Vocabulary

While ciao is the most famous Italian greeting in the world, there are tricky situations where you can’t use it on its own. For instance, try saying it to your Airbnb host’s grandmother, a hotel receptionist, or a shopkeeper you’ve never met, and you’re going to

Germany just broke its all-time tourism record, welcoming more international visitors than ever before and cementing its place as one of the most visited countries in the world. If you’re planning a trip or already packing your bags, knowing how to greet people in German will make the experience

Most language courses hand you bonjour and au revoir, pat you on the back, and call it a day. And look, bonjour will keep you from being completely ignored in a boulangerie. But if you've ever watched a French TV show and heard people say things like ça

You probably already know feliz cumpleaños. What you might not know is how to personalize it, when to use the short version (feliz cumple), which birthday song Mexicans actually sing, or how to write a birthday card that doesn’t sound like it came from a phrasebook. The good news?

If you have ever heard Vanessa Paradis sing or caught a line of dialogue from a romantic French film and felt something before you understood anything, that is the French language doing what it does best. French words carry a music inside them that makes even ordinary sentences feel like

Most Spanish classes hand you a list, make you repeat it a few times, and move on. And for a while, that works fine...until a native speaker asks "¿Nos vemos el jueves?" and your brain goes completely blank trying to figure out which one jueves is. The

If you are studying Japanese from scratch, one of the most useful building blocks you can start with is Japanese months. Unlike English, which uses names derived from Roman gods and emperors (January from Janus, March from Mars), Japanese takes a much more logical, number-based approach. To fill gaps in

If you've been learning Japanese, you already know basic numbers. But knowing numbers isn't enough! In fact, Japanese requires you to attach a counter word to every number based on what you're counting. Three cats, three books, and three sheets of paper each use

The Complete Guide to How Japanese People Actually Talk Online