Today’s blog comes from our fantastic competition winner Emma Wilberforce.

Yorkshire. God’s Own County. Those who live there love it. Those who visit love it too. It’s a great place to be but then again I’m probably biased, having been brought up there.

One of the things that continues to fascinate me about thearea, even more so as a Linguistics student, is the array of accents you hear across the county. Maybe because it is such a large county, divided into several regions, that there is plenty of room for variation. Someone from York doesn’t necessarily sound the same as someone from Leeds, despite being half an hour’s train ride apart.

University provides a great mixture of accents and dialects from all over the county as well as further afield but often not everyone understands what everybody else is saying…

My housemate is seeing a friend of mine who is from Wakefield in West Yorkshire and comes out with some particularly Yorkshire phrases, which my housemate sometimes finds it hard to get her head around. It made me wonder what it was that caused her to struggle to understand these interesting phrases. My first thought was that she’s not from Yorkshire, which may explain it, although having lived in York for the past three years I was determined that this wasn’t the only reason. The second explanation I came up with was that I have known him for longer and, ...

Our Welsh heritage, and the Welsh language translation services we have to offer are something we’re very proud of here at Veritas. Not only are we keen on preserving minority languages such as Welsh, but we’re also keen on promoting them. One of the most effective ways to promote a minority language is through pop culture, and one prominent Welsh-speaking actor is Ioan Gruffydd. Growing up in Llwydcoed, in the Welsh valleys, and beginning his career in Welsh language film production, he worked his way up the ranks to play roles in Hollywood blockbusters such as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in Titanic, and Mr Fantastic in the Fantastic Four series.

Despite leaving Wales for the bright lights of Hollywood, we’re thrilled to see that Ioan Gruffydd hasn’t left his Welsh roots behind. Here’s what he had to say about his Welsh-speaking background:

“The fact that I am bilingual is something I am extremely proud of. I’m one of a majority of young Europeans who can speak a second language. I speak two languages and this has given me access to two different cultures. It has also given me a wider perspective on the world.”

I couldn’t agree more with his sentiments that learning a language opens up windows to the world. In my opinion there is no better way to immerse yourself in a different culture than by speaking the language. Being multilingual stretches far further than learning the words; ...

The hyphen is dying. It’s a sad fact, but since the beginning of the 20th Century, grammar books and style guides have been discouraging the use of the hyphen and even the Oxford English Dictionary has predicted its imminent extinction. So who knows just how long we have left with the hyphen as part of our punctuation family? For the time being however, the hyphen still remains (alongside the semi-colon) a somewhat troublesome member of the family. It’s overused by some and underused by many, and this brief guide aims to give you some friendly pointers as to when the hyphen is necessary in a sentence, and when its presence is perhaps not so welcome.

The OED defines principal purpose of the hyphen as to connect parts of a compound word, or parts of a word which have been previously divided. Simple examples of these include compounds such as “daughter-in-law”, “strong-willed” and with numbers like “twenty-eight”. These examples are common, but often words which are in fact not compounds are joined by a hyphen, such as “divorce lawyer” or “dinner date”.

Another instance where you’re likely to find the hyphen is between phrasal adjectives. You’ll find phrasal adjectives before a noun with two or more words being used to modify it. For example, the phrases “my long-lost sister”, and “razor-sharp talons” both use hyphenated phrasal adjectives. The hyphen would be removed however, if the noun were to precede ...

This week out blog articles have covered a wide range of topics, but have mostly focused on language in the news. Here’s our weekly round-up of blog articles for you to take a look and let us know what you think!

MONDAY

Learning a Language Makes You Smarter

Agata takes a look at recent evidence showing that learning a language keeps your brain functioning at its full potential for longer!

TUESDAY

Andaman Dictionary Published: Minority Languages Preserved!

A look at the story behind the publication of the first dictionary of the rare and extinct group of Andamanese languages.

WEDNESDAY

How Far Would You Go To Save Your Language?

Elfie discusses the Saunders Lewis story and the methods he employed in preserving the Welsh Language.

THURSDAY

Language Translation in History: How it changed the world

An article on how translation has changed the course of history from bible translation to Harry Potter.

Today I’m proud to present the most recent blog from our blog contest winner Emma Wilberforce:

The UK is a great place to find inspiration for anything to do with language. There are so many people from all over the world and I challenge you to walk through a city and not hear more than one language spoken. Therefore, it is only natural that some people are more proficient in English than others. Getting to know people from other countries is just like making friends with anyone else and there is the added bonus that when you hear something you don’t expect in conversation, it makes a great talking point. Here’s a handpicked example from my own experience.

I was speaking to my friendfrom Germany the other day, talking about workload, when she came out with, “I was studying between the shelves in the library.” “Hang on, a second”, I said. “What did you just say?” Turns out it was a literal translation of the German phrase Ich sasszwischen den Regalen in der Bibliothek. It made me think what I would have said in her situation if I had been describing the location of where I was working in the library. Is ‘studying between the shelves’ an appropriate way of putting it? Or would we have to go the long way around and say “I was working at a table which was in between the bookshelves”? Unless it was vitally important ...