Do you know how it feels to handle 19 languages in one week? You might think it is a lot to manage, but in fact, it is AWESOME! Other than dealing with the language routine, we amuse ourselves with some of the interesting differences between languages.

Did you know that…

– translation of “Sincerely yours” in Russian depends on gender? How you translate it depends on who is signing it, man or woman.

– in many languages, including Polish, addressing someone depends on gender?
Szanowny Panie [for men]!  Szanowna Pani [for women]!  

– Finnish attaches case markings directly onto the noun? (“Facebookin” in Finnish for the possessive noun “Facebook’s” in English).

– Chinese likes to convert nouns in English to verb forms a lot? In Chinese, “renewal of company values” is commonly & easily switched to “renew company values.” (perhaps it is because a Chinese verb makes no difference between past, present, future, gender, singular and plural form!)

– in Portuguese, we do not repeat terms as much as in English? (variety=better style)

– written Spanish tends to use more synonyms than written English? For example, you can rotate between “compañía” and “empresa” as translations for “company.”

– in Turkish, indented paragraph alignment in a ‘written letter’ is a punctuation rule?

– Triqui, an indigenous language in Mexico, has three variations? Alto, Media, Bajo (high, middle, low) and they can’t understand each other.

Every language has its own intrigue and subtleties, and when comparing one language to another, these differences stand out. That is, their intrigue is magnified. This is one of the reasons we are drawn to working on so many languages simultaneously