Have you ever heard of Jèrriais? As a provider of language translation, we are always interested in rare languages, and I hope that those who haven’t heard of this language before find the blog informative.

Jèrriais is the form of the Norman langage spoken in Jersey, the British Crown Dependency located just off the coast of France. It is referred to by some as ‘Jersey French’, but in order to avoid any confusion between Jèrriais and the administrative language Jersey Legal French, some prefer to call it ‘Jersey Norman’.

The language closely resembles standard French, but with some key differences in phonology, orthography, vocabulary and word order. For example, the sounds ‘tch’ and ‘dg’, which are not used in French, are used in Jèrriais, as are such letter combinations as ‘ouo’ and ‘aithe’. Adjectives can also precede nouns in Jèrriais, in contrast to French grammar norms.

Even though a study by Cambridge University last year warned that the language was set to die out completely, around 3000 people still speak Jèrriais, and the community is keen to keep its language alive. In this spirit, here are a few useful phrases for if you find yourself in Jersey:

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The Chinese language is widely known as one of the hardest languages to translate.

Language translation into Chinese requires extensive experience and the capacity to solve the important challenges that translators face when translating Chinese documents. One of the most significant ones is that the Chinese language encompasses many different dialects, which obviously influence word choices and meanings, and should be taken into consideration during translation work.

Before we continue, it is necessary to be aware of the distinction in Chinese between the written language (文, Pinyin: wén) and spoken language (语/語 yǔ).

There are many spoken dialects which are not mutually intelligible, so a person who speaks one Chinese dialect may not be able to communicate verbally with someone speaking a different Chinese dialect. Written Chinese, however, is standardised and therefore universally understood, regardless of the dialect spoken. There is an important distinction to be made however, when it comes to writing Chinese too. We will look at this later.

This difference between the spoken and written words in a language, by the way, is referred to as diglossia, and happens in Chinese and Arabic languages.

Among the most widely spoken Chinese variants, Mandarin is the largest spoken language in China, spoken by about 836 million people in mainland China. Cantonese is spoken by approximately 71 million people, Wu is spoken by around 77 million people, and Min (including Taiwanese) is spoken by about 60 million ...

It has finally been confirmed that learning a language does in fact increase your intelligence. According to recent statistics by academics from Newcastle and York universities, the knowledge of a second language helps to train our brain, changing the way we think and perceive things. Following extensive research, Professor Vivian Cook and Dr Benedetta Bassetti have come to the conclusion that knowing a second language and having an understanding of language translation not only improves the knowledge of our mother tongue, but also frees our minds from linguistic constraints which make us see the word in a certain way.

Learning a new language allows us to embrace new concepts that are not represented in our native language. A British individual may have a completely different answer to an Italian speaker when asked what they think of ‘lunch’, to whom it would mean a pasta dish followed by a meat or vegetables. The same goes for our knowledge of colours. In English there are two main shades of blue – dark blue and light blue, whereas to a Polish speaker these two shades are completely different colours, ‘niebieski’ (light blue) and ‘granatowy’ (dark blue). Therefore, when learning Polish, the speaker must be aware of these differences and apply them accordingly.

This view of different aspects in each language has been linked to the theory that bilinguals keep both concepts in mind, which leads them ...

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 ...

Sometimes it happens that two people of this global community, with different native languages and cultural backgrounds, fall in love and decide to live together or get married. Although bi-cultural couples (also called cross-cultural or intercultural couples) have always existed, they have now become one of the world’s biggest social trends.

The reasons for this rise are related to technological and social progress, and include the increased availability of holidays or study trips abroad, and migration abroad for work, which have all definitely made it easier for people to meet people from other countries.
Summing up, international marriages reflect—and result from—globalisation and cultural integration around the world.

I can think of plenty of advantages enjoyed by international couples: their children will often be fluent in more than one language; there will be more celebrations to enjoy throughout the year; and of course, what better reason to learn a language than love!

This is how the actor Colin Firth, whose wife is Italian, sees the matter: “Well, it’s wonderful to have an excuse to learn a language. My wife’s English is better than my Italian will ever be. But, if you’re going to live your life with someone you should, as a mark of respect, try to learn their way of conceptualising things”.

There are plenty of other examples of famous international marriages, such us the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian-born Carla Bruni, Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel (from ...