The French and English languages share many linguistic similitudes, despite having such different origins. French comes from the Indo-European family of languages and forms part of the Romance languages along with other languages such as Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Catalan amongst many others. On the other hand, England having been invaded by Germanic Tribes in the early 5th century,  the Germanic language, ‘Angles’ was strongly imposed.  Therefore, one wonders about the close connection shared between these two languages of different motherlands.

This phenomenon came about during the time of the Norman invasion of Britain in the 11^th century. This is when the French language became the medium of communication of the higher classes. Thus many French words were absorbed by the English vocabulary.  As a result of that, the two languages share many grammatical similarities. It also characterises their difference. Some of these are;

1. Alphabet:

The French alphabet contains 26 letters like its English counterpart.  However, this also includes letters with diacritics: é (acute acent) è à ù (grave accent), ç (cedilla), â ê î ô û (circumflex), ë ï ü (diaeresis).

2. Phonology:

A common error made by a French native speaker while speaking English is the omission of the /h/ sound found at the beginning of many English words.  For instance, ‘As ‘arry ‘eard about ‘er  (Has Harry heard about her?)

Another typical pronunciation problem is the inability to correctly articulate the vowel sounds in word pairs such ...

Car Names – Translated

There is a theory that the Japanese prefer to buy cars with names that sound “foreign”. Therefore, many Japanese car producers launch cars with very weird names. Unfortunately, the marketing managers often do not check the meaning of these terms. This lack of wisdom often leads to funny and sometimes unpleasant results. The following are some examples:

Fiat Uno – In Finland sounds this word like “Uuno“ – which means a dork.

Ford Pinto – Means in South America bandit, dastard, or drunk.

Ford Probe – In Germany, “Probe” means sample, test, trial.. A trial car?!

Lada Nova – This is a not really appropriate name for a car in Spain – „no va“ means not going.

Mazda Laputa – Another weird name for Spanish people. This means the lady of the night.

Mercedes Vaneo – “Vaneo”, in some countries, means toilet paper.

Mitsubishi Dingo – Dingo is an Australian dog. It steals babies out of tents.

Mitsubishi Legnum – Sounds like leg numb.

Mitsubishi Pajero – This term mistake is probably the best known one. In Spain it means pansy, sissy, etc. There it is also used as an abusive word. This car name was changed to Montero in countries speaking Spanish and in the United Kingdom it is known as Shogun.

Rolls-Royce Silver Mist – In Germany, the term “Mist” means rubbish, garbage, muck, etc.

Toyota MR2 – French people ...

Here are some Spanish tongue twisters. I hope you enjoy them! Even though they don’t make any sense in English…

¿Cómo quieres que te quiera
si el que quiero que me quiera
no me quiere como quiero que me quiera?
(How do you want me to love you, if the one I love doesn’t love me like I want.)

El cielo está enladrillado,
¿quién lo desenladrillará?
El desenladrillador
que lo desenladrille,
buen desenladrillador será.
(The sky has cobble-stones, who will uncobble it? The cobble-stone man who uncobbles it, a good cobble-stone man will be.)

El perro de San Roque
no tiene rabo
porque Ramón Ramírez
se lo ha cortado.
(San Roque’s dog doesn’t have a tail, because Ramon Ramirez cut it off.)

Pablito clavó un clavito.
—¿Qué clavito clavó Pablito?
—Un clavito chiquitito.
(Little Paul hammered a nail. Which nail hammered Little Paul? A little tiny nail.)

Un tigre, dos tigres, tres tigres
trigaban en un trigal.
¿Qué tigre trigaba más?
Todos trigaban igual.
(One tiger, two tigers, three tigers, were eating in a wheat field. Which tiger was eating more? They were all eating the same.)

If you require any Spanish translation, tongue twisting or not, then please contact us.

Welsh

Lots of people know some Welsh or have some contact with the language. And many people want to feel a little more confident about their ability in Welsh. So if you fancy improving your Welsh without going on a full-blown course, here are some tips (or ‘cynghorion’ as we’d say).

• Radio Cymru in the car, in the house – probably the simplest and least painful way of improving your language skills. And this works for beginners where the emphasis would be on pronunciation as well as for the more advanced in hearing the words currently in vogue . For the very advanced the game is to catch out the announcers in grammatical errors! But for the majority the barrier to overcome is simply not understanding all of it.  Like breaking the pain barrier, the trick is not to mind.  Just sitting in the warm flow of the language does you good!

• Public signs – bilingual signs are all around us but most people do not notice them. Make an effort to read the Welsh and remember it. Not all the Welsh on signs is correct, so be careful. If it does not sound right to you or has a ‘z’ in the middle then trust your instincts until you get a chance to check. But this is an easy way to pick up regular little doses of Welsh as you ...
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Tourists might feel very uncomfortable when they are in a foreign country, need help, but cannot ask for it. Therefore, for today’s article, we decided to introduce you some basic sentences in the following languages; French, German, Italian, Polish, Slovak, Spanish and Welsh. These sentences might help feel you better, when visiting a foreign country.

Enjoy your stay!