CORPORATE ARTICLES

VAT Rates Applied in the Member States of the European Union

The European Commission has recently issued an official guide concerning the VAT rates applied in the Member States of the European Union as of 01 January 2015. The guide provides with the standard VAT rates applied in the EU Member States,…

LANGUAGE ARTICLES

FIVE LANGUAGE MYTHS BUSTED

Language myths are ideas which are widely believed to be true about certain languages or about the works of language in general, but which are actually not, in the view of most linguists. One example is the common belief that certain languages…

THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF PUNCTUATION

As readers and writers, we are intimately familiar with the dots, strokes and dashes that punctuate the written word. The comma, colon, semicolon and their siblings are integral parts of writing, pointing out grammatical structures and helping…

15 LINGUISTIC FOOD FACTS YOU WILL RELISH

An old Italian saying encourages us to speak the way we eat. The fifteen gastronomic fun facts below show that we do; copiously. Our everyday speech is jammed with food-related words and expressions, some of which are savourily obvious, while…

DIFFERENT CULTURES, LANGUAGES AND BACKGROUNDS – COMMON TASTES?

Food is a significant part of popular culture around the world, and beliefs, trends and practices define and change our eating habits. This type of popular culture is determined by ideas, habits, politics and objects created by a society, including…

DER, DIE, DAS – WAS IST DAS?

To begin with, articles are probably the most difficult thing about the German language. As in many related Indo-European languages, nouns in German have grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. But it is widely known that German…

IDIOMS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

This month our linguistic quest tackles expressions in different languages that contain demonyms, specifically names of peoples or nations, like Chinese whispers (‘inaccurately transmitted gossip’) in English, parler français comme une…

WHY DOGS GO WOOF-WOOF IN ENGLISH, GAV-GAV IN RUSSIAN AND WAOUH-WAOUH IN FRENCH

If you were curious, it is not dogs who are multilingual, but us. Perhaps the most important sense of humans, hearing, is vital for us to understand and communicate with the world around us. Therefore, in order to describe sounds surrounding…

DEUTSCH – WARUM NICHT?

German (German: Deutsche Sprache) is spoken by 100 million people (especially in Central Europe), and if we take into account those for whom it is a second language, this figure rises to 200 million, being the language with the largest number…

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