Willamette World News

We’ve asked out contributors to dig deep into their native language and let us
know about some of the most interesting aspects of their slang and changing expressions.
Here at the Language Learning Center, we’re taking this opportunity to tell you about our
personal favorite tool, WordChamp!
WordChamp is an online tool that allows you to browse the internet [...]

Some people say that German is a difficult language. In terms of grammar, it is definitely not one of the easiest languages to learn as a second language. If your mother tongue is English you will encounter a lot of similarities concerning vocabulary, though, since both languages are Germanic languages.

In 2001, in a Hong Kong comedy film *Shaolin Soccer*, Sing (Stephen Chow) tells Mui (Zhao Wei): “Go back to Mars, the Earth is so dangerous.” Since then, people who seem strange to local culture are often referred to as Martians and strange Internet slang words are often called Martian words.
*Martian language* has become [...]

Language is in constant movement and it changes according to the user’s needs or context. There are different factors that influence language including internet, television and the possibility to access many sources of information in a short amount of time has made language a subject of change and something that responds and adapts to various [...]

Argentina has a unique vocabulary of slang expressions that you won’t hear in any other country, except perhaps in neighboring Uruguay.
Below is a list of some of the most common slang expressions that I have heard used by locals in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There are some informal words, -slang words-, that we use far more than the “normal” or common words, like, for instance, the word “mec” (it means “guy”, but is perhaps more pejorative).

There are three sets of alphabets in Japanese: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Many nouns are written in Kanji, verbs and adjectives are written mostly in Kanji-Hiragana combination, particles and auxiliary verbs are in Hiragana, and words borrowed from foreign languages in Katakana.