Category: Guest Post

Luck plays a huge role in Chinese culture, so there are so many ways to say “good luck” in Chinese! Of course, there’s the basic way to say it (I’ll introduce that first), but if you want to sound like a native, that’s not all you need to know! Chinese culture is so rich in…

Merhaba is the most common way to say “hello” in Turkish. But it’s far from being the only one. Depending on the context, you’ll also hear the more casual selam, the welcoming hoş geldiniz, or the morning-specific günaydın.As a native speaker, I’ve rounded up different ways to say hello, how to respond to hello in Turkish, and other common greeting words.…

“Flower” in Japanese is 花 (hana), and boy, does Japan have a lot of culturally significant flowers! You can see this in especially 生け花 (ikebana), or the Japanese art of flower arranging. In this article, I’ll introduce you to some interesting linguistic and cultural aspects of flowers in Japan and where to see them. I…

“Water” in French is Eau (pronounced /o/). Eau often goes with a definite or an indefinite article, so you’ll mostly see it as de l’eau, d’eau, or l’eau. It’s a useful word in many situations — whether you’re traveling in France, eating at a French restaurant, or renting a house from a French-speaking person! As a French graduate, here is my handy vocabulary…

The most common word for “friend” in French is ami. As with every other French noun, ami also has masculine and feminine forms — un ami is a male friend and une amie is a female friend. Similar to how “buddy,” “pal,” or “mate” also mean friend in English, French also has other words for friend. For example, for your male friends, you…

Imparfait is the French imperfect tense, and you’ll hear it often in daily life. It’s used for ongoing actions in the past, similar to the English past continuous tense, such as “I was doing,” “I was going,” and “I was studying.” But that’s not it — it can also mean “to be used to” depending on…

Le subjonctif, or the “French subjunctive” can be tricky. Is it a tense? Not really. Is it conjugated like the tenses? Yes, we can say so. But what is it? The most appropriate way to define the subjunctive would be that it’s a verb mood. It’s used to express some feelings, such as uncertainty, emotion, doubt,…

First things first: To sound fluent in Japanese, you’ll need to master Japanese sentence structure. Now, a language like Japanese might seem really difficult at first (especially to English speakers!), but don’t worry – it’s a very logical language! And I should know – I’ve been learning Japanese since I was an early teenager, lived…