Nobody’s perfect. Everybody misspells a word, makes typos, or some other mistake when writing I like to think that I have a decent grasp on the English language but, as any longtime Tofugu reader knows that despite my best efforts, I still make a ton of typos, weird grammatical errors, and even leave some sentences [...]
For some reason, imitating other languages really intrigues me. There’s just something about being able to mimic a language you don’t actually know while still getting enough right to make other people understand what they’re going for that’s incredibly cool to me. Whether it’s a bunch of Italians singing a gibberish song meant to sound [...]
At the end of the year, lots of different organizations give their picks for words of the year. These words of the year are based on events and trends throughout the year, so in past years words like “metrosexual,” “bailout,” and “occupy” have made the list. This happens in Japanese, too. Every year, Japanese publisher [...]
The way advertisers are able to target you on the internet is both really cool and kind of annoying. I heard about one of my favorite bands coming to my city through an online ad, but after writing a post for Tofugu about Hawai’i, I saw ads for longboard accessories for months afterwards, despite that [...]
In some parts of the world, language seems as tightly regulated as medicine — the government decides which words are and aren’t allowed. As I mentioned in an earlier post, in Israel there is Academy of the Hebrew Language that regulates Hebrew. It makes sure that new words and concepts stay true to the cultural [...]
A lot of people misunderstand Japan and think that it’s this place where everybody acts the same, does the same things, and all speak the language. While Japan is no India (which has over 20 recognized languages), there’s more to the language than just regular ol’ Japanese. As I saw on Reddit earlier this week, [...]
