Category: Languages

As you know, there are different dialects of English around the world like British English, American English, Australian and so on. In most cases it does not really matter which English dialect you learn as long as you try to stick with it and don’t mix up different Englishes. When you learn English as a […]

We already wrote quite a bit about globalization, that the right language skills are essential in the globalized job market and can therefore give job seekers not only a competitive edge over other applicants but also result into better payment and a lower risk to lose a job. While English is still dominating global trade […]

Many language learners do put enough effort in the initial stages to get to a certain level of proficiency but can’t seem to get above that level, try as they might. There can be any number of reasons for this. I will go through a number of them here. Have a read through them and […]

Language is not logical, and does not have to be: it is an art, not a science. An idiom, for example, is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements. If we hear that someone has kicked the bucket we know he has died, and we never stop to think about kicking or buckets. We […]

What are the languages that will be most widely spoken by the middle of this century? According to so called engco model of language forecasting the top 5 languages in 2050 are going to be Chinese Spanish English Hindi-Urdu Arabic I guess, there is no big surprise in this list in the end but those […]

Have you ever stopped to consider that the world is full of natives? There are about 7000 million of them. And they are restless most of the time. I often feel compelled to ask who wrote a letter, or a notice on a bulletin board, or a simple office sign, that is clearly full of […]

It’s an open secret that the best way to learn a language is immersion which means that you are surrounded by the language you want to learn for as long as possible throughout the day. And the Internet did not change that. If you take a look at surveys on language learners like recent ones […]

For some time now I’ve been thinking about how to help more people.  The problem I’ve run into is that I want to reach those who have not yet ventured to begin to learn another language. Most all of them think it would be a nice thing to be able to speak Spanish or read […]

There are those that want to learn English, those that are fascinated by the French charm, and those who, instead, learn the language of the “dolce vita”. The status of Italian as a foreign language is definitely worth my first post on Fair Languages. Why do people decide to learn Italian? Being a teacher of […]

Forgetting: A common experience It is the beginning of the summer, you are sitting on your chair staring the questions on your exam sheet and you realise that you have forgotten all the information that you have frantically read in the last week. “How is this possible? Will I have to stay in high school […]