If you are flummoxed by French or perplexed by Polish, use the European Day of Languages every 26 September as the opportunity to pick a language to learn. Make it the catalyst for your Catalan!
The Council of Europe first celebrated this day in 2001 and it has been growing every year to include more countries and more participants.
Whether you use languages to boost your CV, as a key tool on your travels, or simply as a hobby, make sure you enjoy it! You could brush up on your high school French, try your hand at Greek or even learn a little bit of everything. Wouldn’t it be nice to say ‘I can say hello in five European Languages’.
On the last European Day of Languages I decided to enrol on a Spanish evening class and this year I think I’ll brush up on my Italian. I love the feeling when you speak to a native speaker and they respond not in English but in their language. In my opinion, that’s the biggest compliment when speaking a foreign language.
The National Centre for Languages wants to encourage us to learn and use more than one language. They have lots of suggestions and ideas about how you can participate on the day, whether you are at school, work or home, for example, playing Scrabble in German, writing your shopping list in Russian, or learning some holiday phrases. Considering that there are over 6,000 languages in the world – there are plenty of options to choose from.
So pick a language, learn it, and you might surprise yourself.
Alternatively, engage in a foreign language activity like watching a French film, answering the phone in Portuguese or just order some food in Italian. Pasta isn’t that difficult to say now is it?