The Basque language, known to natives as Euskera, is the only language isolate in Western Europe, meaning that it is the only existing language that has no known living ‘relatives’: it is unique!  Linguists and historians alike have attempted to discover a link between Basque and other languages, but, despite trying to connect it to languages such as Egyptian, as well as languages of Asia and North America, no connection has been found.

The ancestral form of Basque was introduced into Western Europe several thousand years ago, whereas the majority of the languages spoken today arrived much later.  The first written records of the Basque language can be traced back to the first century BC.

Basque has been a co-official language in the three Basque regions of Vizcaya, Alava and Guipuzcoa since 1979.  However, it has no official status in France.  In 2006, it was recorded that Basque was spoken by just over 1 million people from the south-western French town of Bayonne to the Spanish city Bilbao, stretching from the coast and reaching 30 miles inland. 

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The remaining 8 top languages are all below 10%, with Arabic and Russian seeing the greatest growth since 2000. Perhaps predictably, as a percentage of language speakers who use the internet, Japan has the highest penetration wish a massive 75% of Japanese speakers accessing the web. German comes a close second with 68%, but the rest of the world has some way to go to catch up.

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If you are interested in learning a new language or improving your existing skills, there are many free online resources that can help. A number of schools, including MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Utah State University, have begun to offer free foreign language courses online. Free lessons can also be found through the BBC and the many foreign language learning networks that have cropped up on the web. This article provides a list of 15 places to find free foreign language lessons online:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers over 60 courses in foreign languages and literature. Users can find courses in Spanish, Chinese, Spanish, German, and Japanese.

The Open University - The Open University’s modern language unit features courses for Spanish, German, English, and French. Courses are available for beginner, intermediate, and advanced level language learners.

Utah State University - Utah State University offers several free online courses in languages, philosophy, and speech communication. Two courses that are particularly popular are the Chinese I and Chinese II language courses.

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As e-tailers prepare for another record Christmas period they should consider the changing trends in consumer confidence across Europe for new opportunities. Consumers are buying more frequently in every country in Europe, but as the pace of growth slows in the UK and competition stiffens, smart businesses will look to serve multilingual markets where consumerism grows faster and is less competitive.

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Perhaps it’s not the number one reason to study a foreign language, but speaking another language can save you money!  You’re less likely to be swindled on holiday if you can communicate using the local lingo, of course, but even at home, knowledge of a foreign language can save you a few pennies.  In my case, a 25% discount totaling more than a few pennies!

I recently visited a popular chain restaurant and found a typo on their menu – the name of a French cheese was spelt incorrectly.   I thought it was worth mentioning on a comment card, and was completely shocked to receive a nice letter and discount voucher a week later!   Learning foreign food names definitely pays off, so keep studying, kids!

Of the UK’s richest under 30s, at least half (53 %) count languages among their skills, according to research, while only 14 % say they speak no foreign language at all.

According to MP Phil Willis “The lack of linguists in our society severely disadvantages us as a nation.”

As any Careers Advisor can tell you, the ability to speak another language is not only useful, it might be essential for a particular career path, or just might be the string to a candidate’s bow that makes them stand out from other applicants for a job.

With many young people answering “I want to be famous” to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, who among their role models are setting an example to youngsters that learning languages is a good idea?

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This - the second guest posting on our company blog – comes from Spanish translator Carlos Montilla. Unsurprisingly, given the subject of his post, tourism is one of his specialisms but here he recounts a tale from his recent trip to Peru in near native English: cheers Carlos!

Spanish from Peru

Puno is a city in south Peru located on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake. Puno’s access to the lake is surrounded by some 40 man-made floating islands inhabited by the Uros people. The Uros people live on these islands and depend on the lake and tourism for their survival. We took a boat with members of a Chivay Cultural Association and their families and disembarked at one of the islands, where part of the Uros community welcomed us.

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Have you heard 50 Cent’s latest track? It’s called ‘Captcha’ and it’s about what happens if the police find you.

April Fools! Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is based on the word “capture”, and although it does sound like it could be on a rap album, a ‘captcha’ is most often a set of squiggly letters you have to type in a box to prove to a machine that you are not a machine. Half of the time I get them wrong, which is why I was really intrigued when I found a few on the net recently that did not involve distorted or twisted letters.

Here are 2 to test your French: (answers hidden in glossary under Captcha)

When adding a comment to a blog, I found a captcha which asked “What city does David live in?” The answer was included in the blog title, so it took non-artificial intelligence to figure it out, but it didn’t involve straining my eyes to figure out if something was a lower case “L” or a “1″. If you know of any fun captchas, please share!

Oh dear, who did that translation for you, Hillary? Next time, give us a call!

If you haven’t seen the latest US foreign relations gaffe on the news, have a look at youtube - it really is quite funny! Hillary Clinton, in an attempt to improve US/Russian relations, had a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, and presented him with a gift in front of a room full of reporters. The red button on a black and yellow base was supposed to say ‘reset’ in English and Russian, and was intended to be symbolic of Russia and the US restarting their relationship.

Clinton: “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?”

Lavrov: “You got it wrong; this says ‘peregruzka,’ which means overcharged.”

Ooops!

News reaches me that Birmingham City Council has taken the decision to ban all possessive apostrophes from road signs. The move is intended to sort the matter out once and for all following decades of debate across the city.

Birmingham started to drop the use of apostrophes from road signs in the 1950s so that signs in areas such as King’s Norton (or should that be Kings’ Norton?) actually read ‘Kings Norton’. Despite years of calls to have the signs replaced, the council has said not only will it not replace them; it will continue the practice of dropping the apostrophe from all future signs as well. It justifies its decision on the basis of cost, consistency and the fact that council staff spend too much time dealing with complaints about grammar.

The Apostrophe Protection Society (yes, you read correctly) has taken a rather dim view of the announcement, criticising the Council of ‘dumbing down’. And I have to say I quite agree.

So while the apostrophe debates may rage on, they will be utterly pointless in Birmingham at least.