Language Museum Blog

Communications provider Telefonica Digital have stressed the importance of being bilingual. The company have said that UK graduates need another language to work for a digital employer. ‘Research published today shows 70% of UK graduates cannot speak any languages other than English well or fluently.’

Telefonica has said that as a global digital business, headquartered in the UK, it “badly needs” more graduates who can speak second and even third languages to take advantage of huge opportunities in areas such as Latin America.

Although the statistic of 70% is bad news for Telefonica it is good news for bilingual graduates as there should be less competition for jobs that require a second language.

The survey of more than 1,000 UK university graduates reveals 14% of UK graduates have lost out on a job opportunity because they did not speak another language.

French, German and Spanish are the top three languages graduates with a second language can speak, but ‘only 3% of the graduate foreign language speakers can speak Portuguese, the first language of Brazil, despite that country being one of the fastest growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) markets’. In an increasingly competitive job market it would appear learning another language is not only a desirable addition to your CV but also allows you to compete for jobs many other graduates are unable to.

via: HR Magazine

The internet is a great resource for language learning, but only if you can find the information you need.

Good news for English speakers and language learners as English is the language most used by internet users. According to research by Internet World Stats, English is the language used by almost 30% of users. This is quite closely followed by Chinese and then Spanish. Japanese, French, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Russian and Korean round out the top 10.

Keeping this in mind, try out this game to see if you can guess the world’s top 20 most spoken languages. I think the number one will surprise you!

Yesterday I posted about Christmas songs in different languages, and now it’s time to wish you a very happy Christmas, again in a few different languages! So….

Miilaad Majiid (Arabic), Joyeux Noël (French), Frohe Weinachten (German), Buon Natale (Italian), Meri Kurisumasu (Japanese), Shèng dàn kuài lè (Mandarin), Feliz Natal (Portugese), Feliz Navidad (Spanish), and finally Merry Christmas (UK)!

Try this Omniglot page for more translations in more languages, including some audio recordings.

From all of us at Language Museum, we wish you a safe and happy Christmas. See you in the New Year!