Working in IT? 👩🏻💻 Would you call yourself an IT-ian, Hitechist or Startupist? These are literal translations of actual terms used to describe people working in IT. In Bosnian 🇧🇦, Croatian 🇭🇷, Montenegrin 🇲🇪 and Serbian 🇷🇸, people working in IT are known as “IT-jevac” (m), “IT-jevka” (f) and “IT-jevci” (p). Of course “IT” is […]
Back from a week researching around Montenegro 🇲🇪, Bosnia and Herzegovina 🇧🇦 and Croatia 🇭🇷 with a writer friend of mine. An amazing time! 🚗 ✈️ For anyone working with languages, trips to “territory” (where those languages are spoken) are valuable for language maintenance and seeing and hearing what’s on trend linguistically, particularly slang. There’s […]
It’s all about being friendly when driving out in “woop woop” (the middle of nowhere) 🤗 Driving across a lot of Australia 🇦🇺 involves traversing not just hundreds but thousands of kilometres of roads in near-empty deserts. This huge part of Australia is known as ‘the Outback’ because, you know, it’s out back there. Once […]
Feta, prosecco, parmesan, mozzarella (di bufala campana), champagne…Would you believe that the names of all these famous products are the cause for the deadlock in the free-trade agreement negotiations between the EU 🇪🇺 and Australia 🇦🇺. How come? 👉 All these product names (and more) are protected designation of origin (PDO) terms in the European […]
Did you know that Tina Turner has been one of the biggest contributors to Australian culture? 🦘 Honestly, her impact has been huge! Here’s how… Go to any Australian wedding or social event and you’re bound to hear the rock guitars that herald Tina Turner’s 1973 hit Nutbush City Limits. The long intro provides enough […]
Surprising as it may be, I was once a child, but one who happened to grow up in a multilingual environment but dominated by English. That I actually ended up having a career using my languages from childhood did not come easily. I had to overcome some major hurdles 🚧 in the form of widely-accepted […]
Are you a fan of the cult TV comedy show The Office?🕺And which version: the UK one 🇬🇧? The US one 🇺🇸? The French one 🇫🇷? The Indian one 🇮🇳 or any of the other 13 variants made? 📣 News in is that an Australian 🇦🇺 version of The Office will be hitting our screens […]
Today (Monday), 29 May 2023 is a “bank holiday” in the United Kingdom, our third this month! 📆Now this term “bank holiday” often confuses many people not from the UK or Ireland. Does this mean that it’s a holiday for banks only? 🧐 Absolutely not! “Bank holidays” in the UK and Ireland are what are […]
Did you know that Tina Turner has been one of the biggest contributors to Australian culture? 🦘 Honestly, her impact has been huge! Here’s how… Go to any Australian wedding 💍 or social event 🎉 and you’re bound to hear the rock guitars 🎸 that herald Tina Turner’s 1973 hit Nutbush City Limits. The long […]
Last Saturday Australian 🇦🇺 🎭 comedy legend Barry Humphries passed away aged 89. You might know Humphries better as Dame Edna Everage 👓🌺, the vicious-tongued housewife-turn-international gigastar from the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds (yes, such a place does exist). What is less acknowledged is that as one of Australia’s most widely known cultural exports, […]
