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[3 Sep 2010 | No Comment | ]
Most important languages to learn (besides English)

A post by the Guardian revealed the most important languages to learn: French, Spanish, Swedish, German, Russian. Four languages I understand, but Swedish? Is it really necessary to understand what the name of your IKEA furniture stands for? The Guardian stresses the fact there is a strong IT industry in Sweden. All understood, but Swedish people speak excellent English (and German, and French, and Spanish). Sorry, Swedes, you are just too good with foreign languages!
Image credit: Powi/Flickr

Featured, Learning Languages »

[30 Jun 2010 | No Comment | ]
ESL – or why English still is the No. 1 language

After my recent post on the Globish book I found some more evidence on why English will stay the number 1 language in the years to come. A study by the British Council suggests that there are up to 2 billion English learners worldwide. Now that’s a number compared to “just” 1 billion native Mandarin speakers. Add the ~500 million native English speakers to that and you have roughly a third of the world population speaking English. So, time to start practicing your English skills, folks! There are many free …

Featured, Translation »

[23 Jun 2010 | No Comment | ]
How many languages are there world-wide?

Well, according to Ethnologue there are currently 6,909 languages world-wide. But let’s be honest, how many languages are really spoken by a majority of people in a country? As I am watching the world cup right now I checked out how many member associations the FIFA has – the teams need to communicate in one language, right? There are 208 members, more than the 192 UN member states. That’s quite cool. So my educated guess is that there are about 150-200 “major” languages in the world (yes, I know, some …

Featured, Language Travel »

[1 Jun 2010 | No Comment | ]
How not to pay for overweight luggage

I came across a post by Benny, an Irish guy travelling the world to learn languages. Apparently his whole life fits into 40 kg of luggage. Besides being amazed on how you can reduce your whole belongings to 40 kg he shows his fellow readers how you can sneak in an additional 15 kg of luggage without paying a dime. Now, that’s what I consider cool. Watch the video yourself to find out. And remember: you should pack the maximum allowed luggage into your suitcase and your carry-on luggage (don’t …