From the famous and formal greeting to "rolling a shovel", here is everything you need to know about the language and culture of kissing in France

In our lessons this week we talked a lot about narrowboats, or rather I self-indulgently talked about mine, and my recent little adventure up the Kennet and Avon canal! This led naturally onto the introduction of some nice new vocabulary…

Some German place names have become synonymous with certain things, often foods. How many of these did you know about?

Are there really more words in the English language of Hawaiian origin than Welsh? It's arguable, but the word examples might be interesting

Collective nouns are quaint and expressive, often bizarre. Here's an overview of how they originated and how they are used in modern English

The Académie Française has published a new dictionary. Here are a few selected highlights of new French words

These verbs can cause confusion because they both mean “to know”. However...

Camping, campaign, champagne, and champignons all derive from the same etymological place, but it doesn’t stop there...

How to order your language-learning folder. A few basic tips on getting yourself more organised and becoming more effective

Luxembourg has a brilliant national motto. Those of most other countries are pretty dull, but there are some interesting things to learn

Metathesis is the evolution of words, where letters change places. For example: crocodile becomes cocodrilo in Spanish

The French h: The letter that cannot decide whether to act like a vowel or a consonant. The difference between the h apsiré and the h muet

The ancient game of chess offers a fascinating array of word origin stories. This post barely scratches the surface

Peppering your speech with idiomatic phrases is "next level". Here are some quirky phrases that are good to recognise, maybe even use

Do you know the difference between "What are you doing?" and "What do you do?" This is a guide: present simple vs present continuous tense

Learning Polish is not easy, but is extremely rewarding when you get it right. And it's informative for teacher to be on the receiving end

If you're learning a language, you might want to know how to measure your progress, and what you are aspiring to. What is "proficiency"?

Learn the etymology behind some animal words. Some are surprising, at least one can be debunked and a couple stump even the experts

English is a Germanic language, right? Yes, but... it's more complicated than that. Read a brief summary of the origins of English

Singing carols, eating turkey and mince pies, decorating the tree with tinsel... Where do these words come from? Find out here