Heather Broster
Heather is a graduate in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario and an aspiring polyglot. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction. When she isn’t studying languages, she enjoys the great outdoors, exercising and spending time with her young son.
The European Spanish word for computer is ordenador. It was taken directly from the French word ordinateur, which in turn was coined in 1955 by the French branch of IBM. It is said that François Girard, the head of the advertising department at IBM France, felt that the English word computer was too similar to …
When we watch our favourite actors on the big screen, we seldom think about their linguistic abilities. However, many celebrities are bilingual or even multilingual, with several speaking Spanish fluently or at an impressive level. In this article, we introduce twelve famous actors who have skilfully mastered Spanish as a second language. Some chose to …
One of the most widely consumed foods in the word is rice, known as arroz in Spanish. Interestingly, Spain accounts for nearly 30% of rice production in the EU, only second to Italy! Latin American Pronunciation European Pronunciation The word arroz is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic الرَّوْز (ar-rawz), which ultimately comes from Arabic أَرُزّ (ʔaruzz, …
The Spanish word for animal should be incredibly easy for English speakers to remember as it is spelled in exactly the same way (albeit with a slightly different pronunciation)! Latin American Pronunciation European Pronunciation As in English, the Spanish animal can act as both a noun, describing the living things themselves, or an adjective, denoting …
If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it would probably be cheese, known as queso in Spanish. Queso derives from the Old Spanish queso, which in turn comes from the Latin cāseus. Latin American pronunciation European pronunciation Queso is a masculine noun, so it takes the following definite and indefinite articles: ¡Podría comer queso …
What is one cooking ingredient that make even the blandest of dishes taste delicious? Why, salt, of course! Salt translates to sal in Spanish and both words can be traced back to the Latin sal (genitive salis) of the same meaning. Latin American Pronunciation European Pronunciation Because it is a feminine noun, it takes the …