It's a bit more complex than it seems at first sight.

November 2022

My son is learning how to write the letter A. His own teacher learnt how to write it around thirty years ago. His teacher’s teacher learnt the same…

October 2022

It is quite illuminating to see a theatre play in a language we don’t understand. We become quite aware of what is lost without translation.
Hi! While I’m working on a new article for Language Travels, I invite you to read this one from last year. Thanks so much! See you soon, Marco…

September 2022

Between Northern Portugal and Galicia, there was once a territory controlled by neither Portugal nor Spain. I’m talking about Couto Misto, which existed…
If you ever visit Galicia, you’ll find there are two official languages there: Galician and Spanish. For an English speaker, it may be difficult to…

August 2022

One way to travel through languages is to take a word and pull the thread. Let's try it with port wine...
In the third and final part of the article, we compare language to clay.
In this second part of the article, there's a lot of talk about Basque — and Greek. I also ask: When does a language become another language?
Was Irish invented in the twentieth century? Did Galician emerge in the nineteenth century? Of course not, but some say so.
Answering this question helps us to understand the value of translation.

July 2022

Let us imagine what it would have been like to travel from Lisbon to the Pyrenees 700 years ago.