The Language Learning Specialists
Hello, goodbye, yes, no, please, thank you – and ‘can I have a glass of wine, please?’ You may well wonder what connects the words and phrase above. It’s quite simple: for me, these are the bare essentials of foreign language knowledge when visiting another country. You may of course prefer beer or water, but … Read more
Interview with Alexandra Turner – translator, writer, editor Alex left her London life a few months ago to go and travel around the world. She is passionate about culture and languages and has traveled to 26 countries up to now. At the moment she lives in Stockholm, Sweden (and we deeply envy her for that). EuroTalk: What … Read more
Happy World Egg Day! English is quite a boring language when it comes to eggs. We boil them, scramble them, poach them, fry them. All very ordinary. Which is why we were delighted to discover that other languages are more dramatic in their approach to eggs! Over to Italy: For Italians, poached eggs are literally ‘eggs … Read more
After seeing how amazing our Junior Language Challenge semi-finalists were at learning Mandarin, we’ve set our 33 finalists the new challenge of learning… Arabic. Over 250 million people speak Arabic, across 22 countries. There are a number of different dialects within Arabic, including Moroccan, Classical, Lebanese, Gulf and Egyptian. Modern Standard Arabic is understood across the Arab … Read more
I recently came back from a week long vacation in my home country, Romania. While there, I noticed something very interesting that I’m sure you’ll find as fascinating as I did. I’ve been living in London for more than two years now and on a daily basis I only speak English. Well, I am currently … Read more
The following post is from Paul, an English teacher who lives in Argentina. Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language teaching service which offers foreign-language level tests as well as other free language-learning resources on their website. Check out their Facebook page or send an email to paul@languagetrainers.com for more information. If you … Read more
So apparently a quarter of Brits are nervous about speaking another language when they’re abroad, and 40% of us are embarrassed by our language skills. These conclusions come from a study by the British Council, which surveyed 2,000 British adults. While 67% of respondents believed it’s important to learn a few words of the local language … Read more
Everyone knows the key to language learning is immersion, but upping sticks and moving to the country where your language originates from is a huge commitment and not always possible. However. There are a few things you can do to help your learning along. Watching films (with or without subtitles, depending on how brave you … Read more
We’ve just found this fun illustration by ESL of the 50 weirdest languages on Earth (and beyond), and it’s got us thinking… What makes a language ‘weird’? Is there even such a thing as a weird language, or do they just seem strange to us because we don’t know them? We’d agree that English is a … Read more
Learning a language is one thing… but what happens when that language changes depending where in the country you happen to be standing? That’s the subject of today’s blog post from Kelly – if you’ve encountered any of these regional confusions, we’d love to hear about them! When is a roll a cake? Before you break out … Read more