Brian Powers

How to Easily Type Foreign Language Characters Without Alt Codes

As globalization continues to bring people closer together, more and more of us find ourselves needing to type foreign language characters. Whether you’re learning a new language, communicating with international colleagues, or creating content that requires special characters, typing foreign letters can be a bit of a challenge for those who are not used to…
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Is Armenia in Europe or Asia?

Breaking away a little bit from our more traditional language-specific topics, I wanted to spend a bit of time discussing a very interesting and complicated corner of the world, and dig into where the borders are between Europe and Asia, particularly with regards to Armenia, and why it matters. I was inspired to do this…
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Boost Language Learning with Memrise Video Content

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a Memrise video might be worth a million. The language learning industry has come a long way in the past decade. The resources available have changed considerably since the days of rote recitation and that week your mom’s high school French class spent a week in Paris…
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The Greatest Insults Part I: The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

Perhaps my favorite bit of hate mail ever, the Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is actually the title of a famous painting showing the raucous drafting of a semi-legendary letter sent as a bold response to a demand for military surrender.

10 Tips for Earning an Income with Your Foreign Language Skills

It is the dream of language lovers and others of our ilk to forge careers or even just earn extra money with foreign language skills. For some of us, this works out just fine, but for others it can be a bit more of a struggle. Language skills are in super high demand, and young…
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Why Did Rich Renaissance People Have Latin Names?

We’re all familiar with the greats of antiquity and their Greco-Roman names. Your Maximuses and your Augustuses and countless others whose names litter our high school history texts with dates we can hardly remember. During the 15th and 16th centuries, rich, fancy Renaissance Europeans used some strange naming conventions. Foregoing their family names, it was…
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