By Anna Sobell, Nathalie Moire and Mari Cruz Olivan
Our top five business language courses
Welcome to our new series of blogs focussing on our top 5 languages! By ‘top’ we mean, five of our most popular languages courses for our business learners i.e. the languages we have the most courses in. These are, in no particular order: Spanish, French, Russian, English and German. In this post you’ll find our top 5 facts about each language, and in later posts we’ll give you handy business expressions in each of our top 5 languages.
Top 5 Spanish facts:
- The letter ñ is the only Spanish letter of Spanish origin.
- The United States has the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking population with almost 53 million people. The highest concentration is in New Mexico, California and Texas.
- Many Spanish nouns have the same spelling but completely different meanings if they are used within a different grammatical context. For example; “el cura” (the priest) and “la cura” (the cure).
- Many words in Spanish cannot be translated to English by using just one word. An example is the verb “estrenar”, meaning: to wear or to use something for the first time.
- There are words in English and Spanish that are very similar in terms of spelling but have completely different meanings: They are called false friends. For example, librería means “bookshop” in English, not “library”.
Find out abut learning Spanish for business in our blog.
Top 5 French facts:
- The longest French word, ‘anticonstitutionnellement’ (which means ‘in a very unconstitutional way’) has 25 letters – but it is hardly ever used!
- Although the letter ‘e’ is the most commonly used letter in the alphabet, the author Georges Perec wrote a novel in 1969 entitled ‘La disparition’.
- Not one single letter e was used in its 300 pages! Ironic considering he had four in his name.
- The largest French-speaking city isn’t in France. It’s Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- The word ‘salut’ means both ‘hello’ and ‘bye’. And salute. And salvation.
- A very useful French word that isn’t in course books is ‘bof’. It is used to express indifference or lack of enthusiasm. For example:
‘How was the concert last night?’ ‘Bof, pas mal, pas genial…’
‘What do you fancy doing tomorrow?’ ‘Bof – whatever you like’
Find out more about learning French for business in our blog.
Top 5 Russian facts:
- Every single adjective in the Russian language has more than one syllable, apart from the word for ‘angry’.
- The word ‘vodka’ (Russian: во́дка) derives for the word ‘voda’, which means ‘water’.
- The stress pattern of a word can drastically alter its meaning. For example, я плачу – in which emphasis is on the second syllable means ‘I’m paying’. However, я плáчу – in which the emphasis is on the first syllable means ‘I’m crying’. Quite a difference!
- What do you want to be when you grow up? If your answer is/was “an astronaut!”, learning Russian is essential. Russian is the international language of space, and in the event of an emergency instructions are given to astronauts in Russian. Part of training to become a ‘cosmonaut’ (to give it the appropriate name), even includes doing a homestay in Moscow to pick up some Russian.
- The Russian alphabet is surprisingly similar to the Latin alphabet; if you don’t believe us, just take a look on Google!
Find out more about learning Russian for business in our blog.
Top 5 English Facts:
- ‘Pronunciation’ is one of the most mispronounced words in the English language.
- All pilots on international flights communicate solely in English, making it the official language of the sky!
- The most commonly used letter in the English language is ‘e’. As demonstrated in this sentence.
- For 8 years, a word appeared in the English dictionary which had absolutely no meaning at all. The word was ‘Dord’, and was in fact just a printing error!
- 1.75 billion people in the World today speak English to a useful level.
Find out more about English business language courses in our blog.
Top 5 German facts:
- The German language is the proud proprietor of the longest word in the world! And here it is:
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
Did you count them?! That’s a massive 63 letters! What does it mean? Well, that’s easy. It means ‘the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labelling of beef’, obviously! The sad news is, this word is now pretty much obsolete as it was considered a little too much of a mouthful!
- The German language should arguably be given the ‘most bizarre proverbs and idioms’ award! Just check these examples out:
| Proverb/Idiom |
Translation |
Meaning/English equivalent |
| Das ist nicht dein Bier! |
That is not your beer! |
None of your business! |
| Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof. |
I only understand train station. |
It’s all Greek to me! |
| Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei. |
Everything has an end, only sausage has two. |
All good things must come to an end. |
- German has a number of words which can’t be directly translated to other languages. For example, ‘Luftschloss’ which literally means ‘castle in the sky’ but is used to describe a dream/ambition/hope deemed to be unrealistic. Or ‘Kummerspeck’, which is used to describe the excess fat gained when one deals with stress by overeating. And what about ‘Fingerspitzengefühl’, which means to have strong intuition about any given situations. It literally means to have strong feelings in the finger tips. Which one’s your favourite?!
- A German word consists of an average of 10.6 letters, while an English word has an average of 4.7 letter
- Leonardo Di Caprio is fluent in German
Find out more about learning German for business use in our blog.
Well, I hope you enjoyed our top 5 in our top 5! Keep an eye out for the next instalment!
References:
https://lidenz.ru/5-interesting-facts-russian-people-speak/
https://www.listenandlearn.org/blog/9-surprising-facts-about-the-russian-language/
https://www.english.com/blog/fascinating-facts-about-english
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/12-fascinating-facts-about-the-german-language/
https://www.listenandlearnusa.com/blog/9-surprising-facts-about-the-german-language/
