Senior writer covering language, culture, and the people who carry both across borders.
Senior Writer
Senior writer covering language, culture, and the people who carry both across borders.
About
ernadine Racoma is a senior writer at Day Translations covering language, culture, and the small everyday acts of translation that make global life work. Her features lean toward the human side of the industry — the lives of interpreters, linguists, and the communities they serve.
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English is a fun language. Words are spelled in interesting ways and sentences look as if they do not make sense but they do. English is also a challenging language to learn. Native speakers do not realize this but the many quirks of the language…
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Linguists, translators, and engineers writing on language, culture, and the craft of being understood.
Portuguese. It’s one of the romance languages and is the official language in Brazil and in Portugal, Mozambique, Macau, Cape Verde, Angola, East Timor, São Tomé and Principe and Guinea-Bissau. In Equatorial Guinea, East Timor and Macau, Portuguese is one of their official languages. It…
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.” – Peter Drucker Every expert in the field of effective communication says that it pays to listen more in both personal and business interactions. Oftentimes it is difficult enough to hear what’s…
Chamu Krishna Shastry of Bangalore wants to bring Sanskrit back and he’s been trying for more than 30 years. Thirty-two years to be exact. He wants to resurrect Sanskrit and knows that it is not easy but he believes that “Sanskrit is the basis for…
Japanese is a language that is believed to be related to the Altaic language family in which Mongolian, Turkish and other languages belong. Nevertheless it is also similar to Polynesian and other Austronesian languages. In Japanese, the language is called Nihongo. One of the most…
Among English speaking people, saying that German, also known as Deutsch, is a difficult language to learn is a rather common sentiment. The words are not only difficult to pronounce, there are compound words, and there are three grammatical genders, to name a few of what…
The lambada is a sexy dance, true, but contrary to the “dirty” image shown by some Hollywood films, it is a fast-paced, wholesome and graceful social dance. There is no malice in its movements. It is an expression of artistry, enjoyment of life, of freedom. …
A few months ago a team of 30 Russian scientists led by Dmitry Itskov, a Russian billionaire and founder of the “2045 Initiative,” announced that they have laid out the plan for their project that envisions living forever – or humans being immortals. The project aims…
May the Fourth Be with You! Millions of fans all over the world, or perhaps, the galaxy, prepare to celebrate what they consider to be Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you is a clever wordplay or translation from the movie’s famous line May…
In Sanskrit, the name Sri Lanka means “Venerable Island.” The name comes from the words sri, meaning venerable, and lanka, which means island. The island nation is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, though it is in close proximity to India and Maldives. Sri Lanka is…
Spanish. One of the romance languages. A language spoken by roughly 406 million native speakers; with 60 million people speaking it as their second language and around 20 million more studying it as a foreign language. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the…
Annyeonghaseyo! This is the basic greeting that you are bound to hear when you meet a Korean national. This is a formal greeting that is applicable to everyone, particularly for people that you have just met and for elders. The informal greeting is a shortened…
