands of the Philippines were home to Indo-Malay and Chinese merchants, followed by seafaring Spanish explorers. Today it is the language of the second largest cultural-linguistic group in the Philippines, and its now official language Filipino is based on Tagalog. Did you know? The name Tagalog comes from the native term tagailog, meaning 'people ...

Learn Thai and enjoy a journey of beauty, from the graceful loops of its beautiful script to the musical lilt of its friendly language. You may not even realize if someone is telling you off in Thai because the smiles and tones convey a kinder sound than the meaning! From delicious Thai cuisine to it breathtaking mountains, rain-forests and beaches, the best reason to learn Thai is the reward of c...

Khmer is the official language of Cambodia, often called Cambodian, and is also spoken in southern Vietnam and northeast Thailand. The Khmer language uses its own alphabet, which is known in the language as Aksar Khmer, and looks pretty similar to Thai. Cambodian culture and tradition have had a rich varied history dating back many centuries. Over the years, the people of Cambodia developed a set ...

Luxembourgish is the national language of Luxembourg, whereas the languages of administration and official documents are German and French. This means that Luxembourgers are truly tri-lingual, which is pretty cool for people living in a triangle-shaped country! Just in case you were wondering, its three neighbors are Belgium, France and Germany. So it's not surprising that Luxembourgish has a lot ...

Lithuanian is considered as one of the oldest Indo-European languages, the great-granddad of the family! Although one of its closest relatives is Latvian, it also has strong family ties with ancient Sanskrit, and paternal influence from the Nordic and Germanic cultures. A truly multi-cultural family member! Although only just over 40,500 square miles (65,000 square kilometers) in size, Lithuania h...