The lesser-spotted language of Luxembourgish

I must confess to having a soft spot for the Luxembourgish language. Partly it’s a combination of my interests in languages and small countries. But also it’s because one of my lesser-known skills is the ability to sing “Happy Birthday” in Luxembourgish. Back in my university days, a bunch of us undertook a long minibus…

Practising Esperanto

Apart from Nigerian scammers, the Daily Mail website and a dreadful, never-ending avalanche of kitten photos, the internet is a pretty remarkable thing.  It’s been a huge tool in my learning of Esperanto which, five months since I started, is probably beyond the “beginner” phase and into “intermediate” territory.  It’s fair to say that Esperanto…

Why I’m learning Esperanto

I’ve always been interested in languages. It’s probably the single thing that most powerfully demonstrates human diversity and represents the gateway to understanding the world better.  If there is one free skill I’d love to have for no effort in return, it would be fluency in one or more other languages.  I am not fluent…

The campaign for simpler German

Did you know that the German word for “queen bee”, Weisel, is a masculine noun? Yes, that great animal world icon of matriarchy… is masculine. Nicole told me this odd factoid the other day as she studied a German language book. One thing we were very aware of on our recent trip to Austria was…