The beginner’s guide to London
As London welcomes visitors from all over the world this week, we’ve put together our own guide to the city, with a selection of hints and tips to help you feel like a local…
While you’re here
– Why not take the River Bus from Putney to Blackfriars, then on to Greenwich? It’s a fast and comfortable way to cross the city, with amazing views – and no traffic jams!
– A visit to Shakespeare’s Globe will set you back just £5 for a standing ticket and is well worth it, as long as the sun’s shining… Or you could see a show in the West End – there are discount ticket booths in Leicester Square and Covent Garden where you can buy tickets for the same day.
– Go and take a look at The Shard – the tallest building in Western Europe, which has just opened near London Bridge (be prepared for a sore neck). From next year visitors will be able to travel to the top and take in the amazing views – but in the meantime, here’s a website that lets you see what you’re missing. It really is pretty special.
– If you fancy getting out of the city centre, Richmond Park and Kew Gardens are lovely – although not far from town, you’ll feel like you’re in the countryside. At Richmond, you can even see their famous deer herd.
– London boasts some fantastic free museums; we recommend the Science Museum, Natural History Museum, British Museum and the Tate Galleries, but there are plenty of others to choose from.
Useful tips
– If you’re not going far, don’t take the London Underground (also known as the Tube) – you’ll find it’s much quicker, cheaper and cooler to stay at street level and walk. This is particularly true of stations on or near the Circle Line so don’t get caught out! You can’t go too far without stumbling across a station, and there are maps pretty much everywhere, so it’s quite hard to get lost. But if you are travelling on the Tube, get yourself an Oyster Card, it’s by far the easiest way to pay for your tickets.
– Alternatively, if you want to be able to see where you’re going, but don’t fancy the bus, try hiring a ‘Boris Bike’ (named after Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in case you were wondering). You can just pay and go, then when you’re finished, return the bike to any of the docking stations located around London – no need to bring it back to where you started.
– Most people don’t really talk in Cockney Rhyming Slang, so if you try addressing someone as your ‘china plate’ you may get some funny looks. But then again, we don’t all talk like The Queen, either. Terribly sorry, old bean.
– To feel like a real Londoner, just roll your eyes and say to random strangers, ‘Well at least the sun’s come out at last.’ You’ll fit right in.
– On a similar note, do remember to come prepared for all weathers – a typical bag should contain sun cream and sunglasses as well as an umbrella and some warm layers of clothing.
– And finally, food – we have some strange names for our dishes, so be prepared. For instance, black pudding is not, in fact, a pudding but a type of sausage (and something of an acquired taste). Eton mess sounds horrible but is actually a very tasty dessert featuring strawberries, meringue and cream. And toad in the hole does not contain any toads. Honest.
Most importantly, we hope you enjoy your visit! And don’t be afraid to ask the locals for help – we Brits may seem a bit grumpy (especially during rush hour) but underneath we’re really very nice people…
Are you a Londoner with some useful advice? Or maybe you’re visiting and have already discovered a hidden gem? Please share them in the comments!
Liz and the EuroTalk team
An Olympic Challenge
The Olympics are only a couple of weeks away and with estimated viewing figures of over four billion, and visitor numbers expected to boom, it seems the eyes of the world will shortly be focused on London.
The stadium is ready, transport tests are being carried out and athletes are getting in their final hours of training. With 205 countries taking part, and hundreds of different first languages, how do you ensure that Rafa Nadal doesn’t end up walking bemused around the Olympic stadium rather than Wimbledon, and that Usain Bolt knows where to buy chicken nuggets before the 100m final?
Being the largest and one of the most multicultural capitals in Western Europe does have its advantages; with 200 ethnic communities, and more than a third of its population speaking at least two of over 300 languages present within London, the Olympic organizers have spent the last two years recruiting volunteers for a vast array of opportunities to ensure the games are a success.
Adverts were posted stating the huge advantages of having a second language and this has resulted in over 1,000 volunteers being selected to man vital information points in the stadium and at major transport links. With Royalty, Presidents and VIPs arriving from all over the world, and with athletes having to be briefed, debriefed, transported and organised, the games have given language learners a great opportunity to become an integral part of the games itself.
It is no wonder then that when Nelson Mandela was asked his opinion on the games he replied, “I can’t think of a better place than London to hold an event that unites the world.”
Will you be watching the Olympics? Or are you coming to London? Maybe you’re even one of the 1,000 volunteers? We’d love to hear what you think about the games and the city.
Glyn
A feast of languages: Shakespeare as we’ve never seen it before
Last Monday, 23rd April, was the 448th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare, and marked the launch of Globe to Globe, a series of Shakespeare’s plays performed over six weeks in 37 different languages at the Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank.
On Monday, Troilus and Cressida was performed in Maori by New Zealand’s Ngakau Toa theatre company. Tonight the audience will watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Korean. If that doesn’t appeal, how about The Taming of the Shrew in Urdu, Macbeth in Polish or The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew?
Even though I don’t speak any of those languages, I’m quite tempted to go along. Not only is this probably a once in a lifetime opportunity, but I’m intrigued to see how the plays will translate. Even for a native English speaker, Shakespeare’s language is not always that easy to understand, so is there a possibility that by watching a play and having literally no idea what’s being said, I could just be putting myself in for a couple of hours of mind-numbing boredom?
Well, possibly, but I suspect not. Just as an opera can still move an audience who doesn’t speak Italian, the point that’s being made with this festival is that Shakespeare’s themes and the emotions he portrays are so universal, they can be shared with an audience almost without words. The Globe website describes it best: ‘Shakespeare is the language which brings us together better than any other, and which reminds us of our almost infinite difference, and of our strange and humbling commonality.’ Perhaps Shakespeare didn’t anticipate that his work would one day be portrayed through a haka (the warrior dance best known outside New Zealand as the pre-match rugby ritual), but does that make it any less valid?
A couple of weeks ago, I watched a fantastic performance of Henry V by the Propeller Theatre Company. A whole scene of the play takes place in French, a language I don’t speak and which I’m pretty sure a lot of people in the theatre didn’t either. And yet – we all reacted in the same way at the same time to what we were seeing. If you’d asked me afterwards to translate every word the character was saying, I wouldn’t be able to. But I can tell you why it was funny.
Whether I could make it through a whole play is another question – but there’s only one way to find out! Now the tough part – which play to go for…? Any suggestions?
Liz
The uncertain nationality of The Artist
On 26th February, The Artist swept the board at the Academy Awards, winning five of the twelve categories it was nominated for. This included Best Picture, Director (Michel Havanavicius) and Actor (Jean Dujardin).
However, something has bothered me since the release of this picture.
It is a film with French actors in the two leading roles, made by a French director and with the support of several French film studios. Yet it is a ‘silent’ film and any dialogue from the characters – audible or otherwise – is in English. So with this in mind, can The Artist count as a foreign language film?
At first glance, it is easy to assume it cannot. The film features English as the ‘main’ language and the characters appear to speak, albeit muted, English dialogue.
But that’s only to the perspective of English-speaking audiences.
News reports on The Artist’s success at award ceremonies describe it as the most awarded French film in history and, at the 2012 César Awards (their equivalent of the Academy Awards), it won the award for Best Film, yet English-speaking films such as Black Swan and The King’s Speech were seen as foreign language films.
To me, it seems confusing that it can be seen as both an American and French film, but how can you define a film, which can only be surely described as ‘silent’ – a genre that hasn’t been on our screens in over 70 years?
The Artist has been seen as Havanavicius’s homage to silent cinema and as a result, it has revitalised the genre for a new generation. Can silent films make their way in the world, or will language be the key player in a film?
Katie
Encouraging English learners in Ethiopia
Our guest post today is by Elizabeth Horsefield, a volunteer with the VSO in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia was perhaps not the intended market for a EuroTalk Interactive Learn English CD-ROM. But it’s going down a storm. I work as a VSO volunteer in a Teacher Training College in a rural area of Western Oromia, Ethiopia. We have an English Language Improvement Centre (ELIC) which recently acquired two new desktop computers complete with headphones and speakers. Perfect.
The students are desperate to improve their English. For most of them this usually involves sitting silently in front of an old copy of some estranged grammar book and making notes. Others even read the Oxford dictionary in the hope that it will one day magically transform their communication skills in English. Many of them went to school in remote areas with very few educational resources. Often their experiences in the ELIC provide a first opportunity to use a keyboard and mouse, so operating an interactive CD-ROM in their second or maybe third language might have been beyond their capacity. It would appear not.
Every afternoon (hours scheduled for computer use outside of their regular classes), the students come and learn. Sitting alone or in pairs, I allow them half hour slots to navigate around the different activities and keep score. The cultural context of the material is apparent. These Ethiopian students are not familiar with eating roast chicken, going sailing or playing the trombone. But this only serves to highlight how culture and language are two halves of the same whole and they are quick to overcome any misunderstandings with the help of the pictures and a little guidance from the native speaker (me).
The local language in the area I live and work is Afan Oromo. I have been making a concerted effort to speak and understand something of this wonderful language with its complex history and rich sense of identity. If only an interactive CD-ROM existed for Afan Oromo, I suspect I would be making nearly as much progress as my students.
Elizabeth Horsefield, Nekemte, Ethiopia
