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When I tell people I work at aiaTranslations, complete strangers excitedly ask me what languages I speak fluently. I usually mumble something about knowing a little French and German, languages I have studied in the past. Typically, they all lower their gaze as if ashamed for me. I can speak English fluently, solve difficult Sudoku puzzle in record time, hold my own while watching Jeopardy, skillfully mimic foreign accents, and yet I am woefully inept at speaking another lang

The holidays are almost here, and the phrase “Merry Christmas!” – or “Happy Christmas!” if you live in the UK – is in the air.  I’ve always taken it for granted that these were how the greeting went in each place. But this year, I started to wonder exactly why.  What’s the difference between “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Christmas”?  I thought my research into this would be brief, but it turns out that the word “merry” has a side you may not know about…. It’s a phenomenon that

My name is Alysa, and I’m addicted to the website Buzzfeed.  If you are, too, I’m not judging you.  But sometimes other people are.  Little do they know, though, that as we’re doing silly quizzes and perusing lists of weird news stories from Florida, we may also be witnessing linguistic history. While Buzzfeed’s success has increased exponentially in the past few years, its founders haven’t decided to rest on their laurels.  A few months ago, they introduced Spanish, French,

What’s the best way to learn a new language? With a martini of course. Learning a lovely little bit of Italian, you may struggle in class until a night out with a bottle of Chianti and suddenly you’ve gone native.  Should you reach for a bottle before each language lesson? Alcohol lowers our affective filter, dropping worries and lowering inhibitions.  As confidence soars, we are unconcerned about grammatical rules or mistakes, relaxing our spoken communication (sometimes a l