Interested in some free language courses? Udemy has everything you want! Check those ones out, they're all for free! Also check Coursera, Alison and Futurelearn for other courses.
Ever wonder how polyglots learn languages? Here there's one that shares her secrets... She learned many languages, including English, French, Turkish and Hindi. Without leaving her country.
And don't forget: get your free copy of my Ebook: 100+ tips to learn any language.
Which countries in the European Union (EU) need foreign languages? That's the key question the European Commission asked in a report published on 26 February 2016.
Not surprisingly, the different countries have different needs. But the main conclusions were quite surprising. The needs are very high: about one quarter of our jobs need a good level of knowledge of a foreign language. The higher the position, the higher the need.
English is not necessarily the most needed second language. Languages spoken by neighbour countries and non-English trading partners are needed as well. Business doing international trade are more demanding for foreign language skills, as well as the manufacturing sector and in the industry.
However, public services seem not to be needing languages. Strange, since the globalisation certainly has an effect on local governments. Businesses do not seem to find foreign language skills essential for new employees, compared to other skills.
And lastly, persons speaking several languages definitely have an advantage over those who only speak one language, since it is believed export will grow if the number of multilingual persons at a company increases.
English 500 years ago - that's quite some time. Check out this poem 'Speke Parrot' read like it was read half a millennium ago. The introduction is in Latin though.
If it teaches us one thing, it's that languages evolve. Some languages evolve more than others. Especially those that are not or barely written evolve quickly. Because of technological developments, but also because people just invent new words. Languages live. So we need to know new words like telegraph or MP3, but also for new forms of organisations and functions like NGOs, or president.
If you're interested in keeping up with the latest developments, usually a central language institute regulates the use of the language. The most funny way they do so, is by changing the dictionaries. New words are now included, and old words disappear. Make sure to check these language institutes.
More information on the poem? Well, check out the website.
Set in the first World War, a few prisoners of war try to escape from the German prison. The use of three languages (German, French and English) make the movie 'la Grande Illusion' (the big illusion) already interesting to watch. Including many language subtleties, a great sense of humor and sometimes interesting questions popping up, like the cow that doesn't care whether she's fed by a French or a German person.
Some other interesting details: one of the detainees is a jew, another one belongs to French aristocracy and discusses what aristocracy is going to become after the war with a German aristocrat. This somewhat predicts the end of the rule by unelected leaders in Europe after the first World War. Interestingly, there's not many prison escape movies from Germans escaping - unfortunately, since they went to war for more or less the same reasons, at least in the first World War.
The movie received a high rating on IMDb, the Internet's biggest movie database. There are some parts of the whole movie on YouTube, so make sure to check them out.
Movies: good to learn a new language?
Is watching movies a good way to learn a language? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If a movie is on with subtitles and we're not at all listening to what the persons are saying, the value is about zero. However, if we're watching a movie in a different language with subtitles in the different language, that's great, because it improves our vocabulary, our listening skills and our reading skills at the same time.
For beginners, it might not be a good idea: people speak too fast, there's no way of following the movie, so it becomes an embarrassment. For more advanced students, it's great. Especially with series, so we can adapt our ears to the characters' voices.
Ever wondered which languages the United Kingdom will need in the near future? Instead of making difficult calculations, asking your friends and write a PhD about it - just read what the British Council says in an interesting report.
instead of calling home, better call Spain! copyright: public domain
They published a report, based on a range of factors: which countries the UK will do business with, which languages are needed right now and in the future for the labour market, and so on. Spanish comes first, Arabic second (sure that report will welcome the Arabic-speaking Syrian refugees to the UK). French, Chinese (that is, Mandarin) and German add themselves to the top 5.
Interestingly enough, according to a survey of the British Council, 3 out of 4 Brits don't speak enough of the top-10 of the future languages to hold a normal conversation. Not that the Brits have been studying the wrong languages, it's just that they haven't done enough.
If you compare those numbers to the rest of the European Union, the Brits are dragging behind. Difficult to blame them though: English is everywhere. According to a European survey, only 15% of the Brits say they can speak two languages or more. That's a figure even worse than the British Council's. Only Hungarians and Portuguese do worse, while the EU's average is about 25%...
In a world where emerging markets like China, Africa and South America will increase their share in the world's economy, this might sound quite alarming.
The Economist held a live session with its chief linguist - make sure to check it out! A talk about how many languages there are in the world, if they will die, business languages, and so on. Make sure to read some articles of the Economist - their English is really good! And subscribe to their Facebook page, too! I love it when some of their articles pop up on my wall... like this one below.
Live online now: Lane Greene, The Economist's language columnist. Send him your questions about language
Posted by The Economist on Friday, 29 January 2016
