The Language Learning Specialists
For me, the big glacé cherry on top of the holiday cake is seizing the opportunity to say something in the local language. There is nothing – nothing! – more dispiriting than shying away from an opportunity to test your language skills, forcing someone else to speak your language instead. When I went to Ghent this month, … Read more
‘It’s all Greek to me’. This is what an English speaker might say when they don’t understand something at all. In this context the Greek language is used as a metaphor for ‘something incomprehensible’. So that got us thinking here at EuroTalk… if an English speaker uses Greek, what does a Greek speaking person use? And … Read more
A few days ago, Gloria stopped by my desk with a burning question: had I ever heard of the whistling languages? Proudly, I was able to answer that I had, but quickly became deflated when we realised that neither of us had the slightest idea of how they work. Was there a whistling alphabet with … Read more
Happy Halloween! As is EuroTalk tradition, we celebrated the spookiest day of the year (a day early) with fancy dress, pumpkin carving and other Halloween-themed fun. We also took the opportunity to put together this little video of Halloween-themed English idioms, starring members of the (endlessly talented, we’re sure you’ll agree) EuroTalk team. We’re expecting our Oscar … Read more
One of the hardest things to grasp when learning the English language is emphasis. Emphasising a different word in the same sentence, each time can completely change the meaning of it. Some people make the emphasis on a certain word very clear. This can give you the general feeling of the sentence. Other times it … Read more
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
Here at EuroTalk we love hearing feedback from participants of the Junior Language Challenge! So when runner-up Aalaya Sanjeeva’s teacher Jackie Gliniecka from The Hawthorns School sent us this wonderful message about how she’s found being involved in the competition over the years, we had to share it with you 🙂 10 years ago, in 2005, we … 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
When learning a new language we are happy to pass every little milestone: the first time you address a native speaker, the first conversation… All these achievements mean the world to us, they are the reward of our continuous learning. When becoming fluent in a language you can express almost everything you want to say, … 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