Speaking of languages.

Today is the European Day of Languages, according to their website "a time to celebrate the 6,000+ languages spoken around the world, promote language learning and have some multilingual fun!" Their website offers all sorts of teaching resources for schools. Very nice. 

Some odd statistics abound regarding languages. English remains the most spoken "foreign to me language", which does not surprise me. It's up there in the top five with French, German, Spanish and Russian. In some countries of Europe up to 98% of the people speak another language. Impressive! The UK is one of the places where this is least likely to be the case, together oddly enough with Portugal. When we talk to friends in Spain about foreign language learning they almost always say that the Spanish are really bad but that the Portuguese are really good, especially at learning English. And there they are, the Portuguese, just like the English; 61% of them only speak their own language. Here's a link to an article about it with a very nice map showing where different "foreign to me languages" are spoken.

The Guardian must be aware of the UK's minimalist attitude to foreign language learning as they have been asking people to send a photo of an everyday object, labelled in their native language, as a way of celebrating European Day of Language. 

Here's another aspect of the same thing. A Facebook "friend" who works as a teaching assistant in a local primary school expressed his bewilderment when given the task of helping a couple of Rumanian children to learn some basic English. Some of his Facebook friends gave him sensible hints. Others advised him to resign in the face of an impossible task. But it's symptomatic of his being an English-only speaker that he had no idea of where to start. Or maybe he just lacks imagination altogether. That's a different problem. 

I wonder which language will be used when George Clooney gets married in Venice on Monday. Oddly, they are having the star-spangled (Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon et al) reception on Saturday. If one of them changes their mind, I suppose, this means that they have had the party anyway. It's all something to do with Venetian bye-laws that say civil ceremonies have to take place in council buildings, which presumably are closed at the weekend. I know a number of ladies who will be rather disappointed about the whole proceedings. Their dreams of being George's chosen one have become a little more remote. Of course, in this modern world of short-term marriage they may very well be able to hope again before too much time has gone past. There I go, being cynical once again. 

Happy European Day of Languages.