Malta’s Quiet Transformation Into Europe’s Fintech Island
An island of roughly half a million people has spent five years rebuilding its financial reputation. Whether that makes it Europe's fintech capital is a more interesting question than the brochures...
How Interpreters Shape Outcomes at the Highest Levels of Diplomacy
Salvador Ordorica writes on global business, travel, and culture, and is the founder of The Spanish Group, a translation and localization firm dedicated to bridging cultures worldwide. On December...
The Business Case for Learning a Dying Language
No one will ever build a financial model around Breton or Scots Gaelic. That's exactly why the evidence for learning one is worth reading carefully. If you are going to learn a language for...
Why Some Countries Still Argue Over Which Language Comes First
Quebec just held an election where language was on the ballot. Tamil Nadu turned a school circular into a campaign issue. Belgium still disputes a language border drawn in 1963. None of these are...
How Translation Quietly Shaped the European Union Itself
The first act the Council ever adopted wasn't about coal, steel, or tariffs. It was about which languages the new community would use. That order of operations says a great deal about what the Union...
The Last Speakers of Europe’s Smallest Living Languages
Livonian lost its last fluent native speaker in 2013. In 2020, a child was born who is reported to be a native speaker. The phrase "last speaker" sounds like an ending, and it turns out to be a far...
Why Corsican Still Isn’t Recognized by Paris
Paris does recognize Corsican — as part of France's heritage. What it won't do is make it an official language. The distance between those two words explains one of Europe's longest-running language...
How Yiddish Survived Without a Country of Its Own
Yiddish carried a complete cultural world for roughly a thousand years with no state, army, or territory behind it. Its survival after the Holocaust runs through a place few people expect:...
The Sami People and Europe’s Forgotten Arctic Language
There is no single Sami language. There are nine still spoken, ranging from about 25,000 speakers to two. The family contains every stage of language endangerment at once — and one of its smallest...
Why Catalan Refuses to Disappear
Catalan survived a dictatorship that banned it outright. Today, three in four of its speakers say they feel more comfortable in it — and more than half say they switch to Spanish anyway, "to avoid...