When you first start learning a language, you’ll be confronted by a huge amount of vocabulary. Learning the names of all the different things you’ll encounter is worthwhile, but when you’re running around in a different country, sometimes you’ll encounter something you don’t remember the noun for. Fortunately, there’s something that can save you: adjectives! Learning the most common adjectives in Spanish will help you distinguish between things or refer to things when the name is right on the tip of your tongue. Here’s a quick guide to some of the most important Spanish adjectives, which shou ..read more

In 1954, a Norristown, Pennsylvania, eighth grader clinched victory with the word “transept’”at the 27th Scripps Spelling Bee Championships (held that year in Washington, D.C.). On the 70th anniversary of his win, William Cashore granted us an exclusive interview, sharing the secrets behind his success (including how multilingualism played a part), previously unseen photos and memories of his victory tour, which included meetings with American TV host Ed Sullivan and U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon. He also revealed how he spent his prize money. Today, William lives in Rhode Island and is a ..read more

Metaphors are those linguistic gems that draw connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, painting vivid pictures in our minds. They’re also one of the most common forms of rhetorical device. But what exactly are they, and why should you care? Let’s dive into the captivating world of figurative language and unlock the power of metaphors! What Is A Metaphor? A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly compares two things without using the words “like” or “as.” For example, when Shakespeare famously said, “All the world’s a stage,” he metaphorically equated life to a theatrical perform ..read more

Moving abroad is a huge step — something unimaginable for many people. For those who take on the challenge, it’s a lot of work. Before leaving your home there’s a long list of things to take care of, and quite a few tasks await you in your new country as well. To make the work a bit easier, we’ve put together a moving abroad checklist with the different items to remember as you move to your new country. Of course, we don’t know the specific country you’re moving to and the way of life there, so this list isn’t definitive. We suggest that you also check with the official authorities in the cou ..read more

By now, it’s become clear that podcasts aren’t a fad that will start to disappear. If anything, there are now too many podcasts to choose from. In this article, we give you an overview of some of the best Spanish podcasts for people learning the language. Some of them are targeted specifically at Spanish students, and others are simply really engaging podcasts that happen to be in Spanish. Either way, you should definitely consider adding these Spanish podcasts to your playlist! The Best Spanish Podcasts For Learning A–Zero To A–Hero (Beginner) Our first Spanish podcast comes from Babbe ..read more

A Brief History Of Perfume Making Perfumes have been enchanting us for thousands of years. According to hieroglyphics found in Egyptian tombs, perfumes have been made as far back as 3000 BCE. Priests and pharaohs were buried with fragrances, as a way of connecting humans with the gods. Jasmine, frankincense, myrrh, cypress grass, wine, honey, raisins and juniper were among the most prized ingredients of the time. They were pounded together and burned to please the gods as well as preserve a harmonious balance between the body and the soul. The art of perfume making was later refined by the An ..read more

Join us as we sit down with Qayyuum, a Backend Engineer who became part of Babbel’s Cheshire Cat team in May 2023. Back in February, Qayyuum took the stage at Babbel’s Monthly Commit, our in-house engineering talk show, to share insights into his onboarding experience. Recognizing the value in his story, we decided it would be great to bring this narrative to a wider audience through an interview. In our conversation, we’ll delve into the details of his onboarding journey — from the team lunches that fostered initial bonds to the buddy system that provided essential support as he navigated hi ..read more

English has five vowels, right? A, E, I, O and U. Sometimes we count Y, too — so maybe six? While this might be true about the written language, it’s not the case for spoken English. There are many more distinct English vowel sounds (or phonemes) that can make the difference between otherwise similar words. Exactly how many vowel phonemes English has depends on which variety of the language we’re talking about. In this article, we’ll use Standard Southern British English and General American English as our reference accents. Other English accents will have a slightly different number of ..read more

The AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) CLI is a developer tool that makes it easier to develop and deploy serverless applications on the AWS cloud. It comes in handy when starting a project from scratch since it contains a wide selection of templates in multiple programming languages, which can be used as a starting point. This saves a lot of initial setup time required to write the boilerplate code for an application. The Breakpoint Problem There is an issue with the Typescript templates generated using SAM CLI. Due to a bug in the latest version of the CLI, as of April 2024, there is a ..read more

Prepositions are a notoriously difficult part of learning a new language. They often don’t translate easily from one language to another, and so each preposition has its own set of rules. If you’re learning Spanish, nowhere is this more obvious than with por and para. If you put them both into a translation tool, you’ll probably get the same result for both of them: “for.” But it’s a little more complicated than that. Here, we’ll break down the differences between these two words, with plenty of examples to guide you through. We won’t lie, it’ll take some time for you to get used to putting t ..read more