Language is Everything

Congratulations, Hannah!

Congratulations to Hannah Brigham, our trainee manager, who has been awarded a level 3 certificate in personnel practice by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Hannah passed five units related to the management and development of people, and gained a distinction for performance management & employee relations.

  

"This course has given me a great insight into the foundations of personnel practice," said Hannah, "and I'm looking forward to putting it all into action."

Meanwhile, following on from last weekend's European Day of Languages, here are the answers to the questions we set at the beginning of this month: the word 'giraffe' comes from Arabic; Hong Kong means 'fragrant harbour' in Cantonese; and you can download our Hungarian 'travel survival card' here!

Clipper 09-10: four days to go

This Sunday sees the start of the 35,000-mile Clipper 09-10 Round the World Yacht Race from Hull. The crews will travel to Brazil, South Africa, Australia, China, California and the Caribbean before returning to Hull in July 2010. What makes the race unique is that nearly half the 400 people taking part had never been aboard a sailing yacht until they started training for the event.

Carolyn Burgess (our chief exec and the president of the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce) got a small taste of what the crews will be up against when she took to the ocean for a few hours aboard the Hull & Humber yacht. As befits the head of a language company, she soon picked up the lingo — to an extent. "I was at the helm," she said, "and I did the ropey thing, too."

 

Hull & Humber will be up against nine other teams from all over the world, and this blog will be keeping a close eye on their progress over the coming months.

European Day of Languages

There are just over three weeks to go until the European Day of Languages, celebrated every year on 26th September.

The Council of Europe, which organised the first European Day of Languages in 2001, says that:

"Throughout Europe, 800 million Europeans represented in the Council of Europe's 47 member states are encouraged to learn more languages, at any age, in and out of school. Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes multilingualism in the whole of Europe."

As always, Dawn Bowes (our senior account manager here at Language is Everything) will be 'out and about' talking to schoolchildren that week. Some of the questions she'll be answering are: which language does the word 'giraffe' come from? What does Hong Kong mean in Cantonese? And how do you say 'hello' in Hungarian? (We'll bring you the answers on this blog at the end of the month!)