http://www.language-survival.com Surviving the Language Jungle Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:03:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://www.language-survival.com/headline/most-important-languages-to-learn-besides-english 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 ... http://www.language-survival.com/featured/esl-or-why-english-still-is-the-no-1-language 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 ... http://www.language-survival.com/featured/how-many-languages-are-there-world-wide 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 ... http://www.language-survival.com/featured/how-not-to-pay-for-overweight-luggage This week just a quick pick from Failblog.org. Life as a translator can be hard - just watch the video: Image Credit: Failblog.org/Dailymotion http://www.language-survival.com/featured/life-as-a-translator-can-be-heard Google just announced on their translate blog that they have added pronunciation to a couple of languages - including Icelandic. Cool, finally we can pronounce our most favorite volcano Eyjafjalla the correct way. Sounds kind of funny but it's the next step to their babel phone. Just wondering when they ... http://www.language-survival.com/language-technology/icelandic-pronunciation Just stumbled across a website called admongo.gov. It's an American intiative helping kids understand what ads really mean. As ads are part of our everday life (in fact when I look around my computer right now I can see three different ads) it is important for children to understand the ... http://www.language-survival.com/teaching-languages/teaching-kids-advertising-language I just came back from a couple of days of air travel. Every time I have the same problem: Overweight. I dread the check-in counter as my suitcase feels overweight but I am not entirely sure. I have oftetimes tried to weigh my suitcase on a pair of scales but ... http://www.language-survival.com/language-travel/how-to-get-the-exact-weight-of-your-suitcase While half of Europe is covered in ashes (OK, it is just a big ash cloud but nonetheless) air traffic has basically broken down. Apparently airplanes shouldn't fly through the ashes as the engines might get destroyed. That got me curious of how the engineers know this. As (almost) always, ... http://www.language-survival.com/language-technology/the-longest-gliding-flight-ever Just stumbled across a book review of a book called Globish which will be released in the next few days. It states that English has become the world language. Let me cogitate that (ha, I do use my new favorite word from time to time). After a little bit of ... http://www.language-survival.com/learning-languages/globish-how-english-rules-the-globe