The Language Learning Specialists
Check out this quick guide to tennis terminology and where it comes from. (Answer: mostly French!) According to some experts, love in tennis may come from the French word for egg, l’oeuf, because an egg looks like a zero. Others insist it’s so named because the game is being played for love ie without … Read more
Valentine’s day – a day for declaring your love in any way you can. But love can often be more tortured than a simple declaration. As Alfred de Musset said in his book “On ne badine pas avec l’amour”: “We are often deceived in love, often wounded and often miserable; but we love, and when … Read more
7000 languages, 7 billion people – one museum’s answer The word of God, children’s novels, recipes, drunken talk, rumours or political promises: everything is about speaking. It’s estimated that there are 7000 spoken languages in the world and a billion different ways to say all those things. This uninterrupted discussion among people of generations started … Read more
uTalk has launched 10 free language quizzes on popular game-based learning platform Kahoot. The fun and addictive quizzes are based on the free Starter Words in our utalk.com/app and covers core languages in the curriculum (list). There’s even a Learn English from Spanish quiz specially designed for the US where Spanish is the second language. The quizzes were … Read more
Organisers of the uTalk Junior Language Challenge have announced the launch of the Laetitia Collender Memorial Fund, a special bursary set up in memory of a popular teacher from Putney in West London who was a passionate supporter of the national language competition. The Junior Language Challenge (JLC) is an annual competition for primary school … Read more
So you think you can’t speak French? You may not realise it but if you’re an English speaker, you probably know more French than you think. Just take a look… Biscuit A common snack or treat in the UK and the US, there are so many options to choose from. But did you know that … Read more
In the spirit of ‘Linguists Anonymous’, I am Felicity Jones, 45, and I am mildly addicted to learning other languages. I speak French, German, Spanish, Italian and some Mandarin. I have used uTalk to learn some Danish, and my January challenge is Greek. Even as a child I would listen under the bed cover to … Read more
Lucy was our first ever winner of the Junior Language Challenge and at age 23 has now chosen to take part in the uTalk Challenge learning Russian. Lucy already speaks Spanish, French, Italian, German and Latin and has been learning languages since she was 10 years old. Why? Why not? I was talking to some … Read more
Sarah Barrett from Lingotastic runs language classes for children and families, using music, crafts, puppets and bubbles – it sounds so much fun we might have to go and check it out ourselves! Here’s Sarah’s language story… On my first visit to Germany to visit my husband Maik’s parents, I had a few language misunderstandings. One … Read more
What’s your inspiration for learning a language? Today we’re hearing from Jack, a student and blogger at LangLearningBlog, on how he got addicted… What inspired you to start learning French? I never really was fond of languages, and I only studied French at school for a GCSE in a language – but bear with me! Soon I became almost addicted … Read more