Language Courses in Europe

A world of words

We live in an age of global communication, and the currency of communication is language. Experts estimate that there are a staggering 5 000 to 10 000 languages spoken in the world today, not to mention all the dialects and variants of those languages. Of these, the top 12 account for about three fifths of humanity, while the top 30 are spoken by more than three quarters of the world.

Between them, the EU’s half a billion citizens, in 27 Member States, speak 23 official languages, not to mention all the regional and minority languages. German is the most widely spoken as a first language, with about 90million native speakers. It is followed by English, French and Italian.

With all this linguistic diversity both within Europe and across the world, there are many advantages associated with learning and knowing a foreign language. It can help people make friends, enjoy their foreign holidays and travel more easily, advance in their careers or indulge in the pleasures of other cultures. Learning a language can also help broaden people’s horizons.

Moreover, the European Union has essentially become borderless and all citizens have the right to live, to study or to work wherever they want to within its borders, but the lack of language skills still represents an invisible barrier to free movement. Learning a language can help improve your ability to move around freely.

There is a certain aura of genius attached to speaking languages. But multilingualism is not only the preserve of academics and bookish linguists; plenty of European celebrities are also multilingual. Take football, a sport not traditionally associated with linguistic prowess, but which is replete with players who are fluent and articulate in several languages.

For instance, former French captain and national hero Zinedine Zidane speaks French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Berber. Ruud van Nistelrooy, the famous Dutch striker, speaks four languages, while his compatriot ‘Lucky’ Guus Hiddink, the celebrated football coach, speaks five languages. The popular English striker turned TV commentator Gary Lineker, when playing for Barcelona, did television punditry in Spanish. ‘I’ve really enjoyed learning Spanish and Japanese. Getting to grips with a new language can be great fun, and you learn so much about other people and what makes them tick,’ he says.

Learning a new language — like learning music — requires some effort but is enormously rewarding, and the journey can be as enjoyable as the arrival, as anyone who has embarked on this road can tell you.

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