Regular readers may have realised by now that I’m a sports fan – and even irregular readers probably have an inkling! So you can guess that I’m currently having a fine time keeping an eye and ear on events at the Olympics Games in Beijing. My boys are quite interested too and it’s fun trying to work out the rules of various rarely seen sports like fencing and judo as well as explaining those that I do understand like badminton and canoeing (again rarely seen on TV!)

Of course I’m particularly enjoying the cycling – Sami Sánchez (left) came good in the road race although Contador failed to make it a Spanish double this morning – my eldest was pleased though as he’s a Cancellara fan.

For those of you who are also enjoying the Games and fancy finding out more in Spanish, you can access the official site in Spanish – as well as English, French, Arabic and Mandarin.

Other places to check out –
Olimpiadas Beijing 2008
Clarín from Buenos Aires for a South American view
the sports pages of ABC and also El País (interesting article about Michael Phelps)
El Universal (Mexico City)
Terra (Miami)

And whilst I’m still on holiday for another three weeks (well, bit under I guess!), those of you in other countries will soon be back to school so here’s a link to some great Olympic resources from the Australian Olympic Committee – five lessons worth of stuff available in Spanish but also Arabic Chinese Croatian French German Indonesian Italian and Japanese. I’m thinking that I might use them anyway as part of EDL day – I know all the languages aren’t European but it’s about celebrating different languages and I’m never really very strict on them being European ;o) You could also check out this blog for some further ideas in Spanish.

And of course, don’t forget the Chinese policeman about whom I blogged before the Games – wonder how many people he’s helped – and in how many more languages he’s mastered greetings!

Anyhow, back to my sporting activities – I have a fantasy football team to complete – and it’s not going to plan as there are too few Spanish defenders in the Premiership to make my team fully Spanish so I’m haivng to cheat more than a little. Oh well!

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DSCN0704, originally uploaded by lisibo.

We’re now over half way through the school holidays and time is flying. My thoughts are already turning to the new academic year – I’ve been invited to do an ICT action research project next year and I need to decide on the title, I’m speaking at three conferences (so far!) so am thinking about those, I need to start resourcing the new Spanish SoW for KS2 at school and I’m planning an animation club so need to make sure that’s in hand too.

In the light of this, I was struck by the ‘Cita de hoy’ from About.com

El trabajo más productivo es el que sale de los manos de un hombre contento.
(Victor Pauchet)
(the most productive work is that which comes from the hands
of a happy man)

I’m having a good holidays and feel happier than I have in a long time – so I’d better get to it, hadn’t I?

But I’ll also be bearing these words in mind when term starts and life is getting me down – I think my bike will be seeing some action ;o)

PS you can sign up for the Dichos refranes y citas newsletter here.

Picture taken at Greenwood Forest Park.

After my week in Anglesey (pictures on Flickr!) I returned to a mammoth list of posts to read in Google reader. I’ve now waded through them and am back to a nice clean page (until someone else blogs!)

This post on About.com -Spanish language caught my eye-

Reporting on an article in the Telegraph , it seems that Barcelona FC cancelled their flight to the USA on Air Berlin as the company refused to deliver the in-flight communications in Catalan. The club’s President, Joan Laporta is involved in the promotion of Catalan and the decision, it seems, was made as a matter of principle.

Whilst I can support the right of people to speak and promote their language, especially in the light of the treatment meted out by Franco to Catalan, Basque and Gallego, and in light of recent discussions, I’m wondering…
how realistic the demands are on a low cost airline? As the spokeman for Air Berlin said, it would involve a great effort.
how far the right to have announcements in your language could be taken – will those from Valencia expect valencià to be spoken whilst those from Mallorca would want them to ‘xerrar es mallorquí’ ?
how much it was for the entourage rather than the players – although the manager is now Pep Guardiola – Catalan through and through – and there are a number of players from Barcelona, there are others who perhaps would be more comfortable in Spanish – or perhaps they should have asked for announcements in Portuguese, French and Icelandic as well?

And one last thing – does anyone pay attention to the inflight announcements anyway?

Mañana voy de vacaciones, pues no habrá mucha actividad por aquí durante la próxima semana.
¡Hasta pronto amigos! :o)

Having spent a good while flicking between Youtube and Zamzar over the last couple of days, I’ve had a chance to look over some of my ‘favourited’ videos once more, and came across this one.

I remember They Might Be Giants from their song Birdhouse in your soul – classic lyrics including ‘blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch who watches over you’ and ‘not to put too fine a point on it, say I’m the only bee in your bonnet’ – and It’s Istanbul not Constantinople – but here they are singing a song about the Alphabet of Nations. They cheat for X but otherwise a country for each letter.

I was thinking of using it as a challenge for European Day of Languages – some ideas:

• learning the song would be the simplest
• play the song each day for a week then have a quiz on countries
• name the languages spoken in the countries
• name the capital cities
• challenge pupils to label the countries on a map
• pupils rewrite the song with countries of their choice
• write a collaborative Alphabet of Languages – then learn a word in each language

Doesn’t have to be for EDL – it would be a good exercise for global awareness and ICU at any point.

There is an Animaniacs video naming countries too, but I prefer this one as it’s shorter, less dated (in terms of look and also countries that no longer exist) and also funkier. ;o)

I came across Omniglot the other day and bookmarked it in my del.icio.us account for further investigation.
Omniglot is ‘a guide to the languages, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems of the world’.

You can find out information about a myraid of languages including ones I’ve never heard of!

It’s fascinating to look at all the different writing systems both real – some Mayanscript

and some imaginary – some Klingon!

There are tips on language learning, as well as a multilingual bookstore and articles on languages.

In fact, there’s so much on there that it’s hard to do it justice in a blogpost so I’d encourage you to look for yourself. However, here are three of my favourite parts.

1. Language related art
This is a piece of art by Venantius Pinto based on the Torcharian script and there are links to other examples of artwork such as Mike O’Connell‘s artwork featuring a number of different scripts and Peggy Shearn who is inspired by language and writing systems (see also below)

2. Useful foreign phrases
Ever wanted to know how to say ‘Please speak more slowly’ in Estonian?

Or ‘Where’s the toilet?’ if you’re caught short in Greece?
??? ????? ?? ?????????
There is a quite long list of possible phrases in a wide range of languages – some with accompanying soundfiles to aid pronunciation. And there are also phrases that are possibly not as useful, but nonetheless amusing such as ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’ – here in Mandarin Chinese ?????????? and Polish Mój poduszkowiec jest pe?en w?gorzy and ‘Stop the world, I want to get off!’ in perhaps Czech Zastavte sv?t, chci vystoupit! or Armenian ??????? ?????? ????????, ??? ?????? ????:

You can also access in a variety of languages, again some with soundfiles-
for example –

??? ????? ?? ???? ?????;
(Miá pápia ma piá pápia)
A duck but which duck). (GREEK)

Esel essen Nesseln nicht, Nesseln essen Esel nicht.
Donkeys don’t eat nettles, and nettles don’t eat donkeys. (GERMAN)

Mae Llewellyn y llyfrgellydd o Lanelli wedi llyfu llawer o lyfaint.
Llewellyn, the librarian from Llanelli, licked many toads. (WELSH)

3.Proverbs and quotations about languages.

Omniglot has collected together proverbs and quotations in various tongues on the subject of languages. The majority are quite profound –

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

Una lengua natural es el archivo adonde han ido a parar las experiencias, saberes y creencias de una comunidad.
A natural language is the archive where the experiences, knowledge and beliefs of a community are stored.
– Fernando Lázaro Carreter (SPANISH)

Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon.
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart. (WELSH)

but there are others that are less ‘serious’ –

Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh.
A feast is no use without good talk. (GAELIC-SCOTLAND)

It’s no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport” appear.
– Douglas Adams

??????????????????
(Ti?n bù pà, dì bù pà, zh? pà Gu?ngd?ng rén shu? P?t?nghuà)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Cantonese speakers trying to speak Mandarin. (MANDARIN)

????????????????????
(Tìn m? gìng, deih m? gìng, jí gìng b?kfòng yàhn góng Gwóngdùngwá m?jeng)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Mandarin speakers speaking Cantonese badly. (CANTONESE)

My particular favourites include

Any time you think some other language is strange, remember that yours is just as strange, you’re just used to it.

Kolik jazyk? znáš, tolikrát jsi ?lov?kem.
You live a new life f

or every new language you speak.
If you know only one language, you live only once. (Czech)

and this French saying that I hope will soon be seen as untrue –

Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue.
Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue.
Un homme qui ne parle qu’une langue est anglais.
A man who speaks three language is trilingual.
A man who speaks two languages is bilingual.
A man who speaks only one language is English.
– Claude Gagnière

Looking at all the above ‘favourites’ I can see the OMNIGLOT site as an excellent resource for expanding the vision of languages in an interesting and fun way.

Why not use it as a resource for European Day of Languages on 26th September?

You could use the artwork to inspire your pupils to create their own having looked at the section on various scripts and writing systems.

Or challenge pupils to learn tongue twister in another language – the sound files are great for that!

Or each class could attempt to learn a phrase in as many languages as possible – and other classes could guess the phrase – I think we’ll be doing this at WCPS!

Whatever you do, it’s well worth a look!

First there was the Spanish football team winning Euro 08.

Then there was Rafa Nadal winning Wimbledon.

And now, Carlos Sastre has made it a hat trick of Spanish wins, riding into Paris as winner of this year’s Tour de France.After my post on Saturday re my dilemna, I did feel rather sorry for Cadel Evans who lost out to a Spaniard in the time trial last year too (Alberto Contador who was unable to defend his title as his team Astana were not invited in the wake of Vinokourov-gate last year) but he was simply too tired I think to pull it out of the bag.

However, I must admit that I was secretly really pleased to see Sastre triumph as he rode out of his skin in the time trial. Not simply because he’s Spanish and from one of my favourite towns (Avila), but because he was SO humble about it all. At every opportunity he praised his team who supported him so well throughout – and they deserved it too.

Without the Schleck brothers, Stuart O’Grady, Fabian Cancellara, Jens Voigt (who lost his saddle somewhere on the Champs d’Elysees!) Kurt Asle-Aversen, Nicky Sorensen and Volodymir Gustov, Sastre would have been as isolated and tired as Cadel Evans.

He dedicated his win to his brother-in-law, José María Jiménez, who was also a professional cyclist who died in 2004. As Sastre said ‘su derrota era querer ganar esta carrera’ so it made his win all the sweeter for him and his wife, Piedi, Jiménez’s sister.

So here’s to Carlos Sastre – ¡muy bien hecho!

With the Beijing Olympics a couple of weeks away, here’s a news story from China about one policeman’s efforts to make visitors feel welcome.

In an effort to help tourists, he has learned how to greet people in English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Japanese, Russian, Finnish, Italian and Portuguese. Phew! And he did it by chatting to tourists from those countries – just the advice we give to learners – have go!

Not sure about his taste in movies though ;o)

I’ve been trying to summer-clean my e-mails this evening, deleting ones that are no longer needed, bookmarking sites referenced and archiving ones from fora that contain resources. Whilst doing so, I came across an e-mail reminding me that I’d requested an invite to Twitterfone, and sending me the necessary code to get an account.

I must admit that I like shiny new things and like to be up to date with the latest ‘thing’, and sometimes forget what I’ve requested so I had to look up Twitterfone.

Glad I did!

Whilst I am becoming a bit of techno-chick (according to colleagues!), I still have a blindspot with one regard – I cannot get my head around predictive texting! I am a fast texter but predictive textig gets me all of a flutter. As I love texting and my only access to Twitter whilst at school is via my mobile, I sometimes become frustrated by my inability to text fast enough and wonder why I can’t just dictate my message.

Now I can! Twitterfone works thus …

Having registered with my invitation code, I’ve just tried it out – and it works!! I called the number, left my message and voilà – my tweet arrived a minute or so later, complete with a link to hear my dulcet tones dictating the message – just in case it’s gobbledegook!!
As the info section points out, it isn’t perfect, as it won’t recognise @ replies or d messages which is a bit of a pain, but I guess they might sort it in time.

Want an invite? Click here!

Off to Twitterfone my blog post ;o)

PS Sadly, doesn’t seem to spell in Spanish :o(

Although I no longer regularly teach French, I still love the annual French phenomenon that is the Tour de France. I used to make a big fuss over it with an interactive map and daily updated chart – I think that was when my NQT year really seemed to reap rewards as the kids at the tough comp where I taught fought to be my ‘updaters’.

Anyhow, I’ve been Tweeting all week with @sharongs and @etalbert amongst others about Le Tour, and my house has been a hive of Tour activity as my boys have been avidly watching ITV4 each night, and Mr S has been getting overexcited as his cycling fantasy teams have been doing rather well (his Vélo games team was in 87th place yesterday!)

So the big question is…. who will win?

I don’t share the opinion of some fellow Twits who are missing Armstrong and Ullrich – I love the more open race this year. From the start, I’ve been rooting for Mark Cavendish for the sprints and Cadel Evans for GC. With Cavendish abandoning to concentrate on the Olympics – and to give other sprinters a bit of a chance too ;o) – all my supportive vibes have been channelled the Aussie’s way.

However, Carlos Sastre is in yellow going into the penultimate stage – what shall I do? He’s Spanish after all! Should I be loyal to my Spanish preferences and yell for Sastre, or to my original choice and scream for Evans to make up the deficit of just over a minute and a half? The likely outcome is a win for Evans as Sastre is not a great time trialler, but anything can happen in Le Tour!

But I really can’t see this animation coming true – sorry, Bernhard Eisel – but, just to be on the safe side, watch out for cows, Carlos and Cadel!!