{"id":6115,"date":"2017-09-26T11:37:29","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T11:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6115"},"modified":"2020-03-04T11:40:29","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T11:40:29","slug":"blog-european-day-of-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/blog-european-day-of-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: European Day of Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

26th<\/sup> September is European Day of Languages<\/a>, and in honour of this special day we thought we\u2019d have a look at some interesting facts about the European languages. Did you know that the root of many European languages can be found in the Indo-European language family, which has many subdivisions including the Italic, Celtic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic languages? It may even surprise you to hear that Indo-European languages also include most of the languages in South-East, Central and Southern Asia, and as a family are spoken by 2.6 billion people, or 45% of the population. This common origin means that there are, even today, similarities across these languages, in terms of grammar, syntax and vocabulary<\/span><\/p>\n

\"utalk_LangTrees_bleed\"<\/p>\n

Other similarities can be found in expressions. In fact, there are many expressions that are pretty much the same right across Europe. We could give the example of \u201cDevil\u2019s advocate,<\/em>\u201d which is \u201cSe faire l\u2019avocat du diable<\/em>\u201d in French. It\u2019s meaning is exactly the same in French as it is in English.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let\u2019s see the countries\u2019 languages and cultural differences through one idiom<\/a>. Let\u2019s take the example of the English idiom \u201cto kill two birds with one stone\u201d which essentially means to get two things done with one action, and see how it is translated across Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Czech<\/strong>: \u201czab\u00edt dv\u011b mouchy jednou ranou<\/em>\u201d (to kill two flies with one hit)<\/span><\/p>\n

Danish<\/strong>: \u201csl\u00e5 to fluer med et sm\u00e6k<\/em>\u201d (to hit two flies with one smack)<\/span><\/p>\n

Finnish<\/strong>: \u201cly\u00f6d\u00e4 kaksi k\u00e4rp\u00e4st\u00e4 yhdell\u00e4 iskulla<\/em>\u201d (to kill two birds with one stone)<\/span><\/p>\n

French<\/strong>: \u201cDe faire d\u2019une pierre deux coups<\/em>\u201d (to hit twice with one stone)<\/span><\/p>\n

German<\/strong>: \u201czwei Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen<\/em>\u201d (to kill two flies with one smack)<\/span><\/p>\n

Greek<\/strong>: \u201c\u03bc\u03b5<\/em> \u03ad\u03bd\u03b1<\/em> \u03c3\u03bc\u03c0\u03ac\u03c1\u03bf<\/em> \u03b4\u03c5\u03bf<\/em> \u03c4\u03c1\u03c5\u03b3\u03cc\u03bd\u03b9\u03b1<\/em><\/span>\u201d (to hit two turtles with one shot)<\/span><\/p>\n

Hungarian<\/strong>: \u201ck\u00e9t legyet \u00fct egy csap\u00e1sra<\/em>\u201d (to hit two flies with one stone)<\/span><\/p>\n

Italian<\/strong>: \u201cprendere due piccioni con una fava<\/em>\u201d (take two pigeons with a bean)<\/span><\/p>\n

Dutch<\/strong>: \u201ctwee vliegen in \u00e9\u00e9n klap slaan<\/em>\u201d (to kill two flies with one strike)<\/span><\/p>\n

Polish<\/strong>: \u201cupiec dwie pieczenie na jednym ogniu<\/em>\u201d (to bake two roasts on one fire)<\/span><\/p>\n

Portuguese<\/strong>: \u201cMatar dois coelhos com uma cajadada s\u00f3<\/em>\u201d (to kill two rabbits with one stone)<\/span><\/p>\n

Spanish<\/strong>: \u201cmatar dos p\u00e1jaros de un tiro<\/em>\u201d (to kill two birds with one shot)<\/span><\/p>\n

Swedish<\/strong>: \u201csl\u00e5 tv\u00e5 flugor i en small<\/em>\u201d (to hit two flies with one slap)<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you know this idiom in another European language? If yes, tell us below \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26th September is European Day of Languages, and in honour of this special day we thought we\u2019d have a look at some interesting facts about the European languages. Did you know that the root of many European languages can be found in the Indo-European language family, which has many subdivisions including the Italic, Celtic, Germanic … 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":[11,150,24,3,51,97,794,1635],"tags":[46,2,333,331,265,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115"}],"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=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}