Being bilingual: practice makes perfect
Last week’s post, which contained our top ten tips for learning a language, inspired a few members of the EuroTalk team to share their own thoughts. Here’s what Seb had to say about his experience of learning Spanish, after leaving Colombia and coming to England when he was very young. And come back tomorrow to find out why Lorena recommends spending as much time as possible in the pub. We’d love to hear from anyone else who’d like to share their own advice. Please do send us an email to liz@eurotalk.com if you’d like to contribute to the blog!
My parents emigrated to the UK from Colombia when I was very young and at the time the only language I could speak was Spanish. However, once I began my schooling in London I picked English up very easily. Well, I like to think so anyway because it was so long ago to the point where I cannot even remember a stage in my life where I could not speak both English and Spanish. Attending school and being around English speakers every day meant that very quickly my English overtook my Spanish in terms of the range of words I could use.
If this kept up I would have definitely forgotten how to speak Spanish. However, my parents made sure that my younger sister and myself always spoke in Spanish once we stepped into our house, because they knew that we would be immersed in the English language for the large majority of the day – from being at school to the shows we watched on television. Therefore, if we were in the house we had to speak in Spanish. I think this was my parents’ way of making sure that we didn’t forget our roots and at the same time they knew it would be beneficial for us in the future to be able to speak two languages, even though we may not have seen it back then.
This very quickly became routine and I would find it normal to speak Spanish at home and English when I was out, which fascinated some of my friends. Having been brought up in this way helped me greatly because it meant that I was able to learn English as well as Spanish simultaneously. It also helped me more in terms of my pronunciation and speaking, meaning that my Spanish is fluent enough for me to easily have a conversation, even though it is still not perfect.
Despite this, I believe that the only reason I am able to speak Spanish fluently at this age is because I had to speak it on a daily basis, and you know what they say, ‘practice makes perfect’. Therefore, I think that if you are attempting to learn a new language it is very important to immerse yourself in that language on a daily basis, so that you become accustomed to not only speaking it but also hearing it.
Seb
8 bizarre superstitions from around the world
This month, we’ve been having a look at interesting superstitions from different countries. There are literally thousands of examples – here are just a few. We suggest they should be taken with a pinch of salt…
If you’re in Malta, don’t rely on the church clock to tell you the right time. Churches are sometimes fitted with two clocks that tell different times to confuse the Devil about the time of the service.
Approach toilets with caution in Morocco – there might be a genie living in the u-bend… They don’t give wishes and they certainly don’t like to be disturbed. If you need to go, just say the words ‘Rukhsa, ya Mubariqin’ (With your permission, O Blessed Ones). Also beware of going to the toilet at night, where you might run into a beast called ‘Maezt Dar L’Oudou’, the ‘Goat of the Lavatories’.
If you’re visiting Britain, you’ll probably find you need an umbrella with depressing regularity. But whatever you do, don’t open it till you get outdoors; it’s very bad luck to open your umbrella inside.
Elves are alive and well in Iceland. In a 2006 survey only 35% of Icelanders said that they thought the existence of elves was either impossible or very unlikely and local elves still take an active role in shaping modern Iceland: roads and building projects sometimes have to be changed to avoid destroying known elf homes.
In Japan, if you walk by a graveyard or a hearse passes you, you must tuck your thumbs inside your fists. This is because the Japanese word for thumb (‘oya yubi’) literally translates as ‘parent-finger’ and so by hiding them you protect your parents from death.
Ready to go? Have a seat. In Russia, if you’re going on a journey you have to sit down for a minute just before leaving the house, to reflect on the coming trip and make sure you’ve got everything you need. It’s also bad luck to say goodbyes over the threshold, so you should always say your farewells before you leave.
If you find yourself in Spain on New Year’s Eve, don’t be surprised if, when the clock strikes midnight, you notice everyone around you eating grapes. This has been a tradition since the early 20th century; eating one grape for each bell strike is believed to bring twelve months of good luck.
And finally, when in China, never leave rice on your plate at the end of a meal – for each grain left at the end of a meal, your future husband or wife will have that many pockmarks on their face.
We’d love to hear any more examples, so please do share them in the comments below. And good luck out there…
A brief guide to English Office Jargon
Today’s post was contributed by Mark James, Copywriter at Crunch Accounting.
It’s been just over a year since I traded academia for the office, my three years spent studying English coming to an end and my career as a copywriter now starting to take shape.
In that past year I’ve had to make an array of adjustments; getting used to waking when the sun comes up rather than when it goes down and trading clubbing plans for pension plans amongst the changes I’ve felt. Getting to grips with corporate lingo is something I’ve faced too – an English dialect of its own that can be just as baffling as Scouse or Geordie (perhaps even more so).
Concerned about its influence, the Plain English Campaign has tried to contain its spread, going so far as to say that it’s damaging the economy. That’s probably a tad extreme but there’s no doubt that office jargon’s causing contention, certain phrases creeping outside of the workplace and into our everyday language.
As such, if you’re planning on spending some time on these shores it might be a good idea to learn some of the basics. Here’s an overview of some of the most popular…
‘Touch base’
Heard in offices across the country, confusingly this doesn’t refer to playing baseball, it simply means to establish contact with someone, perhaps through telephone, email, or a meeting in person.
Example usage – ‘David, I think you ought to touch base with Boris. His political aspirations are getting way out of control.’
‘Going forward’
You’ll hear this in meetings a lot. Essentially, it translates as ‘in the future’. Why ‘in the future’ isn’t deemed good enough again confuses me, but hey ho, people seem to like using it.
Example usage – ‘I’ve got my eye on a Bugatti Veyron, so going forward I propose we cut costs and outsource to India.’
‘KPI’
An acronym which stands for ‘Key Performance Indicator’, you’ll often hear this in appraisals and the like. Basically, the term encompasses anything that management can use to manage the effectiveness of a strategy or, you as an employee.
Example usage – ‘For someone brought in to increase productivity by 200%, Tarquin’s KPIs are woefully low. Clear his desk whilst he’s away at lunch.’
‘Thinking outside the box’
This phrase must be a nightmare for a non-native speaker, as there’s no boxes involved, it simply means to think unconventionally.
Example usage – ‘To prosper in the global race, we’ll need to increasingly think outside the box.’
‘ROI’
Another acronym that I thought needed explaining, this stands for ‘Return On Investment’. Put simply, it refers to how much cash an investment in something like property or a marketing campaign reaps in the long term.
Example usage – ‘We invested £200 billion in subprime mortgages but our ROI appears to be less than 300 billionths of that. In other words, we need a government bailout.’
In my first year of office work, these five terms are the ones that I’ve come across the most. There’s many more though, as this article from the BBC reflects, and if an episode of The Apprentice is anything to go by, there’s plenty more where that came from. I’d start developing an office jargon app if I were you, EuroTalk…
Mark James is a Copywriter for Crunch Accounting. If you’d like to touch base with him going forward, find him on Twitter at @MarkJames891.
And if you’re interested in learning some business English, you might want to try Talk Business, which is available as a download or a CD-ROM. It may not include the jargon above, but it’s a good place to start!
Image credit – arenagroove
It’s Raining Cats and Dogs (and Wheelbarrows and Old Ladies)
‘It’s raining cats and dogs!’ is a common British phrase meaning that it’s raining particularly hard. There are various theories as to where the expression came from – although there’s no evidence that it’s ever actually happened!
It may come from the Greek expression cata doxa. This means ‘contrary to experience or belief’ and might explain why the expression is used when it’s raining unusually hard.
Equally, it could be derived from the old French word catadupe, which meant waterfall.
An old theory was that in heavy rain, dead animals would often be washed out of drainage systems on 17th century buildings in Europe.
There’s no conclusive answer. It may just be that it was a funny expression that caught on and became popular. We’ll probably never know…
In Britain it also rains buckets, stair rods, tacks and pitchforks… But did you know that in other areas of the world, it rains other things?
Our favourites are:
‘It’s raining wheelbarrows’
Czech: Padají trakaře
‘It’s raining knives and forks’
Welsh: Mae hi’n bwrw cyllyll a ffyrc
‘It’s raining shoemakers’ apprentices’
Danish: Det regner skomagerdrenge
‘It’s raining fire and brimstone’
Icelandic: Það rignir eld og brennustein
‘It’s raining lady trolls’
Norwegian: Det regner trollkjerringer
‘It’s raining husbands’
Spanish: Están lloviendo maridos
‘It’s raining old women with knobkerries’
Afrikaans: Ou vrouens met knopkieries reen (by the way, a knobkierrie is a kind of African club!)
‘It’s raining snakes and lizards’
Brazilian Portuguese: Chovem cobras e lagartos
‘It’s raining frogs’
Polish: Leje zabami
We’d love to know where some of these expressions came from, so if anyone has any information, please share it in the comments!
Language learning in UK schools: what does the future hold?
Recent news that the numbers of pupils taking a modern foreign language to A-level in the UK have fallen dramatically did not come as a huge surprise to me. According to the latest A-level results, there has been a 9.9% fall in candidates taking French, and an even more depressing 11.1% fall in those taking German A level.
This trend has been coming along for quite some time now, but why?
First and foremost, the general attitude to language learning at a societal and educational level is very poor. To native English speakers, languages are often seen as a ‘waste of time’, as ‘everyone speaks English’. Well, allow me to dispel that notion! Although there are a lot of fantastic English speakers out there, only 22% of Spaniards, 39% of French people and 34% of Italians (for example) can speak English to a conversational level. The rates are higher in Scandinavian countries, but by no means everyone even has a basic command of English, let alone full fluency. The idea that it is ‘useless’ is even more ridiculous – even if other people do speak great English, that’s no excuse for being the person pointing at things mutely on holiday, let alone for UK politicians and businesspeople refusing to communicate with business partners and policial allies in their own tongue.
Secondly, languages are not taught well in many of our schools, and are not particularly encouraged. I was lucky enough to study French, German, Spanish and Japanese at GCSE, but there are many schools that only offer French, and even this is not compulsory. Languages are portrayed as difficult and often seen as being less necessary than maths, science etc. Whilst of course maths and science are vital, languages are essential to communication at every level, whether that is your holiday to France or a financial deal between Germany and the UK. Children also don’t start learning a language until they are around 12, when the best years for natural language absorption are coming to an end, and when teens often become self conscious about speaking a new language in front of school friends. I know I was very nervous about my oral exams at school, and still struggle to be very chatty in another language when I know I might make mistakes!
Here at EuroTalk we know that languages are not only essential but also loads of fun! So what’s the solution? Fortunately it seems that GCSE uptake of languages is on the increase, so maybe there is still hope. But from my perspective we need to introduce languages at a much earlier age in schools, offer a wider range of languages such as Mandarin and Arabic (both official UN languages), create a more open culture of chatting in another language without feeling embarrassed and worried about mistakes, and dispel the ridiculous notion that any other language than English is useless. Even if everyone else in the world learns English, we should be ashamed not to return the favour and at least have a go at saying ‘hi’ in their mother tongue.
Alex
