Amongst the various genetic, cultural and personal characteristics that together make us what we are language must be significant. But how significant? As many readers of this blog will know, I am German by birth. I was born in Northern Germany and lived in that country until I was seven years old, speaking only German. My father came from Silesia, which was German at the time of his birth but is now Polish. His family home was near Opole (which he knew as Oppeln), which was interesting because the language commonly spoken there was a dialect that mixed Polish and German. I have early memories of him using Polish expressions or creating composite words that were both German and Polish. That, together with his liking for Polish cooking, tempered what was otherwise a very German... Similar posts

In English you often hear expressions like 'let's make sure that we're all speaking the same language'. It is a given that communication is at its most effective when everybody is speaking the same language. However, life is not always so straightforward. In business environments the language of choice for meetings is normally dictated by corporate rules. More often than not international meetings are conducted in English except for the case where all participants speak another language more fluently. In my company local meetings are in Dutch but as soon as there is somebody who cannot speak Dutch the whole meeting switches to English. In highly multilingual environments such as you will find at the European Union offices the choice of language shows more variety... Similar posts

Before I write this post I just want to point out that as a language I have nothing against Esperanto. I enjoy learning it, speaking it with people from all over the world and listening to music in the language. Maybe when I get better in the language I will read some books in the language as well. As a language I think it deserves the respect that any other language gets. It has a right to exist and be used and spoken. Yes, it was created by one man but now it is a living language used by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in many if not all the countries of the world. I also do not have anything against constructed-languages. In fact creating languages for pleasure is one of my hobbies.I got a comment left on yesterday's post entitled Language Learning Update. The post was... Similar posts

I wrote this reply to the Omniglot Blog post English as a Lingua (ELF).I hadn't intended it to be as long as this but once I started writing I just wrote and wrote... So I have decided to post it here as well.----------------------------------------I feel that policies such as they have in the Netherlands where it is more common to take courses in English rather than in the vernacular are ridiculous, as students should have the right to study in their native language.Another disappointing thing about language learning in schools and universities today is that foreign language learning is turning into English language learning. Where before German, French, Spanish and Russian would have been common languages to study on the European Continent it is much less the case today. For example... Similar posts