languages

Babel or babble?

Thought-provoking article in last week's Economist on the evolution of language. New research appears to confirm the theory that all languages originated in Africa. Just as humanity's origins demonstr...

READ MORE | 21 Apr 2011

Modern Day Cyclists Ought to be Linguists

Another post on cycling and languages. Lovely quote from Tim Hilton's wonderful memoirs on the world of cycling, One More Kilometre and We're In the Showers, about how the culture of cycling naturally...

READ MORE | 15 Apr 2011

Speaking a second language could delay dementia by five years

New study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) shows that speaking a second language can delay the onset of Dementia and Alzheimer's for up to five years. Both the Telegra...

READ MORE | 26 Feb 2011

European Day of Languages

Sunday 26th of September 2010 marks the European Day of Languages. Set up by the Council of Europe in 2001, the idea of the European Day of Languages (EDL) is to show people across Europe how importan...

READ MORE | 26 Sep 2010

Michael Gove wants baccalaureate qualification for England

The new baccalaureate qualification proposed by the UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, could be a positive initiative for foreign languages. According to the Guardian, The "English bac" would not r...

READ MORE | 9 Sep 2010

Why a second language is crucial in business

Good to see an article in Exec Digital about the business need for languages that pulls no punches. The article points out that the old adage, 'You can buy in your own language but you must sell in th...

READ MORE | 9 Jul 2010

Are Language Skills the Key to England's Future Success at the World Cup?

In yesterday's article from the BBC, England's fear of crossing borders, former England international, Chris Waddle asserts that if more English football players played abroad they would be more likel...

READ MORE | 1 Jul 2010

Languages, The World Cup and Fifa

Just in case anyone could have failed to notice, the World Cup has finally kicked off in South Africa, a nation that can make a fair claim to be truly multilingual. The country has eleven official lan...

READ MORE | 11 Jun 2010

‘It’s a pity that people don’t have to learn another language here’

Familiar, depressing riff from The Times about how the lack of second-language ability among graduates is harming UK business. As the article points out the main way to rectify this is to make languag...

READ MORE | 1 Jun 2010

Raising Bilingual Kids

Does foreign language learning promote child development? According to a blog post on Babble, new studies suggests that kids who grow up with two languages are better at certain tests of "executive fu...

READ MORE | 20 May 2010