Who will you be cheering for at the Rio Olympic Games? Usain Bolt? Jess Ennis Hill? Ben Ainslie? Missy Franklin\u2026?<\/p>\n
The 2016 Games are just around the corner, and if you\u2019re anything like us, you\u2019re incredibly excited about seeing who wins in sports you\u2019ve never cared about \u2013 or even heard of – before. But as Rio prepares to welcome thousands of visitors from all over the world, we\u2019d like to suggest that the real winner of the Olympics will be\u2026 languages.<\/p>\n
![\"riomax_blue\"](\"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/riomax_blue.png\")
Back in 2014, the search began for 8,000 volunteers to be \u201cthe voice of the Games\u201d in Rio. As well as working with athletes these volunteer interpreters will be dealing with press, helping medical teams and welcoming fans at hotels and venues around the city. (And if you think that sounds like fun, we hear Japan\u2019s already preparing to recruit linguists for 2020.)<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, over one million Brazilians have been trained in a second language \u2013 mostly English and French (two of the three official languages of the Olympics, along with the language of the host nation) and Spanish. That makes it the world\u2019s largest language learning programme.<\/p>\n
Why is that important? Because visitors arriving in Brazil will speak over 100 languages between them, and there\u2019s no better way to welcome a guest in your country than by learning a little of their language. It\u2019s reassuring for visitors to know that if anything goes wrong, there\u2019ll be someone they can talk to about it.<\/p>\n
But the best thing about all this? The language skills gained will last long after the athletes and supporters have all gone home. That\u2019s good for the individuals, because learning a language makes you smarter, helps you make friends and opens up new opportunities in work and life. But it\u2019s also great news for Brazil, which will be left with a multilingual population who understand the benefits of speaking a second language for communication and cultural awareness.<\/p>\n
So the Gold medal winner is – languages!<\/p>\n
To keep up with all the #uTalkOlympics action like us on Facebook<\/a> and follow on Twitter<\/a>. You can also test your Olympic language knowledge with our fiendishly tricky quiz<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fancy having a go at the Olympic languages? Try out our app!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who will you be cheering for at the Rio Olympic Games? Usain Bolt? Jess Ennis Hill? Ben Ainslie? Missy Franklin\u2026? The 2016 Games are just around the corner, and if you\u2019re anything like us, you\u2019re incredibly excited about seeing who wins in sports you\u2019ve never cared about \u2013 or even heard of – before. But … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,3,794],"tags":[786,333,52,4,200,1372,265],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8412,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/8412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}