• If you are a foregner traveling to Bavaria, in Southern Germany, and you have a good ear for languages, you might notice that other than German something else is spoken there which you might not be able to place. It is Bavarian, also known as Austro-Bavarian, Boarisch, or Bairisch. Other than Bavaria, it is spoken in ...

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  • As a lover of the Germanic languages and having had the chance to learn some German and Swedish, I've always been curious about Icelandic, the language of the North Atlandic island discovered and populated in the 7th century by Norsemen from different points of Scandinavia, most notably Flóki Vilgerðarson, one of the main characters of ...

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  • How much do you really need to say to put a sentence together? Just as fish presumably don’t know they’re wet, many English speakers don’t know that the way their language works is just one of endless ways it could have come out. It’s easy to think that what one’s native language puts words to, ...

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  • What does it take for a middle-class, self made moviemaker to become a billionaire and rank #107 in the Forbes list 400? Talent - of course; lots of luck to be in the right place at the right time - probably; insight or vision to tell what people want to read, or see, or listen to - yeah, that ...

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  • Since it was first published, in 1957, The Lord of the Rings has given a solid stream of income for author J.R.R. Tokien and his heirs. And when Peter Jackson fulfilled his life-long dream to see a filmed version of the cult novel and rocked the box office with over USD 3 billion, the books sales saw a ...

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  • Across America, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear the use of the Southern contraction “Y’all,” a linguistic fusion of the words “you” and “all.” It may be partly because of the spread of Southern influence nationwide, but it also fills an important need in the English language, said Southern linguist Thomas Nunnally. “It’s being adopted ...

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  • The first "regulator" in history was created in Barcelona in 1401. That year, a bank of exchange and of common and safe deposit was established under the authority of the municipal magistracy, that ended up working as a de facto regulator of commerce and bankers. The Casa de canvi ("house of exchange" in Catalan) was the ...

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  • Many people think that we linguists speak lots of languages. While this is not usually true, it is a fact that we are curious about all of them - that is certainly my case. I took up Hebrew a while ago when I was a student at the University of Barcelona. This was my fisrt contact with a ...

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  • Yesterday in the Northern hemisphere we waved so long to winter and welcomed spring. at least in countries using the astronomical and solar reckoning, because in others countries, like Sweden, the beginning of spring is defined as the first occasion when the average daytime temperature exceeds zero degrees for seven consecutive days, so typically spring ...

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