Adventures with languages
Bilingual dictionaries can be dangerous things, we were told at school – especially if you’re still at beginner level in one of the languages and you haven’t yet developed a “feel” for it. On the other hand if you know the languages well, dictionaries can be useful and interesting. If I look up a word…
If you look back to your childhood and teenage years, can you see where your interests, passions or even your career, started? We’re always hearing stories about people like Andy Murray and how they started playing tennis aged three, so it’s interesting to think about yourself and what you liked to do then. I thought…
It’s a bit more of a serious blog post today. I’m touching on what life can be like for those people who, in a few seconds, lose their language. If you’re learning another language you might get frustrated when you can’t find the right word to express yourself. But what if you regularly can’t find…
In my recent blog post “From revolutionary to biscuit entrepreneur”, I mentioned how exciting it is to see a friend being interviewed on TV. It’s also exciting to see a friend’s name on the ...
Vienna sightseeing The Schönbrunn Palace was on our list of “must dos” when we planned our trip to Vienna last summer. We had 6 days in the city and planned quite a bit of sightseeing as well as the ...
One thing I miss in the UK is good bakeries – especially places where you can buy really fresh brioche. The smell of baking drew me into “Aux Merveilleux de Fred". It has branches in Paris, Nantes, ...
It’s always exciting to see a friend featured on television. One evening in December 2017 we were very excited to see our friend Raffael featured on Südwestfunk (www.swr.de ) German TV. My daughter ...
In mid-April this year we felt the first strong spring sunshine. From then on we could look forward to about 6 months of longer daylight and warmer temperatures. Annual celebrations like Christmas and Easter punctuate the darker days and colder weather, but then in our family we have birthdays to celebrate in the warmer months. …
Following on from my last blog post, Dog Language, I’ve put together a short Dog Phrasebook to show some typical dog phrases and their equivalent in English. Our part-time dog, Hamish, helped me with the translations on his last visit. You may remember Hamish from my previous post about dog borrowing and dog names : …
