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Technically, the language spoken by the Aztecs is known as Nahuatl, and there are many variants of it. It’s the language Europeans heard in the 16th century, when they first arrived in the great city of Tenochtitlan (the site of today’s Mexico City). Nahuatl has been spoken for more than 1,000 years in Mexico, where […]

Even if you don’t know Hawaiian, you’ve probably heard the word ‘aloha’ and know it is used as both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. The Italian ‘ciao’ is similar. In Hindi, ‘kal’ can mean either yesterday or tomorrow, which probably goes a long way in explaining Indian attitudes towards deadlines. Such words with two opposite meanings are […]

Language and history often go hand in hand. The words we use – or don’t use – often contain fascinating stories within them that carry a good deal of meaning beyond the dictionary definition. Here are a few – feel free to add some of your own in the comments! 1. Ahimsa This Sanskrit word […]

Aniketh Khutia studies at DPS, Ruby Park, Kolkata. After participating in the Knowledge@Wharton High School Global Young Leaders Academy in the summer of 2016, he teamed up with a friend on the latter’s environmental initiative called Stopwatch. As a Member (Operations), he discusses how far the fledgling venture has come in just over a year, […]

By now, many Americanisms have crept into English around the world, thanks to pop culture and Microsoft Word. Perhaps you say ‘restroom’ for ‘toilet’. Or you may be one of those people who say ‘from left field’ even though they’ve never played baseball. And you probably know that a ‘cheeseburger’ is a mere shadow of […]

Fifteen-year-old Parthsarthi Suri is a student at the Emirates International School – Jumeirah, in Dubai, UAE. He participated in the Knowledge@Wharton High School Global Young Leaders Academy at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2017. Here’s what he had to say about the experience. I have often heard this famous quote […]

If you’re an English-speaking Indian, there are bound to be some words that you fully believe are English. And with good reason: they can be found in an English dictionary. But to someone from another English-speaking country, their peculiarly Indian usage can be a head-scratcher. And that’s the best-case scenario – in the worst case, […]

It is well known that the passive voice should be avoided. The question is, who does the well-knowing and the avoiding? The answer, of course, is you and me. But it’s not always that obvious. When to use the passive voice First, without getting bogged down in a yawn-inducing grammar lesson, let’s look at what […]

They don’t make buildings like they used to any more. No, really, they literally don’t. That’s why most of us have no idea what to call those little decorative thingies. You know, those fussy-looking thingummyjigs above the whatchamacallit. Problem is, unless we have a particular interest in historical architecture, we are unlikely to know the […]

I must admit, when I first signed up for the Knowledge@Wharton High School Global Young Leaders Academy (GYLA) at the University of Pennsylvania, I wasn’t expecting to make any serious, long-term connections with anybody there. Quite honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from the program. Given that GYLA is an international program, I knew […]