How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes many words borrowed or adapted from French, a vestige of colonialism. For example, the Vietnamese word for “train station,” ga, comes...
In Greek myth, the sirens were women with the bodies of birds whose song was so alluring that it enticed men to their death. In the early 19th century, French engineer and physicist Charles Cagniard de la Tour built a device that sent blasts of air...
The word curfew comes from a French expression that means “cover your fire” and goes all the way back to a similar phrase in Latin. This is part of a complete episode.
The Portuguese idiom virar a noite refers to doing something all night, such as studying or dancing. Literally, virar a noite means “to turn over the night.” In French a sleepless night is a nuit blanche, or “white night.”...
There was a time when William Shakespeare was just another little seven-year-old in school. Classes in his day were demanding — and all in Latin. A new book argues that this rigorous curriculum actually nurtured the creativity that later flourished...