Parasocial Takes the Crown: When Feeling Close to Taylor Swift Is All in Your Head

Ever found yourself emotionally invested in a celebrity, influencer or even your favourite chatbot – despite the fact that they’ve never even acknowledged you? That’s called a parasocial relationship…and it’s the fresh-out-of-the-box word that the Cambridge Dictionary has crowned its Word of the Year for 2025.

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Unraveling Word Origins: from Villain to Muscle

Speak Your Mind! 🎯 “Word Origins” by Dan Manolescu

The English language of today is living and growing. Whether it’s the power of the written word, or whether it’s the choice of the right adjective in an articulate speech, or whether it’s simply playing with the proper verbiage, the English vocabulary has a remarkable history. If we look at the origin of some English words, we may find surprising twists and turns that display the vivacity of a language in a continuous change and development. Here are some examples prompted by everyday questions:

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Language learning through thought, memory, imagination, and reading

The present article aims to estimate the value of language learning through a quick review of the learning process and with a focus on “accumulated knowledge” and “the ability to learn.” Following the opinions of researchers and linguists, we can also argue that the whole history of human culture – “of intelligence and morality, folly and superstition, ritual, language, and the arts” – is what makes us human.

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Interesting findings about lockdown language learning

Interesting findings about lockdown language learning Education Beyond Borders

VERBALISTS EDUCATION news – We keep you informed on your education journey!

30-SEP-2022 | Which languages were the most popular to learn in each country during the lockdown?

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Voices of vanishing worlds – endangered languages

Of the world’s 6,500 living languages, half will cease to be spoken by the end of this century. Most of these endangered languages are oral speech forms, with little if any traditional written literature. If undocumented, these tongues – each representing a unique insight into human cognition and its most powerful defining feature, language – risk disappearing without trace. READ MORE

How the changes in the landscape of global power and business have affected the importance of various languages

It used to be – and not that very long ago – that the list of most important languages in the world to know would have been quite small. French, English, Spanish, and German would have made the list, plus a handful of others depending on where in Europe and Asia one lived. Accordingly, these were the languages most in demand by students across the world looking to extend their linguistic repertoire beyond their mother tongue either for career or cultural/personal reasons. READ MORE

15 important Internet slang and SMS texting language terms that you should know

Love them or hate them, these are the newly created words and abbreviations on everyone’s lips, that is keyboards 🙂

Nowadays, our communication often happens online, so the Internet has developed almost its own language. This language is even more casual and has many abbreviations (shortenings of words and phrases). The English language on the Internet changes almost every day, as sayings, images and videos “go viral”.

Much of Internet slang is made up of abbreviations and shortenings, and some of the most commonly used Internet abbreviations are:

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Croatia will waste your time! – a well-executed PR move or time for the Croatian Tourism Association to hire a professional translator?

Croatia - waste of time

“Before you visit Croatia you should know… Croatia will waste your time” is the message in the promotional video created by the Croatian Tourism Association, depicting the country’s national parks. The same message has been published on the Croatia Full of Life Facebook page, which has over 100,000 followers. Many have commented on the improper use of the English language by the administrators and the potential detrimental effect it may have on the image of Croatian tourism. READ MORE

What are the weirdest languages of the real and fictional worlds?

Let’s zoom on the weirdest or most extraordinary languages of the real and fictional worlds. Discover the complexity of Yupik languages, the particularities of Caucasian Archi, spoken by only a thousand people, or dip into fantasy worlds through the Sindarin used by Elves or the Aklo of Lovecraft creatures.

A great way to travel from the upper to the lower worlds, via the two hemispheres of the real world! READ MORE