Beyond Words - Language Blog
Recent Blog Posts
Five English Grammar Rules You Never Knew You Knew
December 12, 2018
“I’m terrible with grammar.” It’s a sentence that we’ve probably all heard, if not said ourselves, at some point in our lives. Run-on sentences, comma before a conjunction in a compound sentence, they’re vs. their vs. there, you’re vs. your, affect vs. effect, me vs. I, i.e. vs. e.g., the […]
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How to Unify Global Offices with Corporate Language Training
December 6, 2018
As businesses take advantage of technology that enables them to work with team members across the globe, good communication is not only key but essential. With the influx of worldwide team members, language barriers can create a problem. Business news from the Houston Chronicle points out “one of the biggest […]
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Voice-Overs and Dubbing: Home Studio vs. Professional Studio 2018
November 29, 2018
With the boom in podcasts and audio books, individuals and businesses alike are on the hunt for the best software for creating voiceovers and dubbing for their particular needs. In the old days, bulky and expensive audio equipment was needed to create a great sound. Today a computer, a mic, […]
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Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Language of Commercial “Holidays”
November 20, 2018
It’s officially holiday season. That’s right: Grey Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday are just around the corner, so be sure to get your tent set up in line, put your fighting gloves on for five a.m. door buster sales, and fill your wallet up with green. […]
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3 Most Common Suffixes in Medical Terminology
November 15, 2018
The world of medicine offers language lovers an uncanny look into our prevalent and inescapable Latin and Greek origins. While we hear and read the language of medicine on a daily basis, most of us seldom have the opportunity to examine the ancient history and etymological origins of these terms. […]
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Top U.S. Translation Schools: Certificate Programs
November 13, 2018
If you’re new to the translation and interpretation industry and not quite sure you want to make the full investment in a master’s degree yet, a certificate from a university may be right for you. Certificates come in all shapes and sizes, and narrowing down the list of choices can […]
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Is Japanese a Tonal Language?
November 8, 2018
When it comes to learning a new language, one difficulty for English speakers can be learning how tone impacts the meaning of words in some languages. Tonal languages are languages in which changing the pitch of a word can change the meaning of the word itself. For example, in Mandarin, […]
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Working It Out – Metaphors of “Work” in the English Language
November 2, 2018
In pretty much every language, you can find the most basic and obvious equivalent of the word work – as a noun, meaning ‘job’ or ’employment,’ and as a verb, meaning ‘to engage in physical or mental activity to achieve a purpose or result, usually in the workplace.’ In English, […]
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Dubbing Fails for Popular Hollywood Films (and one surprising hit)
October 30, 2018
Multilingual dubbing is a profitable business in the modern film market. As a result, many movies today are dubbed into as many as 30 or 40 different languages from around the world. This is especially true of many films from the United States, as they tend to be popular in […]
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Teaching American English Pronunciation to Japanese Students
October 26, 2018
One of my favorite moments from my time as an English teacher in Japan has got to be the “Japanese loanwords” lesson where I attempted to teach Japanese students how to properly pronounce Japanese words used in English. The students were both amused and bemused to learn that these words […]
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