{"id":4666,"date":"2015-12-03T17:44:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T17:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2015-12-03T17:44:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T17:44:47","slug":"why-i-think-languages-are-lingotastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/why-i-think-languages-are-lingotastic\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I think languages are Lingotastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Barrett\u00a0from Lingotastic<\/a> 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…<\/em><\/p>\n

On my first visit to Germany to visit my husband Maik\u2019s parents, I had a few language misunderstandings.<\/p>\n

One day we were in\u00a0Gro\u00dfe Stra\u00dfe in Osnabr\u00fcck and I had\u00a0to ask Maik\u00a0what a travelling Bratwurst (\u201cRiesenbratwurst\u201d) was\u2026 it actually said \u201cReisenbratwurst\u201d, which means giant Bratwurst. So I still don’t know what a travelling Bratwurst is.<\/p>\n

A few years later I was at church in Germany listening to the preacher. I could not understand why he was talking so much about toast\u2026 he was actually talking about trost (an old German word for “comfort”)!<\/p>\n

Maik and I got married in Germany, but they didn\u2019t believe I understood what was going on, so we had to have a translator!<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/a><\/p>\n

When my youngest daughter started school (two years ago), I set up some language classes for families as Lingotastic. As a busy mum, language learning hadn\u2019t been a priority for a long time, but we had passed on German and French to our children, and I wanted to encourage other families to do this too.\u00a0At Lingotastic we have six weeks of French, German or Spanish. We use simple songs, crafts, a story, puppets and bubbles to help little ones to tune into that language. It was tricky for me at first to separate the languages, but it came with practice.<\/p>\n

I then wanted a challenge, so as a family we learned a bit of Mandarin and some Mandarin songs. We then delivered a class in the local library and also in my daughter\u2019s school reception class.<\/p>\n

We heard about the EuroTalk Junior Language Challenge<\/a> at Easter and my daughters thought they might like to join in. They learned a lot of Portuguese through playing the simple games.\u00a0Then in the summer we heard EuroTalk were doing an Esperanto challenge, using the uTalk<\/a> app. We really enjoyed it and had a few simple conversations in Esperanto around the dinner table.\u00a0A few months ago my daughter asked why gato and g\u00e2teau are not the same thing, and said maybe we should have a gato gateau!<\/p>\n

I love to greet people in their native language and people are often really happy to teach you how. I can often say good morning in up to five languages whilst walking my children to school!<\/p>\n

Language learning only works for me if I can see a purpose. I love to get to know others and language learning is a great way to do this.\u00a0I love to learn languages by playing apps like uTalk<\/a>, playing with FlashSticks<\/a> and singing along to songs in other languages.<\/p>\n

If you want to follow our language learning journey check out\u00a0www.Lingotastic.co.uk\/blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Sarah<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Barrett\u00a0from 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\u2019s parents, I had a few language misunderstandings. One … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49,244,3,51],"tags":[1228,176,48,243,157,144,1359,125,109,37,8,40],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}