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English is one of the most common languages spoken globally. Everywhere you go, whether in America or Eastern parts of Asia, you can find people speaking this language. Since 375 million people speak this familiar tongue, there is no surprise that even you yourself know how to speak English.

But learning English with the British accent; is this also common to the majority?

Surfing the web exposes the fact that there are lots of people who are interested in learning English, the “British” way. They find this unique language with a twist, making English a more sophisticated and a good-to-hear kind of speech. They choose to learn this amazing language not just for the sake of knowing it, or because it sounds cute in a way, but for the reason of speaking properly. Communication has always been essential for people’s lifestyle and there is nothing more fulfilling than to understand one another.

Aside from learning this accent in a personal context, learning British English is also important in the business perspective. If interested people fascinate working in the European regions, then their learning of this kind of English is required from them. It’s a guarantee that businessmen with a British accent encounters people who speak the same kind of tongue will have a greater opportunity in business dealing.

Now, is it difficult to learn English with a different accent? It’s as easy as learning English in grade school.

It is actually a great factor if a person already resides in U.K. during his younger years. Researchers agree based on their studies that children learning languages in their early stage easily adopt the native language in their communities. Language schools with their comprehensive learning facilities aid learners to become efficient English communicators. Manchester and other popular cities in U.K. have language schools that excellently promote intensive English learning.

Prior to enrolling one’s self to language schools, an interested learner can always acquire British English by continually communicating to people who speak the same accent. Through this, a learner practices to improve his pronunciations similar to British accent. By frequently working on this, the learner gradually adopts the mannerisms that the British people possess. With the learner’s keen and observant manner, he’ll become an effective communicator in no-time.

All languages have their own wonders and magnificence. The prolonged usage of it makes it even more beautiful and awesome. As learners continue to pursue their learning on British accent, they will discover how significant it is, both on personal and business contexts. Try learning it yourself spend some days in London, one of the greatest cities in the world and practice your british accent. One of the cheapest ways to stay in london is booking a a room in one of the many hostels london.

In the language world, every now and then we hear various terms such as monolinguals, bilinguals, multilinguals, polyglots and hyperpolyglots. Among the given terms, the hyperpolyglots rank in the higher sphere of people who speak more than one language. What are hyperpolyglots and why are they such amazing people?

A polyglot is a multilingual person who speaks two or more languages. He or she can also be referred to as bilingual or trilingual depending on the number of languages he or she can speak. A hyperpolyglot on the other hand is a polyglot who speaks more than the usual number of languages, more likely to be over ten languages.

Hyperpolyglots are multilingual people who have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood which is then called as his or her first language. The hyperpolyglots’ first language is acquired without formal education and later on they acquire other languages either through immersion or formal language learning.

People who are potential hyperpolyglots are:

• those with strong interest in a foreign language;
• those who find in necessary to acquire other languages for practical purposes either for education, information, entertainment or business;
• those who reside in border areas between countries with different languages;
• those who migrate to other countries;
• those who are children of expatriates; those who are children of parents who speak different languages;
• children who have a parent or both parents who have learned other languages;
• and children in language-rich communities.

Since the world has so many languages and dialects, it is no wonder that some people are gifted enough to absorb and speak many as many as possible. The following are some people who are reputed to be hyeperpolyglots:

• Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti – known to have perfect knowledge of twenty-eight languages, spoke thirty-eight languages and forty dialects;
  

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• Heinrich Schliemann – known to be conversant in thirteen languages;
• Ziad Fazah – claims to speak fifty-nine languages;
• Uku Masing – knowledge of sixty-five languages;
• Alexander Arguelles – claims to have knowledge of more than twenty-one languages;
• Kenneth Hale – has speaking knowledge of more than fifty languages;
• Emil Krebs – mastered sixty-eight languages in speech and writing and studied one hundred twenty other languages;
• Sir John Bowring – reportedly spoke one hundred languages and had knowledge of more two hundred;
• Harold Williams – fluent in fifty-eight languages;
• Jose Rizal – known to be fluent in twenty-two languages;
• Richard Francis Burton – spoke twenty-nine languages;
• PV Narasimha Rao – reputed to speak thirteen languages;
• Paul Robeson – studied more than twenty languages;
• Barry Farber – studied twenty-six languages;
  

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• Daniel Tammet – speaks more than ten languages;
• Carlos do Amaral Freire – studied more than a hundred languages and mastered sixty of them.

If you are one of those who can speak and understand many languages, you are a polyglot and you may be a hyperpolyglot if you can speak more! If you are still one of those who speak only one language, be inspired and motivated enough to learn another language or two or more and be part of the many multilingual people in the world who outnumber the monolingual ones.

Have you observed the learning capability of children nowadays? Comparing people’s learning capacity from the past decades and today, the younger generation has the fastest speed in learning development. Factors considered are the types of communities they inhabit in, the modernization of learning methods, techniques and equipments they use, and the like. Seeing the pace of their learning ability, you cannot underestimate the boundless potentials hidden inside these children.

In the language learning context, researches confirmed that children ages 1-12 have natural knowledge in language learning. When they learn other foreign languages prior to their native tongue, they have better cognitive abilities and richer vocabulary compared to adults who, in their grown-up age start to learn other languages.

Written by Caroline Bowen, she said that children in the 12th month and more can speak one or two words that they understand, or knows the meaning of it. They also obey simple requests like “Can I have your cup?” or commands like “Don’t touch!” They can also understand little questions like “Where’s your tummy?” and responds to it by touching their stomach. In ages 2 to 3, they are able to follow two-part instructions and connect two or three words together to talk about and ask for things.

The basic misconception of parent-to-children communication is that parents tend to assume that everything they say is understood by their children. They must recognize that children’s speech does not sound like adult’s speech. It is because children, as young as they are, make these so-called sound replacements. These sound replacements are termed by researchers as phonological processes.

Here are examples of phonological processes according to Caroline Bowen.

• Context Sensitive Voicing- usually disappeared from a child’s speech sound system by 3 years.
  • Example: cup= gup

• Word Final Devoicing- normally goes out at age 3, then finally deletes it after 3 months.
  • Example: bed= bet

• Velar Fronting- continues about ages 3 years and 6 months
  • Example: car= tar

• Constant Harmony- persists until 3.9 years.
  • Example: kitty cat= titty kat

• Weak Syllable Deletion- common to 4-year old children.
  • Example: elephant= effant

• Cluster Reduction
  • Example: spoon= boon

• Gliding of Liquids- usually disappears during 5th years.
  • Example: leg= weg

• Stopping of F, and S – stops at age 3.
  • Example: fish= tish or Say= tay

• Stopping of Z - often persists at ages 3.6
  • Example: peas= pead

• Stopping of SH, J, and CH- eliminated at ages 4.6
  • Examples:  shop= dop; jack= dack; chin= tin

• Stopping of TH- can go on until 5.0
  • Example: this= dis; That= dat

With children undergoing such kind of processes, parents are required with great patience and immense understanding. They need the adults to help them maximize their potentials. The role of parents to their children’s language learning is to believe in their ability to acquire knowledge, despite of their immature quality. Likewise, parents must continually interact with their conversation. Particularly, parents are the nearest persons kids can converse with, thus plays a vital role for their growth and development.

Inside these children are potentials to become future linguists, business tycoons, engineers, or even the next president of a progressive nation. You never know what these youngsters are capable of. If they would be trained and equipped with enough knowledge, enrolled to institutions that would help them rise to their potential, then the older generation would witness the marvelous acts they boundlessly are capable of doing.

Ten to fifteen years from now, these children will mark history with their unlimited skills and ability. See it for yourself.

The learning and teaching of foreign languages in various parts of the world is among the deemed important activities young students should engage themselves with. Since learning foreign languages has been proven time and again to be very useful for a wide array of purposes. We have written another article related with this, based on intercultural business interaction and  learning foreign languages which helps understanding more cultures and developing businesses that rely on the importance of languages.

More and more countries in the world are promoting the learning and teaching of foreign languages. In the United Kingdom however, new statistics show that there is a fall in the number of trainee teachers specializing in languages. There is a shortage of trainee modern foreign language teachers in the UK and it is holding back the government drive to make certain that all children start learning a foreign language from the age of seven.

The new figures show that there is a drop in the number of trainee primary school teachers that specialize in languages from 710 to 560 in just two years. Sir Jim Rose, the former chief schools inspector heads a government inquiry that calls for the subject of languages to be introduced in the students’ timetable in 2011.

The UK government may be looking forward to improving the curriculum for modern foreign languages but in reality, things are going in the wrong direction since there is a decline in the number of teachers and language specialists.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ briefing note reveals that primary schools have to resort to a range of measures to ensure that they can teach languages. This also includes bringing in parents with language skills to teach and using the existing staff that might have a dash of knowledge of a foreign language.

The languages from which a school might choose which vary from the usual European staple of German, Spanish, and French to the likes of Urdu and Japanese, often depend on which ones the existing staff can speak. The results make it difficult to provide continuity between primary and secondary schooling of foreign languages. It was revealed that most of the primary school curriculum is delivered orally rather than through written work.

Sir Jim Rose’s report recommends that only one or two foreign languages should be taught and that these should fit in with what is offered by local secondary schools. Most primary schools would prefer to offer several languages even though they are not taught with much depth on the grounds that it would increase the students’ interest for the subject.

A research has shown results that there is a class divide in schools which offers languages as a GCSE option with independent and selective state schools still likely to offer languages to all pupils but some comprehensive in disadvantaged areas are dropping the subjects in general. A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said the language teacher figures had to be taken in context, adding the fact that there were only fifty vacancies for secondary languages in January. He said that “There’s no point in recruiting the same numbers of language teachers if there are no jobs for them to fill, if retention rates are good and if the secondary population is falling.”

What will become of the future of foreign language teaching in the UK if there is a steady decline of language teachers? What do you think the government must do to solve this issue?

Time and again we read or hear about learning languages and its numerous advantages. It is true that learning languages has many advantages and that when time comes that a person is fluent in various tongues, he or she will be able to communicate with more people in the world.

It is the interactions or exchanges among people through various languages that they are able to convey themselves, share their knowledge and express their interests. Learning languages helps people achieve a lot of things they want, and it helps them to be able to get in touch with the rest of the world.

For each individual who is learning a language other than his or her own native tongue, there comes a purpose why he or she is learning languages. Most reasons why people choose to become multilingual range from the personal to the global context. For personal reasons, people who can speak other languages can improve their lives and use the languages they learn either for educational, leisure or business purposes. In a broader aspect, the knowledge of languages can be used for diplomatic purposes and volunteer work in other countries.

In some parts of the world, there are people especially young students who learn languages for the sake of completing mandatory courses in their respective schools yet as their courses come to a close; some of them abandon the languages they took time to learn. However, there are those who are really interested in languages and further their studies on the language and even use it in the future either for their careers or personal lives.

The language learning process requires not only the interest of the language learner to learn a language, but it also encourages the language learner to learn beyond the language – the culture where the language came from. People who are able to speak more than one language can become more appreciative and respectful of other races, countries and cultures; and they tend to understand more about the world.

If you are among those who are learning languages, have you asked yourself why you chose to learn another language and why you chose to learn that particular language? Do you value the language you are learning and do you value its purpose?

Think about it. Learning languages may just be a mere requirement in some institutions, but it could be something which will help you make your life better.

The Italian language is one of the major languages in the world and it is spoken by more than sixty-three million people as a first language mainly in Italy. It is also the official language of the Vatican and San Marino, and one of the four official languages of Switzerland. Learning Italian can be used to your advantage for various purposes which involve education, business, finance, travel, and so much more. Knowledge of the Italian language can also be used for travel, watching Italian films, listening to Italian music, or reading Italian literature. If you are really interested to know this wonderful Romance language, better choose to learn Italian in Siena, Italy.

The beautiful city of Siena is located in the Tuscan region of Italy. It is a medieval city located a few miles south of Florence and it is most popular for its horse race Il Palio. Siena’s historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it has the famous Piazza del Campo and Duomo. The city also has gardens and churches and cultural events which you can enjoy as you explore the culture and history of the place. You will never regret to learn Italian in Siena because you will surely be inspired as you stroll around its historic streets and met its friendly people.

Learning Italian in Siena will be a wonderful experience for you since the Sienese people are known for the manner they speak the Italian language and it is deemed as the perfect form of Italian! Explore the beauty and attractions of Siena as you meet and converse with the locals and practice your Italian skills with them. Also try authentic and scrumptious Tuscan cuisine served in the restaurants of the city as well in the local homes of the Sienese you might be able to befriend.

Learn Italian in Siena in our partner language school Scuola Leonardo da Vinci which is located just a few minutes away from the Piazza del Campo. The school is close to museums, historic monuments, shops, restaurants and more. The cozy atmosphere of the language school will enable you to feel at home. The school has large classrooms and a sun deck where you can hang out with fellow Italian language students. Your italian will be great and you won’t look like this:

Have an enjoyable and wonderful experience in a nice Tuscan town! Learn Italian in Siena!

Language learning has been around since people from different parts of the world have learned about each other’s existence, places and cultures and they have established ties with each other by communicating in each other’s languages.

For thousands of years many people have learned languages other than their native tongues in order to be updated with the activities, events, economies, innovations, and strategies of other countries. However, learning languages back then had been crude and complicated since not everyone had the privilege or opportunity to learn them.

Fast forward to the modern times, language learning has experienced a lot of changes together with the development of newer methods and more modern technology. In the 1960s, language learning programs in Canada promoted total language immersion in the language learners’ target language. Language learners may have had a hard time coping with the method but as years went by, it is considered to be one of the most effective ways to learn a language and has become a standard for most language learning institutions.

Most experts say that knowing and understanding languages other than one’s own will be critical and beneficial as the whole world is shifting into a global society where almost everyone on the planet will be interacting with each other. Educational institutions are put in an important position to prepare the future leaders of the world with the essential communication tools.

According to a 2006 survey by the Modern Language Association, the study of languages other than English has been steadily climbing since 1998 and has increased by 12.9 percent from 2002 to 2006. Spanish, German, and French language enrollees represent more than seventy percent of the results yet in that four-year period, enrollment in other language courses have also grown such as the 127 percent growth in Arabic courses and 51 percent in Chinese courses. The trend matches with the prediction that in order to succeed in the new economy, people need to me bilingual or multilingual.

David Crystal, a notable linguist who wrote numerous books including “The Future of Language”, has said that languages are dying daily due to globalization, oppressive governments and natural disasters that are wiping out small communities. The world has six thousand to seven thousand languages and many predict that more than half of them will perish in the twenty-first century.

Marty Abbot, the director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has also said that in the past, American schools tended to focus on languages of the moment. Russian programs started popping up after the launch of Sputnik in the 1960s, in the 1980s there was an interest in the Japanese language since the economy of Japan was strong, and now there is a rise in Chinese language learning as a result of China’s economy. America has a history of learning languages when they think that there’s an economic or political threat going their way. However, there are many college campuses that show effort to internationalize their curriculums. There are more students studying abroad and receiving government scholarships so that they are prepared to meet the demands of a global economy.

Terry Caccavale who is the K-12 language specialist for Holliston Public Schools has launched a French Immersion Program in 1979 with one kindergarten class of twenty-seven students. Caccavale said that studies have shown that foreign language learning increases critical thinking skills, creativity, and flexibility of the mind in young children. She has also said that the argument in favor of early language learning should not be based upon the benefits of learning one particular language and that the better argument is that children should learn any second language while they are children.

Catherine Porter who was Caccavale’s French professor in 1972 and is the current president of the Modern Language Association said that total immersion classes have yet to expand in the United States mainly due to a limited public awareness and the fact that some local officials see foreign languages as expendable. Porter also said that compared to children, adults have a more difficult time learning a second language and many of them lack the motivation because they believe that it is too hard. However, in this century, experts say that it is easier than ever to become bilingual due to technological advances.

David Crystal has said that the internet has been revolutionary since in 1995, 90 percent of the web was in English yet by 2000 the number dropped to 75 percent. In 2003 there were more hosts in languages other than English on the web. By the end of 2008, the internet users of China rose to 298 million and makes up the largest online population of the world according to a recent report by China Internet Network Information Center.

The onset of Web 2.0 has been very influential for many people around the world and language learners have used the technology to enhance their language learning skills. Blogs, chat rooms, podcasts, videos, and more have given learners more exposure to their target languages and cultures beyond the walls of the classroom. Even with the argument that the web will be pushing for one universal language, Crystal said that the technology promotes linguistic diversity.

Crystal said that he believes that the big languages will split across the globe and then converge into two levels one being the international standard, while the other will exist in pockets as variations that express local identities. The internet will contribute to the levels and allow the standard to reach more people. However, Crystal said it is too soon to make long term predictions regarding the matter.

How about you, what do you think will be the future of languages and foreign language learning?