See, the Germans do have a sense of humour!

The German airline, Air Berlin, is considering asking its flight attendants to make some announcements in regional German dialects after a YouTube video taken by a passenger of one of its attendants speaking Swabian became a web sensation with 30,000hits. Instead of standard High German, flight attendant Michaela Bahnmüller, decided to speak in dialect after her plane landed in Baden-Wurttemberg’s capital of Stuttgart, where Swabian is proudly spoken.

Bahnmüller told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung that the decision to do so was “relatively spontaneous” because she wanted to show passengers a little bit of local culture. Bahnmüller has done the announcement a few more times since, she told the newspaper. “People are excited,” she said. “They laugh and say ‘that should be done much more often.”

Apparently, Air Berlin executives agree. They’ve asked passengers on the airline’s Facebook page if flight attendants should make more announcements in regional dialects.

We haven’t seen the video, so we’re not sure what was said but this might have been appropriate as plane landed:

Di will I gau hoa gau hoaße, which means: I´ll throw you out pretty soon!

06/09/11

Confusing times in court

Just a few weeks ago the Justice Minister announced in Parliament that a UK company (Manchester based) had been awarded a £60 million contract to supply language services. Clients include the courts, tribunals and some police force services. The announcement stirred up huge arguments about the bidding process and the eventual apparent selection. We say “apparent” because some UK-based freelance interpreters are claiming in the confusion that reigns, the Ministry of Justice has not confirmed that the contract has in fact been awarded. Watch this space

31/08/11

Tri-lingual Europeans

A new project, funded by the European Commission and a partner is to set up an online Language Observatory by December 2012. The main purpose of the project is to analyse the best ways to implement language policies and provide objective tools for solving everyday communication problems.

The project was established earlier this year to create an interactive website concerning multilingualism in Europe that will work as an online observatory.

Soon, the EU will be home to 450 million Europeans from diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. There is enormous pressure for citizens to be able to understand and communicate with their neighbours and for migrant workers to learn languages to improve their chances of finding work.

The main goal is to enable Europeans to speak their mother tongue plus two foreign languages. The portal will attempt to document good practice on language learning. For example, the site will provide suggestions about the best time to begin learning a foreign language and how many languages can be learned at the same time.

The aims are laudable but it’s difficult to see how this will work in practice. For instance, in the UK, learning a foreign language is not compulsory in schools (although this may change in the near future). If your first language is English, you may learn one other language, but it is rare indeed to find any English speaking native that is even remotely fluent in two other languages.

18 July 2011

Read this entertaining Blog of the Le Havre to Guise 400 kms bike ride:

He Just Kept On Pedalling

WORDtrans MD, David Arrowsmith, completed a 400 kms charity bike ride last week across France . He says he is still saddle sore, but happy that the task was completed without mishap. There is still plenty of time to sponsor him for this very worthwhile WW1 memorial fund at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/iron12 If this is your thing, the whole story can be read at www.ironmemorial.org. He’s also promising to produce a Biker’s Blog very soon. May 9^th 2011.

A Race to Save a Language

Ever heard of Dusner? No? Neither had we, and no wonder when this ancient language of the remote jungle in Papua has only three known speakers. When severe flooding hit the area recently and many people lost their lives, there were very real fears that these may have included the Dusner speakers. Fortunately they survived and a prolonged study is now in place for Oxford University in the UK to document the vocabulary and grammar of this language which has never before been written.

Dusner has been overtaken in popularity by Malay but is still used in official ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. We wish this worthy cause well. Languages that are under threat should be retained and encouraged to flourish even if the don’t ever feature highly in requests for online translation services, or global translation services.  27 April 2011

Learning a second language is good for you – especially if your hair is greying!

A recent study in the US has found that people who have a second language are far less likely to suffer the effects from Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers are quick to point out that studying a second language will not prevent Alzheimer’s but it will delay the onset. Being bilingual exercises the brain and provides the reserves of power that will retain functionality even after dementia takes hold. Speaking another language exercises a part of the brain known as the executive control system in the frontal lobe that manages memory, learning, language and reason. Research found that learning a language surpassed the benefits of exercising the brain with crosswords, Sudoku and the like.

On average, bilingual people are likely to be about 5 years older than their monolingual counterparts if they are eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

People who speak bilingually more or less every day derive the most benefits from exercising the brain, but learning and practising language skills at any point is very beneficial.

Figures for dementia sufferers worldwide are on the increase and with an ageing population, the problem is not going to go away. Learning a second language has never been easier and is within everybody’s reach. If you are not the classroom type, there are many professional language translation services that offer multi-media titles that are an excellent and convenient way to learn another language. Keeps your brain fit and helps you order your dinner in Paris, Rome or Beijing – can’t be bad, can it?

12 April 2011

Language Study in the UK Becoming Elitist

Recent studies have revealed that since teaching of foreign languages became a non-compulsory study topic in state schools, schools have quit language tuition in droves. By comparison, language study in private schools is flourishing. Kids of 14 years and more are twice as likely to study languages in private education compared to state schools. An offshoot of this is that thousands of youngsters are being excluded from top jobs in multi-national companies where language and translation skills are a pre-requisite.

English is, of course, a dominant world language and us English have always been reserved when it comes to learning foreign languages. However, even the most die-hard colonials have to acknowledge the retrograde steps that are being made today in the classrooms of our schools. Such is the turmoil of the curriculum of the UK’s schools in can only be a matter of time that the folly of this decision is realised and French, German, Spanish and even Chinese is back on the language menu. The alternative of top international jobs going to a privileged few is difficult to swallow.

6 April 2011